Sitemap

This past week, I've been working on the design and formatting of my website. A major challenge in this process is planning for a responsive website, or a website whose design will change depending on what kind of monitor with which you view it. A successful, modern website is accessible and aesthetically pleasing whether you're looking at it on a laptop screen or a smart phone. In the past, I've made the mistake of trying to plan out a website for a desktop screen and then compressing it to fit a smaller screen, but this has proven to be highly inefficient. This time, I will try to plan for an iPhone / Android screen and choose natural breakpoints for when the design should change to incorporate a larger monitor. By doing so, I hope to create a website that feels more naturally responsive.

At this step, I am currently creating a sitemap and wireframes for my website. A sitemap is a very general, overall plan for my website, mapping out very rudimentary building blocks like links and pages to break up my content. A wireframe is a layout of my website in its most basic form, using boxes to indicate where text might be, where an image might be displayed, etc. I have also been figuring out potential color schemes for my website, and am choosing colors that I associate with the Sonoran Desert - brick reds, cream and tan, dark blues and purples. My next step will actually be creating a mock-up of the website itself.