This week I decided to visit MSU’s website and JSC’s website.

MSU

I was immediately pleased by the simplicity of this website. The cleanliness of it’s layout made it not only pleasing to the eye but also easy to read. I also loved the set of of the text into three parts: the about section, the analysis, and the identity conclusion. The continuity of this set up with each organization makes it easy to follow and I especially love the conclusion page that ties all the organizations’ fashion trends together at the end. The structure of this site is really strong and it appears to be almost done. The only part missing seems to be the oral history. Overall, this is a great website! My only suggestion is for the site creators to create a personal header/logo. The MSU logo works, but it kind of makes it seem like the website is something the school set up and not a personal project for school if that makes sense. I think creating a header/logo will not only add some extra creativity to the website but also help the website visitors get a sense of the tone of the website they are about to explore.

JSC

I love the giant scenic photo of the school as the header. I don’t know why but for some reason I can imagine Maria from The Sound of Music twirling around on that campus. Anyway, as I scrolled down I was a little confused. I’m not really sure what the website’s goal is. Perhaps to compare and contrast ’70s fashion with the fashion of today? It is a little unclear because instead of pages there are just posts which makes it a little difficult to read. I would suggest turning those posts into pages. If you don’t know how, Corey does! He built our website because pages are something I am clueless on. I also, understand that you don’t have all your content up (I don’t either), but I do suggest coming up with a different way of presenting the photos. I think if you put them in Google Slides and then embed the slides into your page, they will be larger. Right now they are very small and hard to see. My final suggestion is to come up with a unique title that clues visitors into the topic of the site and maybe also spells out what JSC stands for since some people may not know.

Unfortunately, we were not able to accomplish everything that we wanted to accomplish in time for the draft submission. Our site is very unfinished right now. Most pages only contain a slideshow or timeline and no words to add context to those elements. The only page with context is the national page under the androgynous tab. I started working on that late last night after doing a lot of reading on androgynous fashion history. It seems that every fashion scholar and journalist has a different idea of exactly what makes fashion androgynous and where androgynous fashion stood in the ’80s.

As for the elements on each page we do have, they are only half done. The slideshows only contain the latter half of the ’80s. Corey is supposed to be finding pictures from the earlier half. I know he’s a busy guy so I have no clue if he just didn’t have time or forgot, but I’m confident it will get done by the final date. The same is true about out timelines. We wanted timelines to help identify the origins of some of these trends in the ’80s but pinpointing origins is harder than we thought. The best we can do is find the trends that celebrities wore in concert and on television that were later popularized.

So as you can see, we still have a lot of work to do to finish this site. Corey will (hopefully) soon add to the slideshows and timelines and write the context for a few of our pages and I will write the context for the remaining pages. Then we will both edit each others context for continuity. I’m also hoping to add a few header images at the beginning of each page just to add more color and break up the text so it is a little more appealing to the eye, making it easier to read. I think we will also get rid of the local page under the androgynous tab unless Corey is able to find examples of androgynous fashion in the early half of the ’80s yearbooks. And hopefully Corey will upload his interview with his American Studies professor soon. I know we discussed trimming the end of his interview to create a cleaner finish, but I’m not sure if he got around to doing so. Our work is definitely cut out for us.

So I closed my eyes and moved my mouse across the links of sites to decide which ones to admire and critique for this blog post. The first link I clicked on was the site for Montevallo. I was immediately greeted by a picture of the archway of Montevallo, which I loved. It felt very welcoming. When I scrolled down, there was a map so I could see where Montevallo was and what it’s city looked like. That was followed by a brief history of the school. The history was my favorite part. I love the tone of voice in it. It is almost a little tongue in cheek. I also applaud those first two men who decided to go to an all girls school. That must have been terrifying but thrilling. I only have two critiques. The first is that the header of the website seems a little messy too me since there is the COPLAC logo and the Montevallo logo and the picture of the arch again. A simple logo or title header would be more pleasing to the eye. I used canva.com to make our header for our site. It’s really easy to use and free. I use it for everything! I also suggest making the pictures larger on the 1950s page because as they are, viewers can’t see them in detail. Other than that, I’m excited to see what else I can learn from Montevallo’s site, like I said the voice of the text is amusing so I look forward to reading more like that.

The next link I clicked on was for Truman State’s website. I loved the header image immediately! It’s a subtle image which works perfectly because it won’t distract from the information below it. I think my favorite part of this site was the fact that there is images of the handbook that dictated what women wore in the ’80s. That is so interesting since universities don’t typically regulate clothing like that anymore. I also loved the captions under the photos. They are hilarious (though slightly sexist, but it was the ’50s)! I just have one critique. I wish the images were larger. Montevallo had small images too. I haven’t tried uploading images to our site yet so I don’t know if it’s even possible to make the images larger. I hope so because I really want to zoom in to see the clothes. Also, this is kind of tedious but I suggest scanning the images from the yearbook onto the computer rather than taking pictures of the page. This will create a much cleaner image and framing. Most libraries (I’m assuming Truman State keeps their yearbooks in the library) contain a scanner somewhere in them so maybe try that. I think it would make the images more impactful. Overall, I can’t wait to see what the captions are for images in the other decades! I wonder how the captions’ tones will change throughout the decades.

Everything. We haven’t actually played with the layout yet. Since Corey has done a similar project and knows quite a bit more about about website design than I do, we both decided that he should be the one to design our site. We also decided that quality content is our top priority because Corey’s knowledge of site building means that we can get that done quickly whereas quality content takes time. For that reason, our site is still in it’s basic form we were given. We do have plans for it though so I’ll try my best to outline those plans below.

• The site will have an ’80s print header to clue visitors in immediately on our topic.
• There will be four pages for visitors to click on:
  1. Thesis page
  2. Women’s Fashion in the ’80s
  3. Men’s Fashion in the ’80s
  4. Androgynous Fashion in the ’80s
• When visitors hover their mouse over those pages they will be given two options:
  1. National Level
  2. Local Level
• After clicking on the national level tab visitors will see a timeline of cultural events that affected trends in the ’80s for either men, women, or androgynous. This will be followed by a few paragraphs that further explain the important connections between these cultural events and their affect on trends.
• After clicking on the local level tab visitors will see a slideshow of images pulled from UMW yearbooks in the ’80s for either men, women, or androgynous. This will also be followed by a few paragraphs that further explain why trends from the national level were or were not seen on campus at the time. This will also be where visitors can listen to our oral histories with the experts on this topic.

I hope that made sense and painted a good picture of what we are hoping to accomplish in the upcoming weeks. I’m sorry we haven’t made any major progress this week. It is our spring break and I’m not sure how Corey spent his, but I spent mine exploring the streets of New York City! We will get back on the productive track next week.

In case you want to see the progress we haven’t made, here is a link to our site!