The design element is one of the most important parts of anything that you hope to showcase anything on. Whether it’s a music blog, a forum in which to showcase your accomplishments, or even a billboard or flier. The goal is to attract the attention of people so they will listen to what you have to say, purchase your product, etc. For our personal hypertext project the design element is one of the most, if not the most, important element.

I have had a decent amount of experience with website work, and a little bit with design. And one of the tips that really stood out for me was to make the format and operation of your website different than most of the cookie-cutter sites you see today. While still making the site easy to navigate, make the look of your site different. There’s nothing that will attract more attention initially then a totally different look.

I found the ideas and themes suggested in 10 Unusual Places to get Design Inspiration  quite interesting. I really liked the idea of looking to different eras for inspiration. Giving your site a retro feel could be very cool and different. Because I’m very into music I liked the idea of using album covers and album art as inspiration. I also thought that a combination of different themes could be interesting, possibly a retro album cover theme.

Some other things I noticed about some of the layouts were that the majority of them were very pleasing to the eye. When creating a website you want people to be interested in what you have to say on the site; that’s the whole point. If the format of a site is to abrasive or boring people might ignore what you have to say purely based on the aesthetics of the format, regardless of what you have to say.

For my personal hypertext project i want something thats fresh, contemporary and pleasing to the eye. I think I’m going to use something musically focused to be the theme of the page, including headers, backgrounds, and possible link icons to other pages.  I like the idea of using different eras when designing the theme of my page. I thought about using a retro theme, but I’m also thinking about going in the other direction and using a technology infused futuristic feel for the site as well.