Tag Archives: Access to higher education

Website

Graphic Design, , , , , ,

The second piece I have chosen to display in this section is a website I developed to coincide with the European Access Network’s (EAN) annual conference which took place at UCD in May 2016.  I have included this project because:

  • it was the first website that I coded myself
  • it is a well-researched piece of work
  • in terms of design I feel it is a reasonably well-presented first attempt
  • it was one of three projects from my class that was selected to go on display at the EAN conference

 

Development Process

Home Page

Research

The EAN aims to encourage wider access to higher education for under-represented groups. My website sought to highlight the difficulties faced by refugees and asylum seekers in Ireland in pursuit of higher education. It was important to research thoroughly to ensure accuracy of content, so this very time-consuming stage was my starting point.

In tandem with the research I was carrying out, I was also looking at websites like dribbble.com for inspiration and guidance  as well as learning HTML & CSS from an online tutorial.

 

Wireframing

Next I drew up wireframes using Photoshop. At this stage I had a good idea of how I wanted to present the content:

  • Home page
  • Stories from refugees and asylum seekers
  • Statistics Page including a timeline of legislative changes that made it more difficult for refugees and asylum seekers to access higher education
  • Information Page  about going to college for refugees and asylum seekers

 

Development

By the time I was ready to begin developing the website, there was a lot of content for the home page. I decided to make another page called Issues which would serve to highlight some ongoing unresolved problems facing refugees and asylum seekers.

I used Brackets code editing software and the 960 grid to build the website. I found the process enjoyable, and not too difficult thanks to the sheer scale of help and information that is available online when stuck on a piece of code.

One design aspect  I especially enjoyed was finding images to illustrate the content and editing them with Photoshop.  I feel the images are important in breaking up the text and communicating the issues to the reader.