Examples of Work
Below is a list of projects produced as part of coursework or otherwise, in reverse chronological order. I think that they clearly show how my skills have advanced through time. The main improvements are in the visual design and Photoshop skills with the latter alo showcasing server-side capabilities. I intend to improve, update and in some cases completely remake these in order to further highlight advances in my ability.
TopNotch Boxing
TopNotch Boxing was developed in ASP.NET as a solo Final Year Project. The brief was to create a Multimedia product of a chosen kind- websites, 3D models and animations and short films are some examples of the sorts of projects regularly submitted.
Keen to develop my web programming knowledge, I always knew that I was going to produce a dynamic website. I chose it to be about boxing because it is something else that I am passionate about.
The site built on the foundations of the skills developed during the E-Commerce module. It contains news feeds, ratings, lists of champions, boxer profiles, a forum and more.
We Sell Football Kits
WeSellFootballKits.co.uk is a mock e-commerce site that was developed for the E-Commerce module. We had to create an application, in ASP.NET, that offered products of a chosen kind. I chose football kits. It was delivered as an introduction to ASP.NET.
PJ Manning Building Services
PJ Manning Building Services are a company that approached me asking me to build them a website. They didn't want or need anything too big or extravagant. The term they used was an 'online business card with a some interactive features'. At the time I didn't know any server-side technologies although it was the first time I used jQuery. A redevelopment of this site is something that I intend to do, with their consent of course.
Portfolio 2.0
I wasn't happy with my flash portfolio beforehand and I didn't want to pursue flash any longer. I decided that a redesign and a redevelopment was in order. This is showcases the level of my ability in September '09.
Portfolio 1.0
This is the portfolio that I had made previously, again as an extra curricular activity, whilst looking for a project in Flash. It very much builds on what I had learned previously and includes more animated features than my previous effort in flash. It was also the first time I'd published a website online, therefore I also learned a lot about how you do that- buying a domain name, finding a host, using FTP clients and so on.
Having decided that I'd rather pursue a career in HTML, CSS and JavaScript as opposed to Flash and ActionScript, in the 2009 summer off from uni, I redesigned the site.
Lotto Picker
Lotto Picker is an extra-curricular project that I made in the latter half of my second year at the University of Kent after reading through some JavaScript books. I was aware that there was only one web design related module in the second year and that JavaScript was an important tool for any web designer to have. Now that I understood JavaScript, I needed a project to put that into practice. It was also a very good practice to refresh my mind of HTML and CSS having spent a lot of time using Flash and ActionScript.
Its a simple idea, it uses randomly generated numbers to produce lottery numbers for all the different types of game such as Lotto, EuroMillions, Thunderball etc.
John Butterworth
For the only web design related module of the second year, we had to create a portfolio for an artist. The portfolio had to be made in Flash using external ActionScript 3.0 files and using images stored as XML data. This again was completely new for me. We had to use our own initiative and find our own client and produce copyright consent forms for any assets that we used.
My client was John Butterworth, a local artist, who I found via the Canterbury Arts Festival website. He was due to host open house exhibitions throughout October 2008 during the festival.
I worked very closely with the client and was lucky that he took an active interest in what I was making. Everything that I did was learnt on the job haaving no previous knowledge of ActionScript 3.0 or XML.
M4 Entertainment
This was made as a team effort for the module EL336 Interaction Design. As a team we had to produce a website brief to be built by a certain group for us, and we had to build a website based on a brief given to us by another. The emphasis here was on how closely we followed the brief and how satisfied the clients were with the end result.
We were put into groups of four and I was nominated, by the lecturer, to lead my team; however by the time the project was due to begin, one member had dropped out of the course, meaning we were down to three members. I was in charge of delegating roles and setting up team meetings as well as team-client meetings, where we would produce drafts, design, prototypes etc depending on the stage we were at.
We were all involved in the initial design process and delegating tasks frm then on was fairly straight forward. One member was particularly strong at Photoshop and CSS, so that was his area. The other member and myself split the pages into sections and were responsible for researching and producing content and the basic HTML structure of the pages in our sections. The first member would then style them.
Visual Communication
The coursework for the the module EL338 Visual Communication, was a website that contained a series of essays written about various subjects related to visual media. In this case the emphasis was put on the content, although some marks were awarded for the visual presentation of the work.
At the point of making this we had not learned any new material in terms of HTML and CSS and most of my efforts went into the content of the website.
Personal Website
This is a website made for the module EL331 Website Design. The brief was to make a W3C compliant website using HTML and CSS. It was the first web project on the course and for me the first time I'd used either HTML or CSS.
We were given three subjects, Film, CDs and Books in which had to pick and write about our top fives in. We then had to pick a further two subjects of our own. I chose TV and Food.
I used Dreamweaver to create the site and Photoshop to create and/or edit any images and graphics used.