Shall we change the site design?

Mostly green is associated with Slovenia too, however more lime or grass green. Alternative colour is turkise blue accordint to our alltogether national sports kits (remember olympics in Sochi or London and you’ll know what I mean). Many would associate red with Slovenia too, but red isn’t our national color at all although our flag is partly red.

Shwmae Megan. Hopefully I can answer your questions. : -)

The current colour is based on the High Intensity approach. I agree that the red is a strong colour, which is why it was chosen to embody this attitude. Red says energy, action, determination. As you say, colour psychology is far from an exact science, and I’m aware that red holds negative connotations too. That’s why feedback is always so valuable!

Competitor analysis showed that they were using a combination of colours and copy that emphasised how nice and easy this language learning business is. The SSi HILT philosophy sets itself apart by saying ‘easy doesn’t work. This is going to be intense. And that’s why it will work.’

The HILT approach is hard, fast and effective, but it’s not going to be a fit for everyone. The branding (colour, copy etc) needs to communicate that at the outset so that you can decide whether you want to take it on or not.

Having said all that, the current design was a fairly rapid iteration, so we will be undertaking a deeper, more extensive branding process later on that will refine everything and also inject some SSi-specific personality into the site.

I hope that answers your questions. If not, I’ll be happy to answer any others you have. : -)

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All good points, Meg, and diolch yn fawr iawn for them - as you’ve partially hunched already, though, yes, Jon has been doing exactly this work - which is why it looks so dramatically better than anything else we’ve done… :sunny:

Dee - yeah, I’d probably end up going with you on that - they were cut and pasted in from an ‘all on one line’ situation where they needed the punctuation - and now I’ve got to admit that I’m unlikely to do the tedious data entry/editing work of going into every lesson file and deleting each full stop at any point in the near future…:wink:

For people thinking of colours - sorry! - please don’t spend your valuable time thinking of colours, because we will in the not-too-distant future have far too many languages for the colour set to do anything apart from get very blurred… ‘No, Swahili should be peach.’ ‘I thought we agreed that Swahili should be apricot?’ etc etc… :sunny:

@aran if it’s possible to send me or give me access to the files in any way I’m happy to go through and remove the fullstops

I think the Spanish site design looks great. Clean, bold, inviting.

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So did I, but I thought it was old fashioned now!!

Thanks, but now can you tell me how to avoid the fright I got this morning when I tried to log-in to SSiW as usual and found myself in the Spanish version!! I managed eventually to change to Welsh, but I thought I was in our site when I logged out, so don’t know how this happened!!!

Re: colour! (I can’t work out how to answer a lot of comments in one reply)
I agree with Tatjana that green is best!! Cymru is red or green and green is much more restful. The red in the Spanish site made my head swim!!
If you decide to go for all languages having the same colour, personally I would find it very hard to concentrate with my screen screaming at me in red or orange. Blue and green are nice restful colours which let you concentrate on what you are doing without being distracted by the screen!!!

http://www.european-lisp-symposium.org/

It still has its adherents, it would seem

I ran the Lisp workshops at the uni back when I was a postgrad. Although that’s a while ago now (and I probably couldn’t remember how to spell a parenthesis these days)…

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I remember Lisp from my Systems Analysis module at Uni - or Rips as most of the Chinese Asian students in our class called it. And people have trouble pairing brackets in SQL queries!!

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I never look at the screen. I do my lessons while walking, driving or doing other tasks. I think you need a different colour scheme for each language but with design similarities in common.

I never look at the screen too despite I’m usually sitting at the computer doing lessons.

Regarding colors: Well I feel like every language should have its own color but same design though but since @aran said it’s waste of time for us to bother with that, I won’t bother community with that anymore even if Cymraeg will appear as green one. :slight_smile:

For the record @henddraig regarding green I didn’t say it’s the best for Cymraeg but is actually the only logical choice right now since Spanish is red. I actually said for me personally green is the worst choice for any language (or anything else in my life since I mustn’t even dress in green) as far as concerns me having huge personal problems with green color but it’s not my right to demand or choose anything in this course. I’ll just have to adapt to that. (that’s what I’ve written above).

Can I just point out that approximately 5% of the male population is red/green colour blind (deuteranomaly)? :smiley:

I am one of them :frowning: have pity

I sympathize with you.

I’m not color blind though. My “green” problems are far beyond this, but this is not the topic to spread thoughts about. I can only say that (you’d maybe say I’m out of my mind and stupid) green is kind of under a spell for me.

I have other question though: Will site change “dictate” the development of new app aswell? Did someone think about that or this practically isn’t neccessary to be changed too and the changes on the site are practically “cosmetic” (with what I mean only design is changed and not functionality and coding).

(just curiousity and “idea” which just lightened through my head).

Diolch, Dee - at the moment, I think that would involve you logging in as me - when we get a proper ‘levels of admin’ thing set up, I’ll remember your very kind offer :sunny:

Sounds as though there was a hiccup of some kind - but if you know that you can get back to Welsh by clicking on SSiSpanish (top left), hopefully it won’t be so worrying for you if it happens again :sunny:

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Oh Aran, I thought I’d fixed it, by switching to Welsh at once instantly when I logged in. I logged out from there, came back in, and was in Welsh! So I told someone else with the same problem. (See forum link “Broken link”.)
But then, after telling you about that, I came back in and… I was in Espania again!!! There is definitely a glitch!!!
Mae ddrwg gen i!! I don’t think it’s anything I’ve done!!
Jackie

It’s impossible to be entirely sure without actually seeing what process you’re going through - going in and out of the forum while on the Spanish side might have muddled it slightly - but certainly, the process you’ve described of finding yourself on the Spanish side, going immediately to SSiSpanish (top left) and choosing ‘Welsh’ from the drop-down list should solve things as you described - so if you do find yourself on the Spanish side again, just repeat that, and I’m sure at some point it will stick :sunny:

Diolch Aran. It hasn’t stuck yet, but apart from hating the red colour, I don’t mind having to come over to Cymraeg each time I log in. What is weird is that the first time I tried it, it did work!!! (I haven’t purposely gone to Spain since!!!). Oh, I think it’s the amount of red that gives me a headache, The amount of green in ‘our’ section seems much less.

But the grass is green!! The sky is white!! Only my relation is red!!! So a green or green and white background is quite patriotic!!

By that criterion, it would also be patriotic for ireland, England, Scotland and most countries in the temperate zones of the world :smile:
I’ve rarely seen a white sky even on a cloudy day and I’m not sure what a red relation would be - embarassed? communist? sunburned?

The good news is that you can now take your pick of colours in the new site. Needless to say, I’ve chosen red :smile:

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