More Looking At Websites

Another website I look at a fair amount is the DC website. This again is again because I follow the skate scene along with a touch of snow boarding and motocross. I am also a fan of Ken Block's Gymkhana videos and this website has it all. I also like the way this site has many photo's and videos as they are of sports I am interested in.
It has now also began to showcase the last 20 years of professional skateboarder Danny Way, who happens has skated professionally since he was 14 and gone on to break world records for the highest backside air out of a quater pipe, measuring 23.5 ft, also setting the long distance record with a backside 360 at 75 ft, largest bomb drop from the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino at 100 ft into a 40 ft ramp, gapping the great wall of China as well as breaking the land speed on a skateboard at 74 mph.
Because of these achievements he has become extremely well known and websites use this to draw attention to audiences. This also supports the reason I have decided to focus on images and videos rather than large amounts of text to read.

Print screen of the DC website:
Also Check out DC website

Danny Way also has his own website, documenting on all his latest and oldest news including photos and videos. This site is also Black which in my opinion looks much better.


Now that I have already built a simple website which is shown as print screens in the post below, I can now begin to make it more unique to me, adding images and videos.

Danny Way Official Website

The reason for this post is to determine my audience. I aim to target an audience that has similar interests to me, as the videos and images I put on my website will mainly be of skating.

After Experience

Now that I have been down to the Stonehouse area and specifically looked at Union Street as a focus point I am now able to generate a new map of the place with a bit more experience and feel to it. Below is the map and key that I managed to come up with.
As this map shows, there are only a few naturally green areas in Union Street. I have added images to show what exactly can be seen from certain standing points on the journey down the street which helps when referring back to. There are also a huge amount of artificial lighting down the street from street lamps and surrounding buildings in the area.

More Website Ideas

I didn't like the fact that the images/logos I came up with had a lot of white in them. This did not fit in with the black and darker look I am aiming for with my site. To change this I went back and did some more. Before hand however, I also wanted to create some sort of logo that could the site could be identified with. To achieve this I had another look at my digital signature I made for the module IDAT 107, by using the same style as the Love Park does in Philadelphia.
Digital Signature:
This is what I managed to produce from the above and will use it for my header to the site.

Website Building

I know which websites I like, so creating my own should be fairly simple. I definitely don't want too much going on, this can distract users and make navigation of the site much harder than it needs to be. I also wanted to create some sort of logo/image that can be recognised with my site. I came up with black, white and red being my main colours as black and white are complete opposites and red was to give the site more a bit of colour. They also contrast with each other which again makes it easy to identify. The menu is located exactly the same on every page, also making it easier to navigate, which is at the top making it clear and easily found.

This was the first image i came up with, but it did not turn out the way I wanted, it was way too small to be used and not what i was after.
So I went back and came up with a similar logo/image using Illustrator to make the image much larger and clearer. I also kept it simple by just using the domain name 'olza' to keep it specific to my site.

So this is the image i came up with to use for my site. I definitely wanted to use this, but was not sure of whether to use it as my back ground image, or the header of each of the site pages.
Here are some screen shots of the different ways the site may look by experimenting different uses of this image.

Without Background Image:With Background Image:
I am currently split between both these options as both have hold characteristics I like. The print screen with no background image I find looks good as its easy to read and nothing to distract users, I find it also makes the menu much easier to use as its extremely clear and separate to all other text.
The print screen of the site with the background also looks appealing as there's something extra, but not too much that it takes away the main focus to the text. It also makes the site more unique having a background image that I have created myself.

My choice of font was Arial as it is easy to read, but also looks different. I was tempted to use Times New Roman as this is sans-serif font and has been proven to be easier to read as the flicks of the letters bring them closer together, however, this really only applies to large amounts of text that will be read by users for long periods of time. The purpose of my site is not for long reading about me, but more visual in the use of pictures and video. I wanted to focus on this as it is much nicer for a user to see images and clips rather than to read, this should keep users interested for longer and keep them visiting again to see updated pages.

Digital Signature

For our first assignment, we have been set the task of designing our digital signature using Illustrator. We had to use out full first and last name to create this and only allowed to change the font, size and colour.
The signature had to reflect on how we feel, and the interests we have. I love skateboarding and definitely wanted to incorporate this into my personal signature, but we were told that making the text look like an object was not a good idea.
So instead of making the text look like a certain object, I decided to use the style of writing and positioning that I knew would relate to skateboarding.This the welcome people get when visiting Love Park in Philadelphia. It happens to be a place where many Professional skateboarder used to go to skate, so I used this style when creating my digital signature.
I started with the o, l, i and v in the style of the LOVE sign in Philadelphia. This is because for many professional skateboarders this was a place they could go, reflecting on my love for skateboarding. I also highlighted the o, l and i because I'm always called Ollie by everyone. All the letters are in different fonts because my mind is always up and down, never really focusing one just one thing. Although I tend to be all over the place, I still like to be organised, so all the letters are in order. The letters are also all different as I like things that are aesthetically pleasing, so I continued to change the font until I found a style that best fit the feel of the letter.
I would usually use a lot of colour, but for this I decided to use red for the LOVE style start of the signature, and on the g as its the beginning of my second name, keeping the rest black to further highlight this. To finish I added the black stroke around the o, l, i and g as to many I'm known as Ollie G.http://www.paul-rand.com/index.shtml

Networks

Networking can be seen as collective patterns, a form of organised events choreographed in a certain way. This idea can be supported with physical evidence taken from the animal Kingdom.
here are some examples...

Birds:

To see a video of this example, click here

Even in the way that we organise ourselves when we move in a group or crowd, how we position ourselves before we are comfortable with where we chose to settle in such an environment can be determined by different factors.
For instance, If in a class room a large number of people were to walk in and be asked to take a seat, which one would they chose, thinking about its location and how the surrounding environment may be responsible for you making that decision. Such as whether or not you are able to see the front clearly, whether you are uncomfortable with people sitting behind you, wanting a seat near a window...maybe its just where your ended up and were forced to stop there. Possibly the fact that you don't care and it was convenient to just sit anywhere. These points can be seen and should be considered.


Linked:
Albert Laszlo Barabasi was a Hungarian scientist , specifically network science and wrote a book called linked. This book is all about networks, on the cover it reads, "How everything is connected to everything else and what it means for business, science and everyday life."
In 1999 he introduced the concept of scale-free networks and proposed the Barabasi Albert Model. This was to explain their widespread emergence in natural, technological and social systems, from the cellular telephone to the World Wide Web or online communities.
From: Albert Lazlo Barabasi - Wikipedia

Albert Laszlo Barabasi:

Barabasi Albert Model:
These 3 diagrams show how the connection of nodes can represent different connections in networks and how strong they function. A method of showing how well they work in networking should 1 node be broken.
The centralised diagram (a) shows a very weak structure, should the middle node be cut, then all corresponding nodes would cease to exist.
The decentralised diagram (b) shows a stronger network of nodes, but far from very strong as should a node coming from the middle be broken, then the following branches from that node would be lost as well.
The third diagram (c) is a distributed example. This is by far the strongest, and much more solid structure in the form of a mesh. Should any one of the nodes break, then they are all still connected via other surrounding nodes, being much more reliable.

Power law:
This is a speacial kind of mathematical relationship between two qualities. It is an active area in scientific research and are present in both natural and man made worlds. Power laws can also describe other relationships such as metabolic rate of a species and their body mass, called the Kleiber law.
This is an example of a power law graph demonstrating ranking of popularity. To the right is the long tail, to the left are the few that dominate (also known as the 80-20 rule).


For more information, click here


Flight path Networks:
I noticed this type of networking on my travels when was shown by a travel agent the flight paths that Quantus airline make when transporting passengers all over the world. The travel agent showed me this route worldwide map to help me decide where I could fly from and to and in what order would make most sense economically with time and money. The network showed the possible connections between airports worldwide.

Animated Network:
To see how these flight paths work, click here and you can select which route you wish to see.

Internet network:
The internet is a global network which allows almost any computer to connect and exchange information any where worldwide.

This was how Albert Laszlo Barabasi visually saw global internet networking:

Biostatement

Hello there, my name is Ollie Griffiths and I was born in 1989 at Poole hospital. For the majority of my life I have lived in Blandford, Dorset. I began education at Pimperne First School, then Milldown Middle, followed by The Blandford Upper to complete my GCSE's and continue on my education by completing A levels. I then took a year out of education to travel, venturing all around America, Fiji and Australia. From there I returned back home to attend The University of Plymouth. I am currently living in halls of residence and in my first year of my Multimedia, Production and Technology course.