The process of creating a cover image, icons, and images was honestly one that gave me fits and sent me into a tailspin at times. I have never created a new cover image for either twitter or facebook and was daunted by the process in the beginning. Canva proved to be a wonderful tool for designing a facebook/twitter cover photo. I honestly cannot say enough positive things about the Canva experience. The one downside to Canva is that I was not able to have a background created from scratch (or at least not in a manner that I could figure out). It would have been beneficial to have the freedom to create a background from scratch within Canva. For example, I would have liked the opportunity to pick my own background, border or no border, and script versus having to adapt it from a pre-existing template. Regardless of having to use the pre-existing template, I was able to personalize this photo and place a Civil Rights/inclusive feel to the image by including some of the free graphics (rainbow hearts).
I did not experience the same ease of creation when I started working on the icons, however. Having never really been a super duper creative person, I was gobsmacked by my lack of creativity when working on the icons for this site. When I first read this directive, I did not understand and/or realize that I had to create the icons. I found several, beautiful, free icons on IconFinder that were free and required no linkback (therefore, Creative Commons-esque). I thought I was in business because the graphics I used were gorgeous. However, I re-read the directions and realized just how off the mark I really was, and then I wanted to cry. After this, I opened up my handy-dandy PowerPoint 2013 and showed the world just how ineffective my creative skills actually are. I created a calendar, Pinterest, and Google Plus icon set. For the calendar, I utilized part of one of the tutorials, and I think that it turned out only okay. I did not follow every single step because I could not figure part of it out. For Pinterest, I created a logo that had the red and white color scheme. It doesn't look anything like the Pinterest logo, but it does have the same color scheme. As far as the Google Plus icon, I really love Stars and I chose to create a star icon based on my love of stars.
After creating the cover image for Facebook and Twitter, I used this image to "brand" the website. This image was present front and center on every page of the website. Since websites should be image heavy, I chose to utilize Weebly's Creative Commons search and find images that were related to the theme of Civil Rights. As related previously, these images were all gained through a Creative Commons search within Weebly and proper attribution was made at the bottom of the page.
I cannot say enough positive things about using Weebly's template driven design features. Weebly takes the difficulty of coding and creating design elements out of the mix. Having previously authored websites using CSS and HTML, anything where I do not have to write CSS/HTML, makes me extremely happy. I do NOT feel as if Weebly stifled my creativity in any way whatsoever. Weebly has a wide variety of attractive layouts and you can insert many different types of media from a wide variety of locations. If I had a Media Specialist position, I would seriously contemplate using Weebly to host my Media Center's website.
The design decision I am most proud of in regards to this website is the Canva cover I created to unify all platforms (Weebly, Facebook, and Twitter). Branding is one of the topics that was recently talked about recently at the Georgia Library Media Association 2016 Summer Institute. Branding is very important to your Media Center's web presence. The area that I would most like to change would be icon creation. If I were able to, I would use the free icons without the need for attribution to jazz my website up, rather than it looking homemade (it really does, but I did my best).
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