Coding - Gradients

Most of my website is going to use CSS graidents for the design. I am using CSS as it is much more practical than image gradients and work on almost all modern browsers.

This was the code I ued on my navigation bar to give the effect of a dark to light green gradient:

In the code, you can see that the code "left" means that it is going from left to right, there fore making it a horizontal gradient. the 0% and 100% are the start and end points of the gradient, with the hex numbers being the colours.

Starting to Code My Website

To start coding my website, I used the tutorials we were shown in class to lay out the divs, but have modified it to suit my own site design.

So far, I have made this:

There are still a lot of things that I need to add to the site, such as navigation buttons, a banner, a background and a footer. However I have most of the basic parts of my site here, such as the rounded news bar and the gradient on my navigation bar. Hopefully the website will look more complete when I add a banner.

Emailing the Client

So far, I have emailed the client twice, once before meeting them at the nursery, and the second one today. I did not receive and email back from them the first time, however they did show me that they got the email when I met them. I sent them the other email to get and opinion on the ideas I have made so far.

This is the screenshot of the email I sent first.

Visiting PACES Nursery

Our website group visited PACES to have a look around and to get a feel of what the place is like. Whilst I was there, I took some pictures on their camera so hopefully I will get those soon.
We got to look around the facilities there and see what happens during the day at the nursery. We also got to ask more questions to the client, which was helpful for figuring out what to add to the site layout.

Pitch

Overall my pitch went well. The client liked my ideas, especially the foot idea on the logo. The mockups were also well received. As for criticism, I mainly got it on my colour schemes and on the logo. As the client wanted the colours to look gender neutral, I shall change my site colours in future mockups. They also said that the feet should be the other way around, so the logo looked more balanced.
When I showed off my website research, the client said that she linked the way the navigation was laid out on the Little Stars Nursery site, so I will take this into account when I make my new mockup.

Mockups

These are my two finished mockups:

The first design I made was for a horizontal nav bar.

The second one uses a vertical nav bar, and also features a news feed underneath the banner.

I am still unsure which design I should use at this point, and I shall wait until my pitch for extra feedback.

Logo Development

When I first started sketching up logo designs in my sketchbook, I was stuck for ideas as I had to think of a logo from scratch. I started by using wordplay on the word "paces" to come up with a foot or walking idea.

These were my initial ideas. The first one, in the top-left, was a simple foot. The letters were moving upwards to look like it was moving. I then went onto the the "parent and child" idea, as the name PACES comes from "Pant and Children's Educational Services", so I thought adding a parent and child together would work for a logo theme. The logo on the time was also based on the parent and child theme, but didn't use feet on the logo, but went on with a "moving on" theme, hence the arrow. I decided to scrap this idea and continue with the feet idea as I felt it was the stronger of the two.

After making the foot idea, I went to my current logo design. This included two different sized feet to represent a child and adult foot. I also added the meaning of PCES at the bottom of the logo.

This is my finished logo design. I aligned all the letters, unlike my sketch. I also changed with way the feet were ordered, although this design may change after my pitch.