Client Report

I decided on my site content/plan fairly easily; as a graphic designer, the paper you use for any and all of your projects are super important, but not enough people know what paper types are the best for your needs. I’ve been fortunate enough to work in a printing center for the past two years and have learned lots about paper.

I was able to communicate with my developer frequently because he was very good at keeping open communication and wasn’t afraid to reach out if he had any questions.

As a graphic designer, I will always be picky about design and layout, but for the parameters of the assignment I think they did a great job at fulfilling my expectations for the site.

The next time I hire someone for my website, I think I’m going to look into what their portfolio looks like to make sure they can nail the aesthetic I’m going for, haha.

Lead Developer Report

I made sure to keep in contact with my junior developers throughout the production of this site through email. One of my junior developers was very responsive and was quick to update his subpages, which I appreciated.

I would communicate with my client through email, and we had no issues. He provided any and all clarification I needed. Publishing and sharing the client site was easy and I had no issues.

GitHub has been a little tricky, but thankfully my work supervisor at the Mac Lab (Ethan Glenn) is a software engineer about to graduate and he was an awesome help to me when learning how to use GitHub and HTML/CSS in general. My overall experience with managing my site in GitHub has been positive.

Junior Developer Report

I was not able to get in contact with one of my team leads whatsoever. I had some communication with my other lead, but they did not ever update me when I requested it. It wasn’t until the last Tuesday of class that I was able to get the link to one of the sites.

I was having trouble figuring out what was expected of me since there was a big lack of communication, and I was not able to add any changes to either site. Hopefully this isn’t an issue, but I did really try to get in contact with my lead developers.

General Experience & Reflection

There was definitely a learning curve for me; HTML and CSS were difficult for me to learn, but I’m happy with the knowledge I have of the basics. I think the group projects were the most challenging, because it’s hard to get in contact with people.

I really enjoyed the design aspect of this project the most. My job as a graphic designer is to visually communicate ideas and messages in creative ways, and interpreting client site plans and making them look good (to the best of my HTML and CSS ability) was the best part.

If I could do anything differently, I would try to find a way to lessen the number of groups. I can see it getting confusing, and focusing on two-three sites would be more manageable than four.

Since I am still a beginner and only know the basics, I wouldn’t fully feel confident in doing my own client project in the future, but I am fully confident in my communication skills and figuring out what the client wants/needs. I think being more of a web designer would be better, working with a team of “coders” that can do what I can’t.