Digital Textile Portfolios

		<p>The web design class that I've been teaching in the <a href="http://creative.massey.ac.nz/html/design/bdes_textiledesign.html" title="Massey Creative">Fashion and Textiles Department</a> at Massey is finally finished, and what's more, we've put the portfolios online for all to see at <a href="http://crafty.coretxt.net.nz" title="crafty sites...">crafty.coretxt.net.nz</a></p>

These are first websites that all of these girls have ever made - they're fashion and textile designers not graphic designers, and nobody had any experience working with websites or internet technology before starting this project. The brief was to create a textile design portfolio to communicate their own unique identity; it's great to see so many rich ideas from outside the digital environment coming onto the screen, and amazing how ambitious some of the designs are for a first attempt at building a site.

Some funny things I noticed - everyone wants to take up as much screen area as possible! And theres a distinct aversion to boxes, grids, headers and footers in any way shape or form. Having been so immersed in web standards lately, I found the "fuck design" approach they were pushing really refreshing, and it was fascinating to see the way total beginners responded to CSS and the mad things they were trying to do with positioned content.

This is the first time we've run the course, and I think it worked really well - the biggest positive for me was how focusing on process rather than technology really brought out the best. For the first three weeks, we started learning HTML by building a basic requirements document in HTML to outline the goals and purpose of the site. Next step was to develop a site map of the proposed gallery, then moodboards and sketches, which of course led everyone off in their own unique direction. The final three weeks involved the realization of the ideas in an actual finished site. Pretty choice eh?