Assignment 2 Brief

Web design: The client’s brief

For Charlie’s Dog Training Centre, your task is to create a new web site that will promote new courses that he proposes to run there. The name of this new venture is StudyDogs@Home and you will be provided with draft text for the course content to be displayed as well as background information about the Training Centre and a selection of photographs and a sample design for the logo. [Here's a sample design to guide you.]

The first part of the task is to prepare designs for:

• a Home page
• three Course pages
• Centre information page
• Course application page
• Contact page
• temporary More information pages

Theme or master page items

Each page should have a consistent theme and style. The navigation system used should be in the same position and contain the same links and any effects added in all instances. The name of the organisation, Charlie’s Dog Training Centre and the trading title for its educational provision, StudyDogs@Home, must be featured clearly on each page as well as a contact number and e-mail address included at the foot of each page. You can make your own designs for display of the Centre name and logo if you wish.

There will be four main styles of text (other than artistic text for banners or logos etc. These comprise:

• Page headings (eg Welcome, Our Courses)
• Sub headings (used as paragraph headings in some of the content)
• Normal text (for most of the paragraph text content)
• Notes (a smaller, less intrusive stylewhich might be appropriate for captions, less important notes about something etc.)

Links in content text should stand out in a different colour but need not be underlined. Visited links should appear in the same style as others.

The background can be of your choice or left to appear white. If a graphic effect or image is used then this must not interfere with the legibility of content when pages are viewed across a range of monitor resolutions from 640 to 1600 pixels. At resolutions higher than 1600 pixels wide there should be no obvious indication or ‘cut off’ visible where a background image ends or repeats.

There should be a Page Title StudyDogs@Home on each page that appears as a browser window title and in search engine results and a Site description and keywords entered as meta tags to help the site appear in appropriate searches. You should suggest appropriate text in each case and include it in your design suggestions and incorporate the agreed text the site for publication.

Pages

The Home page should feature prominently the three main courses offered with links from the course promotion graphics to their individual course description pages.

The Course pages should include an image or selection of images to promote the course to which each page relates and the content text to be supplied. There should also be a clear Apply Now button or link which customers would use to purchase the course and a More information link which would lead to further details. Set up a suitable More information page to which each ‘more information’ link would lead. There is no content supplied for these pages - just add suitable holding text.

The Centre description pages should contain an image or images and the Centre content details to be supplied.

The Course application page should include a feature whereby each course can be purchased using e-commerce facilities. You will be provided with a sample account for this purpose. You may use this page as the one to which the Apply Now or purchase links elsewhere on the site go to.

The Contact page should include a form whereby interested parties can request information and submit contact details and an interactive map which displays the location of the Centre and can be clicked to provide further information like directions from the map source provider. You will be provided with an address for contact details to be sent to.

The More information page is included purely as a temporary holding page for later development and needs to include merely text to that effect and maybe an image of your choice. It should, however, have the same theme and general appearance as the others.

Each page should contain the text and links as supplied. You may suggest sizes or styles of font for the text, headings, subheadings etc. but not change the content other than to correct errors.

You should design pages that will not scroll horizontally on a monitor at 1024 width resolution and which appear consistently across Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera (current versions). Minor variations may be acceptable - you should discuss any queries in this respect with your tutor.

Vertical scrolling may be inevitable on many pages but you should aim to have none for the home page on a monitor resolution of 1024 x 768 in Internet Explorer 8 with a typical user's display of toolbars.

Licences

Any image utilised that is either not your original artwork or supplied by or on behalf of the client must have its source acknowledged. This acknowledgment may be either as an unobtrusive note adjacent to the image, included in a mouseover text, the image properties or on an additional page accessible from a link on or near the image. Any coding utilised that is neither standard nor of your own construction should have its source acknowledged within the coding for the page (but not visible as page content other than an additional page such as one you may use for acknowledgments or design information).

Initially, the client requires just sample layouts of the proposed site pages - these can be prepared in any medium you prefer but do need to display the colours and either have annotations to indicate measurements of page, image or panel dimensions or these may be specified in an accompanying note.

Once a final design and content has been approved then you can proceed to create the actual site pages. For publishing purposes, a folder will be provided on a suitable web server for your use with FTP access.
The site is intended to be a lively, cheerful set of pages which will appeal especially to younger visitors as Charlie’s Dog Training Centre particularly wish to attract parents and young children to start learning about their pet dogs. It will need to meet the requirements of legislation and accessibility tests and your sample
designs should indicate generally how you propose to ensure compliance.

Note

The organisation referred to in this assignment exists and the individuals referred to on current site pages are real. It is important, therefore, that no changes are made to any page content or existing images other than those agreed with the client and that should any new images be included these do not in any way affect adversely the perception of the organisation by the public.