Assignment 2: Design Sketches

When I sat down to start working on assignment 2, I realized: how am I supposed to design a logo without knowing what my web address is going to be? After researching all of the portfolio websites that I did, I noticed that a lot of web designers will add a "design" after their name (i.e. benlebowitzdesign.com), but with a name like "lebowitz," I don't really want to add any unnecessary clutter to my URL. So, I am proud to announce that I purchased the rights to the domain name, "benlebowitz.com." Simple, universal and easy to remember, if you already know my name. 


I went to fontsquirrel.com and looked for a few, clean fonts that spoke to me. I downloaded "Nobile" and "PT Sans Narrow" and you can see them in my design below. 


This first "logo" design, if you will, is a little generic and unimpressive, however it does fit in with the clean, typographic look I am going for. I have an issue with my last name being that much longer than my first name, and although I could use my whole first name, I rarely go by Benjamin and "Ben" is just more cool and casual. I feel like it could look slightly disproportionate in this first option, but that just might be me and I'd need a few more opinions. 

This second design is nothing too crazy or different, but I instead have my name butted up against each other, appearing as one word, but differentiated with the bolding and capital letters. Out of these two designs, I think I would lean more towards the below option. 

Check out the same type layout but in the PT Sans font below:

Color schemes have always been my issue. Like my closet, my room, and yes, my digital design, I am always gravitated towards the same color palette and have a hard time getting myself away from my neutral, earth-tone, safe color choices. I am also afraid that the below color scheme is a bit too paint-shop/carpet store/pharmaceutical company for me. 

Then I found this great site for finding and making color schemes called colorcombos.com. Here are a few combos that I liked:

http://www.colorcombos.com/color-scheme-275.html

http://www.colorcombos.com/color-scheme-277.html

http://www.colorcombos.com/color-scheme-5.html

Designing the Nav Bar for benlebowitz.com is perhaps the most important part of the design, for me, because it is (most obviously) on every page of the site, but I feel like it also defines the design of the site. It's the blueprint of design, for me. 

I have a few options of a nav bar (with my prospective logo) below:

The first example is a bit skewed. If I were to actually use this design for the nav bar, I would probably give a little more whitespace between the logo and the nav bar (probably about 2-300 pixels). I like this option, but it feels done and used. 

My second example stacks the logo on top of the nav bar. Keep in mind that I would most likely have a colored rollover, and am thinking about having an off-white background for the entire site, so it may look at little drab, but on the net it will come more in to life. 

The third example shows a nav bar/header look that I am in favor of after my research of other portfolio websites. I really like the idea of the nav bar, vertically stacked, along the right side of the site. I also like the whitespace it forces between the logo and the nav bar (if you were to draw a perfect square around it, much like the screen-capture).

Another example, one that is directly derived from the markboultondesign.com website. I kind of like where this is going, but on the other hand, I feel like it just might be too much "ben lebowitz" going on.