Yesterday evening I was quite excitable as I’d made my first ever favicons and they looked quite good. Well I like them, anyway. Here and here if you want to have a look yourself. If you don’t know what a favicon is, it is that tiny picture on the left side of the tab in your browser.
I also finally decided upon a new font for my weather page. I’d originally decided upon “Exo” on the basis that it was striking and a little unusual. But I had some negative feedback and decided they were right.
So then I went through dozens of Google fonts before settling on Open Sans Condensed. It was actually one of the first ones I looked at yesterday – at first I wasn’t so sure so ploughed on through the fonts for another hour (amazing how quickly time passes when designing websites) and at the end had no font.
I started going back over them again and re-discovered Open Sans Condensed. It then made sense. It was lighter, softer on the eye, instructive yet gently persuading. The big issue with running a website asking people to pay money for a weather forecast will be trust. Design is clearly going to be important to win over potential customers and as a web developer – not designer – I am going to have to go by my own feelings, and feedback of those around me, as opposed to a degree in graphic design theory.
So I think I’m making progress, I’m confident that I will get my dream junior web developer job this year.
Then I do something dumb. I forget how to change the title of my website – it was defaulting to show the website address. I asked on a forum, feeling stupid and yes it was missing the
Then someone posted “that is just a test website, isn’t it? It isn’t responsive”.
My heart sank. I have made efforts to ensure it re-sizes, recalculating fonts, boxes and buttons in respect to the width, and repositioning some elements for small screen widths.
I checked on my phone and the font does need re-sizing for mobiles but apart from that I do not understand how it isn’t responsive? I know the photographs do not resize. Maybe I need totally change the layout for mobile. Or maybe I am just not getting something. That junior web developer role then seemed further away than ever.
The next website I make I think I will do it mobile-first, and then upscale it.
Emotionally there are lots of ups and downs doing this, especially with the pressure of needing to find my first job this year. I cannot stand my current career and the morons I deal with – though that is just one of the many drawbacks of chasing payment for a living.
One hour I’m full of confidence – the next hour I’m dejected and despondent. Onwards.