Pictoris

Pictoris 2009

Pictoris.co.uk Gallery index page, as rendered by Moziller Firefox 3
Pictoris.co.uk Gallery index page, as rendered by Mozilla Firefox 3

Brief

To create a simple and distinctive portfolio website using SC mark-up for the purposes of self promotion.

Medium

XHTML, CSS

Tools

Macromedia Dreamweaver 8, Adobe Photoshop CS, Adobe Illustration CS, Notepad.

Design Aesthetic

A clean and uncluttered aesthetic is the goal of this project; it is achieved through careful use of a restricted colour pallet, one which includes neither black or white. Minimalist design choices help enforce the aesthetic, a dark screen background creates a large field of negative space which draws the eye to the slightly off white background colour of the content panel.

Standards Compliance

One of the technical goal of this site is for its code to validate as XHTML 1.1; a particular emphasis is placed upon this point, though it may increase the design time and the chance that the site will not display as anticipated on all machines, it also allows a flexibility of design, and the possibility for the “graceful failure” of the formatting which cannot be easily achieved using the high-strung design techniques that are legacy of “The First Browser Wars”.

In addition to compliance with the XHTML standard, this site aspires to follow the WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines v2.0, in order to ensure the greatest accessibility for users who rely upon alternate outputs such as text-to-speech software or Braille units. As this site is intended for professional use rather than personal it is also a legal requirement to take all reasonable steps to accommodate disabled users providing equivalent content and functionality i.e. Adding text descriptions to non-decorative images, defining the page language and text flow direction.