# Website — Concept & Design — 5 points **Due: Week 10 — Friday, October 30 (bring to the full-class session)** **Submit: concept document (PDF) in Canvas** --- ## What this is Before you build, decide what the site is and prove the sequence works. This is a plan on paper — wireframes and decisions, not code. ## What to submit **1. Platform decision, with a reason.** ArtStation, Behance, personal site, or a combination. One paragraph on why, tied to your target role. If you're building a custom site, say what you're building it with and how many hours you're budgeting. **2. Sitemap.** Every page and how they connect. For most of you this is: Home → Project pages → About/Contact. If it's more complicated than that, justify it. **3. Landing page wireframe.** Rough is fine — boxes and labels. Show which piece is in the first position and which is second. **4. Piece order, ranked 1 through *n*.** With one sentence on why your #1 leads. Your strongest piece goes first; there is no reward for building to a climax, because nobody scrolls that far. **5. Project page template.** One layout that every project page will follow: > **Finished beauty shot first.** Then breakdowns — wireframe/topology, texture sets, turntable, in-engine capture, progression. Then two to four sentences of role and constraint. Contact route at the bottom. **6. Typography and color decisions.** Two typefaces maximum. A neutral background — your work supplies the color. Write down the specific choices so you're not re-deciding them in Week 11. **7. Domain.** Your registered domain name, or a written reason you're not using one. ## The 30-second test A stranger lands on your site. Within thirty seconds they must be able to answer: 1. What does this person make? 2. Are they any good? 3. What role are they going for? 4. How do I contact them? We run this live in Week 10 — you'll swap URLs with someone who doesn't know your work and answer those four questions on paper about each other's sites. It is reliably the most useful twenty minutes of the semester. Design toward passing it. ## Things that fail the test - A splash screen, an intro animation, or an "Enter Site" button - A landing page that leads with an About statement instead of work - Thumbnails cropped so the piece is unreadable at grid size - No contact route above the fold - A hamburger menu hiding the only three pages you have - Anything that requires scrolling before a single image appears ## The trap Every year somebody spends October building a beautiful website instead of making art, and arrives in December with an immaculate empty container. **The work is the product. The site is the shelf.** If you're choosing between finishing a piece and refining a hover state, finish the piece. ## Rubric | | Points | |---|---| | Platform decision justified against the target role | 1 | | Sitemap + landing wireframe, legible and complete | 1 | | Piece order ranked with a defensible #1 | 1 | | Project page template follows the beauty-shot-first structure | 1 | | Type, color, and domain decisions made and written down | 1 | ## Related - Week 10 page — the full session - **Website First Draft** (Week 11) · **Website Final** (Week 15) - Glossary: *above the fold, wireframe, sitemap, beauty shot, hero piece*