Here’s the working design for the new website:
I incorporated Jap’s vectorized logo, which I believe gives it less of a “scanned look” effect, especially in these days that web quality is increasing. The logo gives it a clean, fresh, “cyber” feel.
- The official font of UP Sandiwa is a bit problematic in terms of the recognizability and legibility, which we need to establish right away on first look that what you are seeing is SANDIWA. But to keep traditions, I kept the official font, but differentiating it from the rest of the text so that when one sees the logo, unang nakikita ang “SANDIWA”
- I overlapped the word “SANDIWA” from “UP” to denote two things: 1) the word SANDIWA has more emphasis putting the “UP” into the foreground, di gaya dati na they have balanced emphasis nahahati ang attention ng eyes. 2) people who have seen it rarely mistake it as “UPSANDIWA” because it was designed in such a way that hindi sila magkadikit. Overlapping sila. Font, size, and color difference establishes the notion “that must be two wrds…”
- Keep it simple. That is the prevailing theme nowadays, to keep things as “boxy” as possible, ala-blog effect. In this way, the site will look less cluttered, making people who browse see what they want to see (or let them see what we really want them to see).
- To keep with this simplistic idea, the theme will be white and some touches of red. No, there won’t be any solid backgrounds (masakit sa mata ang bg na red!) but rather the lines, divisions will be red.
- Why red? Unfortunately, our logo doesn’t really give us any departure from any other color scheme. It matches with green (the green currently on the left pane) but has to be complimented with another color. Blue is out of the question. No matter how we blend it, it just looks off.
- Mr. Oblation is now out of the picture, but that’s yet to be seen. Not really part of the web logo, the faded Oblation is likely to remain.
- Site navigation has always been a problem, we solve this by cramming as much info as possible in each page. This way, people don’t need to click and click and click to get what they want (especially quick notices such as org updates).
- With Kuya Myk’s help, the pictures in every page of the website will be complimented with the content. Scripted na ito. Unlike this, incidental and cropped lang lahat ng pics.
- Use of Flash for the menus (by the way, the menus will now be put below the logo, spread on top, unlike the current spread-on-side) to have an interactive effect is still being analyzed. It might go against the simplistic theme, as well as compatibility issues.
- In the University’s mandate to support Open Source software, the website’s support and compatibility will be prioritized on open source software such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Netscape, etc. The website WILL NOT be optimized for Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Here’s another alternative design, just thought the SANDIWA text should be more effective in red, hence, the inversion of colors:
