Lacuna Presentation

On the morning of the presentation I was given slides that I didn't know much about instead of the things that I had researched. This meant that I hadn't rehearsed my slides and mucked up what I wanted to say due to unnecessary nerves.

I thought it went well because we covered all the necessary ground and had researched into the figures well.

Lacuna Website

For our Exhibition design website Lacuna, I brought up 3 websites for research to pick what kind of direction I should take with it. Will had already created a nice aesthetic with the presentation slides and the logo, which was helpful because then it was easy to just pick up and roll with. 

For the websites the one above and below I showed to the group and we identified we wanted to create a layout similar to the mix between the two. The Seriousness of the one below while appearing relaxed like the above.

Along with the attitude of Snask.

Initially I thought the best solution to showing off what we do on the front page would be through a scrolling slideshow or something of them sorts. However I wasn't sure on how to really balance it off with the other pages tabs. It worked, but It probably wouldn't have with a image. The gradients and logo Will had created were really nice to work with as well as the typeface, it was easy to just put it together and since it was so simple it worked well been rather minimal which kept in with our presentation. 

Instead of going to the edges It'd be probably be best to  

The rounded corners were added to match with Will's design of the presentation, I think it's a nice touch to the brand and it shows we're friendly and modern, doing something different to the norm. This was take even further. (Below)

The stacked logo was a better solution because it fit in with the rest of the website better, it allowed for the logo to be consistent with how it would be else where.

Even though this was just for one slide I'm really happy with how it turned out, I would probably take out the bars along the bottom which detract from the slide. 

OUGD503 Module Evaluation

Module Evaluation Adam Garbutt OUGD503 by adgbtt

Pitch

someone needs to refine product list
order the presentation

Lifes a pitch: (Business insurance)

There are lots of different insurances needed to cover different things in a business and it was my job to find out what they are and possibly what they'd cost. However when It came to finding out a rough cost of things I got stuck because it'd hard to know given we don't have a real business for getting quotes, it wasn't really possible to get a accurate or a rough estimate.

However, the insurances that we would need to assure our assets would be secure 

http://uk.sageone.com/2012/12/27/business-insurance/

http://www.barclays.co.uk/Businessinsurance/Officeinsurance/P1242622759456

http://www.directlineforbusiness.co.uk/office-and-surgery-insurance

http://www.hiscox.co.uk/

http://www.money.co.uk/business-insurance/office-insurance.htm

http://www.morethanbusiness.com/products/office-insurance

http://www.hiscox.com/small-business-insurance/professional-business-insurance/web-design-insurance/

Life's a Pitch: (Website hosting)

To know what to look for I looked into what the different types of hosting are to figure out which would work best when it comes to a small start-up business.

Considering it's a small business, initially, I'd imagine it's following needs would be: little space and low traffic as well as having a site that is easily manageable. Fast to load, daily back-ups and has good tech support incase anything goes wrong.

To figure out what the differences in hosting are I found a website that explained it'd in layman's terms.

Shared hosting: In this arrangement, a single Web server box usually handles hundreds or thousands of websites. This is possible because each of those sites is probably very small and uses minimal bandwidth--which is why providers can offer such a service for just $4 or $5 a month. We looked exclusively at shared hosting in our Web host roundup.

 VPS hosting: A virtual private server is designed for higher-traffic sites, and provides a virtualised server that runs only your website and no others--the benefit being that you can manage or reboot the site individually without affecting (or being affected by) other sites. At the same time, however, the server is hosted on shared equipment that is running many such VPSs, so a hardware failure will still take all the sites down.

Dedicated hosting: With a dedicated host, you get one computer (or more) to host your website. Other sites are hosted elsewhere, so they can’t crash your site or bog it down if they receive a lot of traffic. Sounds nice, but this service gets expensive quickly. 

Managed hosting: In a managed hosting situation, the host provides staff members to help keep an eye on your website, manually restarting failed servers and providing technical expertise, sometimes at additional cost. Many hosting plans--shared or dedicated--can also be managed. 

Colocation: Although colocation is similar to dedicated hosting, it uses hardware and software that you provide personally, giving you complete control over the site. The Web host doesn’t touch the server except to make sure that it’s still turned on. Everything else is up to you. This service is the most complicated--and usually the most expensive--way to run a website.  

http://www.pcworld.com/article/249412/which_web_host_do_you_need_six_small_business_plans_compared.html

From the same website they showed a list of the cheapest web hosts along with rating, although I know of Godaddy.com I remember it having some security troubles in the past. As well as that all these sites are based in the US so they wouldn't have the fastest of load up times. Which is critical because people don't like waiting for a site to load, I'd imagine it'd be a few seconds at least but even still.

http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/threads/which-uk-web-hosting-is-the-best.291795/page-2

On a UK Business forum, I found a selection of hosts everyone agreed on been the best, OR ones they used and frequently mentioned the following three for been reliable, fast and having excellent customer service:

http://www.unitedhosting.co.uk/

https://www.vidahost.com/

https://www.tsohost.com/

While looking on the websites, when it comes to a domain name I discovered that Lacuna.com (Any every other prefix) was already taken so It wouldn't be possible for us to go forward with that domain name, however since the business is fictional I'd assume we'd be able to find a way to possess the domain name we'd like because the ones with the prefix .com and .co.uk weren't really in use in any shape or form.

Taken from vidahost.com

However, from the three websites I decided to compare their hosting prices and see what they offer. The best option personally would be Vidahost, which comes in at £29 per annum. However this is more expensive than tsohost it offers double the sites and bandwidth so it'd be more of a just in case rather then a necessity as the site wouldn't have too many pages and since the traffic wouldn't be too high it wouldn't need that high of a bandwidth.

It appears that both Tsohost and Vidahost are both from the same parent company so I'm guessing the service would be similar, however because of what Vidahost offers I would conclude it be best taking the Starter Package for £29/pa.

I wouldn't choose Unitedhosting after seeing what the other two both offer simply because how little you get for your money in comparison to what you get from Vidahost and Tsohost. I'd imagine it'd be good if you hosted a little blog with them, but for what a small business would need I feel Vidahost supports that more.

Vidahost.com

Unitedhosting.co.uk

tsohost.com

The cost of registering a domain under the .com prefix would be £8.99 while it would be £5.39 (this would last one year before needing a renewal every year) for using .co.uk so that'd be the go to choice. This on top of the price of the hosting would be £40.19 with Vidahost.