Creating a website

 This website is a great tool to show potential employers or admission boards my work both inside and outside of college. They can navigate the website easily and see what kind of work I can produce as well as informing them of what software I can use (the name of the software used are posted along with the video/photo). It gives them an indication of my work styles and I believe it is a positive representation of some of my best work over the last two years. The post descriptions also explain what the project was for including whether it was for a real client or not and the purposes of each project. 

Website link: https://sophie97gibson.wixsite.com/website

Navigating the website

Home

The first page you are presented with when visiting my website will be the 'home' page. This displays my logo, name, purpose of the website (online portfolio/showreel) and the tabs at the top of the page- work, contact and blog. The blog section is empty at the moment but I am planning to upload some posts there soon- perhaps that of my networking which is already uploaded on blogger with people such as Leo Pearlman and Aardman animation. 

When you scroll down the home page, you can also see some examples of photography that I have taken over the past couple of years. As I am not really a photographer and wouldn't class myself as an expert in this area, I thought it unnecessary to include this in its own tab. Still, the few photos that I have taken on a more professional sense appear here and makes for a nice little section on the website. There is around 8 photos that visitors are able to scroll through and see he titles of when hovering over them with the mouse. The titles are mainly just a couple words about where they were taken. 

After the photograph section, I decided to include a little bit about me. This basically just explains that I am a college student studying media and that this website is the place I display my work. 

Finally, at the bottom of my page is my Instagram link. This shows a few posts from my media account on Instagram, but I do mainly use it privately and so wanted to keep it subtle. I'm considering re-uploading the Instagram section into my 'my work' section. This is so that it fills out the showreel but also means I don't have a random social media showing at the bottom of the home page.

My Work

This section is a work in progress. There is a lot more of my work that I need to upload to this section and will be updating once I get the files from my home laptop. As I say, this is a place I also hope to re upload my Instagram posts too and can transform everything directly onto this tab rather than scattered around the website (excluding the photography section). 

So far, there are only 4 pieces of work available to view on here. This is because some of my other work has been blocked on copyright grounds so I'll have to upload the file directly rather than through YouTube. The work included so far are all college projects from this and last year. I am yet to upload work that I have done outside of college and extra credit projects. You can click on any of the videos to view them and its description in full screen rather than them all playing at once. Before I upload them, I could also start including my logo on them and use the logo I have designed on a more professional sense. 

January update- there are now over 10 examples of work on my work section. Completed with an explanation and the software used to create them. In most of these, I explained some of the motives for creating them and what steps were included in the making of the product. My practitioners statements are now much more detailed and provide a lot more insight into the project.

Evidence of practitioners statements that are on my Wix website:

Contact

The final section of my website, not including the empty blog section, is 'contact'. Here, I can receive and reply to any potential clients or questions anyone has for me. I'm not relying on having clients but I thought it would be beneficial for people to have a direct means of getting in touch.

Google Forms- Peer feeback

I created a feedback survey for my Wix website and was able to gather some responses as to what works well and what could be changed about my website. The feedback showed me that my website was decent quality and there isn't too much that needs to be changed. 

I am now certain that my website is easy enough to navigate for visitors as there was a 100% yes in response to this question. The survey also shows that a lot of people like the colour scheme and layout of the website. 

In response to what could be improved, I will try to navigate Wix to change some of the fonts that are on the website at the moment in order to make it less simplistic, however there is no easy way to have more than one font on each page. I also need to remove the social media logos as not to mislead people. I don't really have a well established linked in or relevant facebook account to go with my media and so when people click on it, it doesn't just go to the general linkedin website. I could also add more information to the about section and perhaps include my inspirations on my website. 

Improvements- Inspirations

There is now an 'Inspirations' tab which shows a few of the people who I have been influenced by, particularly in the media sector. This provides more information about me and my ideologies, which I hope fulfils the improvements on my website.

I was able to use some previous work from my 'Inspirations in the industry' to share on my website- particularly that of Grace Wells, who is now listed on this section along with Alfred Hitchcock.

I have since removed the linkedin/facebook logos as they were not relevant to my website.

I have also changed the font on my website to one that is serif as opposed to the original sans serif font. I hope that this one will look more attractive to viewers.