Describe your target audience. Be specific! Not "everyone" — who specifically will find this site useful or interesting? What do they care about? Where do they hang out online?
What do you want visitors to do or feel? What action should they take? Think about the one thing your site needs to accomplish — the rest is secondary.
List the pages or sections you're planning. Keep it realistic — you have 10 days to build this.
Be clear about what's out of scope. This helps you stay focused! Saying "no" to things is a design decision too.
What specific features or interactions are you planning? Think about what you covered in Days 1–4 — responsiveness, accessibility, interactivity, meta tags, links pages…
Why are you making this specific site? Not a generic answer like "I like design" — the real reason. What personal experience, interest, or goal drives it? Be honest.
For each site, consider:
Are you drawing from a specific aesthetic movement? Brutalism? Vaporwave? Y2K? Corporate minimalism? Dark academia? Something else entirely? Or are you creating your own hybrid? You don't have to pick a label — but thinking about this helps you make consistent choices.
What design choices will signal to your intended audience that this site is "for them"? What visual codes or cultural references will you use? And — honestly — who might feel excluded by those choices? Is that intentional?
What dark patterns will you avoid? How will you prioritise accessibility? What values will your design communicate — intentionally or not? Remember: design is never neutral.
Sketch or create an ASCII wireframe of your homepage. What goes where? What's the visual hierarchy?
Example:
+----------------------------------+
| MY NAME |
| [Work] [About] [Contact] |
+----------------------------------+
| |
| ============================= |
| Welcome! I'm a designer. |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| |
| Featured Projects: |
| +-------------+ +-------------+ |
| | (img) | | (img) | |
| | Project 1 | | Project 2 | |
| +-------------+ +-------------+ |
+----------------------------------+
How will you display your work? Grid? List? Single-scroll? Think about how many projects you'll show, and how much detail each one needs on this page vs. on its own page.
What goes on your About page? Remember the "About your About" exercise — your 3 sentences, your image, your links. How will you lay these out?
How will users navigate between pages? Traditional nav bar? Side menu? Something experimental? Think about what happens on mobile — will it collapse into a hamburger? Stay visible? Disappear?
How did your wireframe change from your first sketch to what you have now? What did you try that didn't work? What surprised you? Be honest about your process — this isn't about having the perfect plan from the start.
Draw your homepage layout on paper. Include: header/nav, main content areas, footer. Don't worry about making it pretty — focus on where things go and how big they are relative to each other. Photograph it and add it to your planning notes.
Describe what you drew. What are the main sections? How did you organise the hierarchy? What did you learn from drawing it by hand that you wouldn't have learned from just thinking about it?
How is the paper version different from your ASCII wireframe? What changed when you drew it by hand? What did you notice about proportions, spacing, or hierarchy that the wireframe didn't capture?
Looking at your paper prototype, what will you adjust when you actually build this? What works on paper but might not work on screen?
This is body text. It should be easy to read and comfortable for longer paragraphs. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789.
This is smaller text for captions or metadata.
This is body text. It should be easy to read and comfortable for longer paragraphs. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789.
This is smaller text for captions or metadata.
This is body text. It should be easy to read and comfortable for longer paragraphs. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 0123456789.
This is smaller text for captions or metadata.
For each option, ask yourself:
Which option are you going with and why? How does it align with your site's purpose and audience?
What font combination did you try that looked TERRIBLE? What made it not work? What did you learn from testing different options? Be specific about what failed and why — this is valuable information.
Choose your primary, secondary, and accent colours. For each one, note:
Here are some starting palettes to test against — change the background colours in your own version of this file to preview your choices:
Why these colours? What mood or feeling do they create? Are there cultural associations you're drawing on — or avoiding? Do they align with your audience and your aesthetic movement?
Test every text/background combination and record the results:
What colour combination FAILED the contrast test? What did you have to change? How did that affect your design? Be honest about what didn't work — it shows you actually tested.
Include an annotated screenshot in your planning document. You can annotate it with image editing software, draw on it with Preview/Paint, or print it, scribble on it, and photograph it. Whatever works.
Explain what we're looking at. What stage is this at? What have you built so far? What are the annotations pointing out?
What does this screenshot show about how you work? What decisions have you made? What are you still figuring out? Be honest about where you are in the process — not where you think you should be.
After your peer review, note:
What part of this plan feels solid to you? What are you excited about? What do you think will work well?
What might not work? What are you still figuring out? What parts of the plan feel shaky? Uncertainty is normal and valuable — name it.
What specific questions do you have for your tutors? What do you need to learn during the 10-day build? What are you worried you don't know how to do yet? Ask us! That's what we're here for.
What's the hardest part of this project for you specifically? Technical? Creative? Time management? Perfectionism? Be specific about YOUR challenge, not a generic answer.
If your main idea doesn't work or you run out of time, what's your simpler fallback? What can you cut? What's the minimum viable version of your site that still works?
How will YOU know if this project is successful? Not what you think the instructor wants to hear — what actually matters to you. What would make you proud of this site?
What are you hesitant to say? What do you think you 'should' be doing differently? What judgement are you worried about? This is a safe space to be honest — and it helps us help you.