Sam's Sports Merch

Logo 2.0

These are my two final logos. I really liked the more feminine feel to it, especially since gymnastics in more targeted towards girls. I liked the darker purple originally because it just appealed more to me and makes it seem more sophisticated and not too kiddish, and that's what I feel when looking at the lighter pink. I feel that the darker purple will give off a good impression about the business and that any ages are welcome, rather then just little girls.

New Logo

These are my newly revised logos. The comments I got really liked these two logos in particular, and most of them also said to try out different fonts for the word sports, although I ended up still liking my original one the best. None of them really appealed to me too much, and I couldn't find any fonts that I was crazy about. Nonetheless, I still tried some other ones. Let me know what your thoughts are.

Sam's Sports

Sam's Sports is a gymnastics place. At first, I went for real fonts and then I started drawing them on my own. I did a signature type font and really liked how that looked, but also tried curly ends and really liked how it looked like a ribbon in rhythmic gymnastics. 

Wordpress vs Wordpress

Wordpress.org

• You host the server
• You pay for your server and have to keep the web server (Wordpress.org itself is free to use though)
• You get your own domain name
• You get more flexibility, range, and options (plug-ins, themes, and code)
• You can add in ads and make money from it
• Recommended by a majority of websites over Wordpress.com

Wordpress.com

• Wordpress hosts the server
• Cheaper/free
• Domain name includes Wordpress.com
• Can't have custom themes
• Hosting service ranges from $36-$5000 a month 
• Automatically backs your website up for you
• There is ads on your page, but you don't get money from it
• You can't see any statistics of your page
• They have the power to delete at any time if they think it goes against their policy

Conclusion: Most websites prefer Wordpress.org because it's gives you more free range to do whatever you want, and in the end it's probably cheaper then Wordpress.com, you just need to keep up the site yourself. 

Sources: themes.com, wpbeginner.com

House Locator Software

Throughout this journey on finding software for Mr. Map Builder Guy (MBG for short), I found many shortcuts and secrets that companies use to make their businesses accessible to customers. One of the companies I took a look at was Apple, and they made their own map unlike the other companies. I looked more into their source code and found that they used separate divs for everything, and mostly separated all the locations using column divs. Before any tag, ac-ls and then whatever they wanted to happen then would appear. Here's an example: 

id="ac-ls-dropdown-options" class="ac-ls-dropdown-options" role="menu" aria-expanded="false">. Even tags that weren't divs had "ac-ls", so I'm thinking that's the code word that connects it all together.

 Now for Zillow and Walmart. The both actually just connected their site to bing or google, which sounds like a much more reliable and easier way to go about it. Sites like Walmart can let google do all the work because the site hours and locations are already connected through Google, so when Walmart connected it, they just needed to make a few tweaks with the popups and they were good to go. Now what Zillow did with Bing is what we would be doing more realistically because we're dealing with houses as well. Having individually dots for MGB's customers and having the ability to search, zoom, and pop up names will make things easy to find and use for MGB. Also, if Zillow wanted to add something to their map, a tag named bing attribution would be added to have that flexibility of adding some of your own things. Something I learned from Zillow that I knew was that whenever you hover over a certain dot (house) it will automatically send that dot above the other ones and push the other ones behind it.

Final Reflection

Web Design Final Reflection

Technology

Technology is one of the biggest aspects of eComm, and the biggest thing I took from it was how to fluently use adobe suites. It started in Graphic Design my freshmen year when we started Illustrator and Photoshop, and as the years have gone on and I’ve used them more and more they’ve gotten easier to use and I’m using new tools to create advanced graphics or web sites. These skills come in handy when making a website because if you’re making a mockup for a client or just doing a project, you can quickly and efficiently make something and put it in your website. Of course there were challenges and struggles when I didn’t know how to use a certain tool, but that’s all apart of the learning process and it helps me become more efficient in those tools specifically because I got more help on them.

Collaboration

Collaboration is one of my strongest suits out of all these categories. I use it daily when helping (or talking) to my peers and even working together to make suggestions to our websites. Of course, collaboration can also be viewed in the negative when you’re talking too much and not collaborating on work but rather just talking.

Communication

Communication is another one of my strong suits because our specific web design class is generally really close and friendly with each other so we don’t have a problem asking each other for help when we need it or just asking for advice and feedback on something.

Project Management

I’ve found myself struggling with project management more this year than ever. Last year, I was so on top of it and everything was done in advance, and this year I’m still getting things in on time but I’ve found myself having more crunch time during projects when I just need to block off other people and work in order to get it done on time. Management comes in handy in pretty much any and every job position you’ll hold in the future, because you’re always going to have a deadline in something and you’re always going to need to have long nights and early mornings in order to get it done.

Leadership

I mainly learned leadership freshmen year during the 4th quarter project and working together to create a project. It was hard adjusting to new people in a new environment, but it really helped broaden my horizons and become more comfortable with Olathe Northwest and e-Comm in general.

Greatest Strength &Weakness

My greatest strength has to be communicating and leadership, while my worst one is getting distracted easily. If I’m by myself, I’ll get things done so fast but if someone starts talking to me I get sidetracked and before I know it, 20 minutes has passed (maybe that’s the reason for my time crunching problem in time management…) I’ve definitely improved throughout the last couple years in all of these aspects and I’m going to continue growing next year and hopefully after that.

What Now?

I’m going to take what I’ve learned these past three years and apply it all on my senior year and try to make my websites better as well as preparing for senior show and eMagine and going out with a bang. If I had to change anything, it would be nothing. Web design has been my happy source for 3 years and if I had to go back I would change absolutely nothing. Sure there’s been struggles, but that’s just a bumpy road through life and it helps get to your main goal in the end.

In conclusion, eComm has been and will be the best experience of my high school career. It taught me so many things about technology and future clients that I know will come in handy later on in the future, even if I don’t do anything website related.