MDC Sitemap Tweak

Another day, another update. Here's a modified version of the Millennium Dance Center sitemap. Instead of having the calendar and class schedules on separate pages, I'll feature them in modules on the home page. There's also a newsletters link, which is currently hid in their twitter feed.

New classes, new projects.

Alrighty, we're finally in the home stretch of classes here at College of Dupage. I've just started Design 3 and Web Design 2, and completing these two will wrap up the web design certificate.

Our first project in Web Design 2 is to develop a new web site design or retweak an existing one. I wanted to get out of my comfort zone of trying something easy, so I'm gonna try and redesign my daughter's dance studio website, www.mdancecenter.com.

The site as it is now is OK... but it's just OK. I'd like to keep the entire page above the fold, and definitely add video of various classes, recitals, etc. Right now there's not a single video clip on the site, and not much in the way of pictures, either.

The design brief's done for Millennium Dance Center, and here's a sitemap I've got:



The Design 3 class should be quite interesting, as much of the focus is on logos. Letter-based, pictorial, abstract, logotypes... pretty cool stuff. After a small project where we collected a variety of logos and cut and pasted them onto boards, the project we're on now involves taking just our initials and using them to create logos for a bar, restaurant, comedy club, toy store, sports team or fitness club. We're to try out ideas for all six types of companies and then narrow them down to our two best and brightest. I'll post my initial sketches later.

Homepage Artistry...

Since I'm dealing with a fictitious store, there's no actual storefront to shoot a picture for the basis of my homepage idea, so finding the right image online was HUGE... after a bit of searching, I came across a pic of a lonely, closed store located in Niles, Michigan that was an ideal fit for my Art Deco-styled signage.

So I toyed around with the image, colorized it, cleaned up some of the rough edges, used the fun stamp tool in Photoshop to wipe out the Closed sign as well as an automobile reflecting in the glass, tried out a few effects, and here's where I'm at for the moment.

This building will set up nicely for my homepage div structure, as the three-window setup will give me some options here. I'm thinking of using the large center window for a photo slideshow, featuring current specials, holiday deals, and the like. The black space beneath this window will work our great for the slideshow information. I can use the two side windows for showing a flavor of the month, deals on popcorn tins, lots of stuff.

As for the navbar/overhang, I'll still probably tweak the colors and bit to more evenly match the colors of the image. I'd like to get it so that the overhang really looks like it's been part of the building all along, and right now, it's not quite there.

Yay, the Logo's done...

I probably spent WAY too much time tinkering with this, as I've now got just three days to get the mockup pages done, but at least I've got a perfect logo to place on storefronts, popcorn tins, merchandise, etc.

The Final Two Logos

Honestly, I could spend another week just tweaking this thing endlessly, so I'm gonna step back and say that I'll go with one of these two variations and be done with it.

The only difference between the two options here is the depth of the letters. I might even take the deptho f the POP'S from the first one and use the Corn's Emporium depth from the second one.

Still more tweaks

Now I see why people get paid just to make logos for companies... so many small tweaks here and there changes the whole feel of it.

So here are some variations on what I thought might have been the final logo. I'm liking the top right one... for now.

Possible Final Logo

I think we're getting closer. The font's good, the spacing's good... now it's just wondering about the exact colors and thickness of the letters.