Style Manuel

Purpose:

Like every web site ever conceived, the purpose of this page is to present information. This particular web site has the dual purpose of a) presenting information about me, and a couple of my areas of interest, and b) fulfilling the requirements for my English 123 Writing for the World Wide Web.

Audience:

Web sites, like television, newspapers and magazines, need to optimize and target specific audiences. The important part of that step is to establish who your audience is, for the finished website. In this case I have a well defined audience, namely my professor and fellow students.

Theme:

The theme behind this webpage is one of creation. I present information less about the final product of my efforts, and more about the methods I used in their creation. Why I chose certain pieces for the Venerable Dreadnought for instance, and why I applied a certain technique in Photoshop for issue 2 of ”City of Heroes Invasion”. I want to convey the idea of a sheet of paper, because so many ideas begin as little more then a scribbled note on a piece of paper.

Color Scheme:

In keeping with the basic theme, I have kept the colors subdued, Solid black text on a white background. There are no real colors for non-active links, but underlined to show they are links, bright green for links that are being hovered over and dull-green for visited links.

Fonts and Background colors

I used a Verdana Sans-serif font because it is sharp and directed, but not particularly fancy. It helps convey the concept of “This idea isn’t finished, but it’s been refined” an extension of the basic concept of my site.

Element	Font	Size	Color
H1	Verdana	30px	Black
Normal Text	Verdana (underlined)	14px	Black (#000000)
Link	Verdana (underlined)	14px	Black (#000000)
Active Link	Verdana (underlined)	14px;	Green (#009900)
Visited Link	Verdana (underlined)	14px	Dull Green (#330000)
External Link	Verdana	14px	Dull Red (#CC0000)
Visited External Link	Verdana	14px	Dull Red (#CC0000)
Page Background			White (#FFFFFF)
Primary Nav-bar: Sections not being Viewed	Verdana (Image)
Primary Nav-bar: Section being Viewed	Verdana (underlined)
Footer Background

Recurring Images:

There are a series of seven recurring images. The first of these is the “Michael’s Work Space” banner across the top of each page. The remaining 6 images are the navigation tabs below the banner image. I made these image tabs resemble folder tabs to again reinforce the concept of paper. Different tabs mean separate folders and thus cover something different, or not directly connected, to what I am currently reading.

Page Template:

For a break down of my page layout please see my page template.