Food for Thought

The art of web design

Amy Sheppard — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:33:31 +0000

Now, I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and all that but I have a thing for well designed, easy to navigate and just, well, pretty websites.

What seems to be a product of recent years and probably advances in technology, websites seem to look best nowadays when they’ve got nicely rounded pictures with a warm hazy glow about them. I’m not sure if anyone will understand exactly what I’m trying to convey so maybe it’s best summed up by the glorious artform of picture.

So, I was looking up decent blogging sites and landed on the wonderfully user friendly and just as pretty Tumblr (no disrespect to WordPress who’s forté lies in the unique posting interface)

The lovely Tumblr homepage

Keeping to the same theme is Vimeo, the web’s best kept video secret, loved by artsy types and clever people who produce masterpieces of animation and film work. I’m a bit of a sucker for nicely designed Flash sites (ahh, if only I knew how to use it!) and this is a nugget of Flash gold. I love the childlike, happy, innocent feel which I think perfectly represents the site’s image.

The joyful world of Vimeo

A favourite site of mine was for a little coffee shop chain in and around the South West and South Wales: Coffee #1. I know that the guys behind this website were paid a good amount for generating it and I thought it was a cool, but effective Flash site that really delivered. Unfortunately, the site I’m talking about has had a bit of a revamp and is no longer as visually pretty as it used to be!

I’m not really sure myself what it is about these websites that are so appealing - maybe it’s the Flash aspects that are common to some or the shadowed texts. I also really like the bright, happy-go-lucky colour schemes with a bit of flair behind them. Kudos to whoever designed these little gems on an internet so full of dull, mediocre and badly navigated text sites.

Hopefully in the not-so-distant future I’ll uncover some more brilliantly designed sites to impress you all with.

Great layouts: ELLE Magazine

Amy Sheppard — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 02:05:45 +0000

I have collected all but one of ELLE Magazine’s monthly offerings since June, after I picked up the Emma Watson cover for a bit of a read on my flight to the Algarve. Something’s obviously kept me buying and reading it ever since and this comes down to astoundingly early fashion predictions which come to fruition months later, insightful features and stunning layouts both on the cover and inside the magazine. When my knowledge of InDesign is better, I hope to achieve something along these lines.

I have a very fussy eye for good presentation, whether it be on a website or an essay. Sometimes (be it right or wrong) I will entirely disregard a website if the layouts and navigation are sloppy. The latest edition of ELLE, February 2010, I found particularly beautiful and it was a bonus that it featured a great interview with one of my favourite actresses.

Reflection and, well, musing!

Amy Sheppard — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:57:28 +0000

As this blog’s URL is titled Reflection and Musing, I thought I better do a bit of both. I’m always so busy thinking of a billion different things that I’m not too sure where to start. I don’t expect this post to be entirely coherent but, there you go. I love films that make me do a bit of reflection and today after watching Toy Story 2 (surprisingly, for some) my brain span into a marred frenzy which, I’m sure, only I could possibly understand. I’m barely doing anything in my life at the moment yet, at the same time, I feel unbelievably busy. That’s probably the reason I find it so difficult to sleep at a reasonable hour. That’s coupled with the fact that I don’t very often rise from my slumber until an unfortunately late hour, so when I’m good and try to sleep at a decent time, my body and mind are far too awake.

I’m doing journalism yet, half the time I don’t feel like writing. Maybe it’s because I’ve been neither criticised nor praised for any of it and I’m sort of in the middle of the literary road. Not great, but not that bad either. That’s probably the category in which many of the things I do are placed; hence why I am yet to be employed. My grades have always been a bit in the middle of the road, too! But, you know, that’s the way things go and I’m a pretty happy person the majority of the time and don’t like to wallow in my own self pity. All is well in the world of work experience as I get to be quite hands on with the news in two wonderful radio stations in both Bournemouth and at home, so I can’t really complain. I’ve seen that there is a silver lining on many a cloud, so hopefully the silver will shine in the rest of the lacking parts of my life thus far!

So, Toy Story 2′s childhood ethos made me think about how time is precious and how we should all be thankful for every waking, happy, healthy minute. This particular thought has become all the more prominent since a family death earlier in the year which was a real eye opener for me in many ways. Toy Story did show how we should make the most of the time we do have with those we love.

My first post…

Amy Sheppard — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:35:39 +0000

…has been a long time coming.

A blog has been one of those concepts that I have for a long time been fascinated in, but only occasionally considered. As a would-be journalist, having a blog is no less than an expectation, a requirement, a necessity.

So, here I am, embarking on my journey into the unknown realms of blogging and hoping that I’m gonna be given enough food for thought that I might eventually have something good to natter on about.