The Event and Final Thoughts.

Alexander Brown / / Uncategorized

In the build up to the launch event, we managed to overcome some obstacles that would have originally set us back, however the event took place on Monday 7th December and we believe it was a great success.  It started at 6pm and ran all the way through until 1am, with a continuous turn out of people throughout the evening. The doors were open to anyone and we managed to generate approximately 90 individuals to come and try ‘The Bearded Brew’ and check out our website. We were hoping to have a minimum of 50 people due to a potential venue charge, however we managed to avoid this from the venue exceeding their own profit targets set for the night. We also had the obstacle of the band cancelling last minute. However, after a long night of searching, we found 3 amazing acts to perform instead! Lewis Canner performed for an hour, Lauren Davidson performed a set, and the band Striped Sight went on at half 10. All in all it was a huge success, and we couldn’t have been happier with the outcome.

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But the main purpose of the event was to showcase the website and get some feedback. We had a whole feedback wall that had some great feedback written on it by the end of the night. We have used this feedback to make improvements to the site, ready for the final hand in. The website is now finished. We are very happy with the work we have produced this term, and couldn’t have been happier with the outcome of the event.

But yes, here it is. We are proud to showcase:

www.thebeardedbrew.co.uk

 

The long spirally road of web development

Alexander Brown / / Design Ideas, HTML & CSS, Web Development

So I haven’t posted many updates recently and the reason mainly has been there hasn’t been much to post. The last couple of weeks have consisted of trying to find the right tools to tackle the task at hand. I have experimented with quite a few different methods and softwares to try and get the parallax scrolling to work in a way that works for us.

This includes:

  • Using CSS alone to create a parallax effect <— http://keithclark.co.uk/articles/pure-css-parallax-websites/
  • Using a standalone parallax scrolling Javascript library <— e.g. Scrollr.
  • Adobe Dreamweaver
  • Adobe Edge Animate
  • Brackets
  • Adobe Muse <— What I decided on.

The only software I have previously used to develop websites on has been Dreamweaver. I experimented this time with using Brackets, which has the great feature of extracting CSS from a PSD file. This let me easily format all the elements on the page very quickly. I also far prefer the layout, finding it much simpler and more straightforward than Dreamweaver. However, I had a lot of trouble getting to grips with Parallax this way. I just found the process too complicated and fiddly to achieve the effect I wanted. This prompted me to search for software that would do some of the heavy lifting, leaving me to focus on the visual aspects of the site.

I experimented with Edge Animate, using the ‘EdgeCommons’ Javascript library to link the timeline to the user scrolling. Whilst this did work, it made it hard to synchronise the scrolling on different device widths. As I was working on solving this problem, I stumbled upon this video which I found very helpful.

This led me to experiment with Muse which I had never previously used. It was exactly what I had been looking for. It made the whole process of parallax far easier to achieve, letting me concentrate on other aspects of the site.

Here is my update on what the main page of the site currently looks like:

Whilst it still needs to be populated with content, I think the layout of it and design is nearly there.

 

What i’ve learned from all this experimenting is that I shouldn’t be afraid of new tools. If I had just stuck with Dreamweaver I don’t think the site would be anywhere near this stage. And whilst I understand that with Dreamweaver and Brackets you have far more power and control over your final site, if another tool offers everything that you want and is simpler, why shouldn’t you use it?

 

No beer now, only work.

 

– Alex

First Day On Air!

Alice Louise Eagle / / Uncategorized

So today was the first day of letting the public know about the event we are holding at the Rogue Saint.  We created a Facebook events page (which is remaining private for now) and printed 200 flyers, to distribute around the University.  After spending a couple of hours, walking around and talking to people about the event, we were shocked by the interest we have already had.  The facebook event holds 25 people that have confirmed yes, in less than 24 hours and we had great feedback from some of the University professors we got to talk to.  We decided it would be a good idea to head to the venue and let them know about the potential turn out of people, so they had a heads up too.  We are really excited that the evening we have planned is appealing to people and really hope we can get together a great number of people to experience the beer and give us some helpful feedback on our website.

 

– Alice

Final Flyer Design

Alice Louise Eagle / / Design Ideas

After spending some time discussing the design of the original flyer, Alex and I decided to run it by James and see what he thought.  He gave us great feedback of some elements that needed minor changes and after following through with these, we have our finished flyer…

Flyer Complete

 

We altered the arrangement of some of the text and changed the opacity of the orange assets to 70% as the contrast was quite high.  We also changed the date, as I originally entered the wrong one!! However, the flyers have been sent to the printer and will be ready to dispatch around Lincoln tomorrow. Time to introduce the Facebook event page…

 

– Alice