Mystile

Once the decision was made to use and modify a pre-made theme, I looked through the internet to find a good low cost one that I felt could be changed into what I wanted. I ended up back in WooThemes like most of the tutorials I watched had and the theme I picked was called "Mystile", this theme is very plain and simple, its clean and easy to use and the main thing that I wanted was for it to be responsive and I have tested this theme to check that it is.
The reason I chose such a plain theme is that I want to make it my own, so getting as close to a blank canvas as possible but avoiding having to try and code the PHP, this theme seemed like the best option. WooCommerce is the addition to this theme to make it a shop which is exactly what I needed.
Here you can see what the theme looked like as a demo, but when you get this site it is completely blank for you to customise yourself.

The only downside to this theme is that because it was free you are not allowed to take off their branding on the bottom. However for all the plus sides this theme has come with, I can live with their watermark. 

Joomla VS Wordpress

While at the start of this project I had decided to use Joomla, I had not looked at the differences between it and Wordpress. It wasnt until my tutor suggested that Wordpress could do everything I needed it to that I started to look into it.
The first thing I did was go on Wordpress.com, not realising that it was different to .org, seeing the prices I was sure that I had gone wrong somewhere, this is where the book by Chris O'Connor "Wordpress For All : How To Create A Website For Business Or Personal Use, Quickly & Easily - Whatever Your Skill Level" came into its own, this book clearly established the difference and the pros and cons to either, his book was very pro .org which luckily was what I wanted to use. After working about that I would use Wordpress without taking a loan out! I started to watch tutorials of both Wordpress and Joomla to see which I thought would be most suitable, but I found that I struggled to find a good clear video for Joomla, while there were hundreds for Wordpress. This to me was the first sign that I may have jumped to the wrong choice.
I had another flick though the book by Chris O'Connor "Wordpress For All : How To Create A Website For Business Or Personal Use, Quickly & Easily - Whatever Your Skill Level" which was very useful and almost instantly sealed the deal. Before I made my choice I also had a look at some of the information in "Wordpress for dummies" which despite the name, was also very useful in giving me a head start with tips and tricks of the software.
To make certain I had made the right choice I also looked though "The Official Joomla! Book" by Jennifer Marriott, this book was useful and interesting but by this point, I had already made my mind up on Wordpress.
So I paid for hosting and started to set up the Database and upload the files, with the help of some good walk though videos to make sure I got it right.
Once Wordpress was up and running on my website I started to look at more videos to give me a place to start. The thing I noticed with all of the videos was they they all used themes, and 90% of them used themes from WooThemes, I looked into what it would take to create my own theme and teamed that with the comparison of how much you can modify from a preset theme. My decision was made on the basis that you can modify almost all of the templates you can download, but they come with the bonus that all plug ins and widgets that you could think of will definitely be compatible and above all else the check out and cart ability would not have glitches forcing customers away.

New Logo

Since changing the name of my business to Pixel Patterns, I have been working away on a new logo.
I started drawing designs on note paper as you can see below

After multiple different ideas that were wiped off, this one stuck and started to take place the more I drew it. Here are the white board scribbles of its first appearance

Starting as a simple swooping P, I found myself adding extra details such as the X instead of the dot on the I and pixels at the bottom of the P. The more I drew this piece the more that came up, the final drawing before moving to the computer was to have the first P as a needle and tread swooping round and looping through the eye and the second P to have pixels dropping off the bottom of the stalk. 

From this I headed straight to the computer and started to recreate this logo. Picking a font to go with the large swooping P's was tricky and I wanted it to look somewhat similar to what I had drawn in the sense that the letters are tall, reasonably thin and well spaced. After a while of searching I found a font called Tall Films, using the fine version of this font I feel that I managed to keep all of the aspects I wanted from my whiteboard drawings. 

Here is the final logo and its smaller icon version which I will use as a favicon and possibly much more.

To make sure that I dont run into the same predictable issue, I have used the needle on pixel and the pixels on pattern, this not only keeps away from them being too predictable, but also represents how I am bringing the two together to combine them in my work.

Logo and Name troubles

I wasn't 100% sold on the last designs I mocked up for this project as I felt they were lacking in something, after showing my tutor the designs she agreed. While I couldn't put my finger on it, she suggested that the problem may be that it is too predictable. Pixel fonts on the word pixel has been used a thousand times before so we just expect to see it now. She suggested I try to come away from taking it so literally and think about the imagery past just fonts.

While I was considering new logo designs, I decided to buy the URL for Pixel Stitch, so that I could start setting up my hosting and website. However when I came to buy www.pixelstitch.co.uk, I found that it had already been taken and so had .com

The company that had taken the name, to my surprise were nothing to do with sewing! They are in fact a software company in Australia.

As much of a shame it was to lose the name to another company, it did give me the opportunity to revisit my brainstorm and see if I could add anything to spark my interest. After a few days of pondering a new name and flicking though what other people were using online as inspiration, I found that the names I liked the most were ones with double letters such as sew sweet and cottontail crafts. So I decided that I would stick with pixel and see what words that began with P could work. After a few such as pixel pig and pixel pie which were sweet but didnt really make sense, I thought of the most obvious of all, Pixel Patterns. I quickly checked online to see if the URL and name was taken and to my surprise it wasnt. This is the perfect name for my shop, it says exactly what it does but also have a nice ring to it with the use of two p's. Now I just need to design a new logo and start building the shop.

Cross Stitch Patterns

Since I will need to fill she shop up with my own patters, I have been drawing some designs that have started to cover all bases of big, small, hard, easy and so on.
Before I started this however, I was looking through books at other designs that have been done before, how they are laid out and what information is normally given with them.

In the book "Mini Cross Stitch" by Michael Powell, I found some very good information on what sort of stitch notes are normally written, all of his pieces have a stitch count, letting the customer know what size material they need to start on, along side this he always has a colour key, while patterns can be stitched from simply looking at the colours on the grid, this does not suit everyone and sometimes colours are very similar, because of this most cross stitch designers code each colour pixel and then add a chart at the bottom of the design, here is one of the charts out of Michael's book against the designs coded symbols.

Ed Hardy's book Love Kills Slowly Cross Stitch, also showed me a very similar style of charting colours, however this book did not show the colours and the code together as we can see above on the dairy. Instead this book shows you the finished article and the colour code then sets you off with a black and white image. 

Although this is a perfectly reasonably way to lay out your designs, I feel that looking at the two books I prefer the style of coloured images shown in Powell's. For this reason when I code my designs, I will leave the colour showing through.

Here are some of the designs that I have drawn up so far.

Some of the designs that I have drawn are full scenes that would be stitched and framed, these ones are naturally more complex than the single ones. These full images will be very large and time consuming pieces for an advanced stitcher who is looking for a new project. I have also done some medium sized patterns as you can see by the tree and dogs, these can be taken on as a small project or as a welcome challenge for someone new to cross stitch. The other designs that I have done are small singular designs that can be done by all abilities from beginner to expert, these designs are great to use on things such as birthday cards, but can also be added together to create a scene if wanted. These small fun designs will be cheap for customers to buy and quick enough that they will return for more.

Logo Designs

After brainstorming some company names based around the idea of pixel art and stitching as you can see below

 I came up with the name "Pixel Stitch" What I like about this is that it tells the customer what I do straight away, this name combines the two elements of my interest and suits the business perfectly.

Having picked this name I started to do some sketches, from those I have created a few simple logo ideas that I could move forward with.

I started by looking at different fonts that suited the theme of pixels and cross stitch, here are some of the best ones I found on dafont.com

These fonts all show promise as they speak exactly what they will se saying. Mix Stitch, is a nice easy to read font, however it does show the wrong type of stitch as this is more like a running stitch than cross. The next font called Stitches is very pretty and light, however it is much too dainty to be a stand out logo, I feel this font would get lost on the page even though it would suit it nicely. The next font is the best of both worlds, Mesh Stitch, is a font made up of crosses, but they are thick enough to stand out without looking too fat. It also looks home stitched with its slight uneven finish and over crossing on the E. Cross Stitch which is the next font down has the same positive qualities as Mesh Stitch, but has lost the home stitched feeling, this looks very machine made and the spacing is too wide for what I had imagined. Pixelsplitter, however is exactly what I had envisioned, this pixelated font is bold and big without being hard to read and gappy. With a combination of this and Mesh Stitch, the logo should look exactly how I had hoped. 

Using the fonts I selected above, I have come up with a few variations on how to lay them out,

The first two designs are as you would think, pixel font for the word pixel and stitched font for the word stitch, I did try out the running stitch font as it is very easy to read while still saying the right thing, however now seeing it in the logo, I think I was right originally to say that it wont work because of the running rather than cross stitch design. The one below that however is using the two fonts decided earlier. The other two examples are to get an idea of what the logo would look like all in one font and next to eachother rather than ontop. I am still confident with my font choices, however I can't quite grasp why Im not in love with these designs. I have also tried them in colour below to see if that will liven them up.

I do much prefer these logos in colour but I still feel like something is missing to make these really stand out and be different. I have decided to present them to the class and tutors to see what they think of them. To get an idea of what they might look like for the class to see, I have drawn up some mock ups from rough wireframes.

Using these simple mock ups will give the class more of an idea of how these logos will be used on the site and what sort of size they will be in comparison to other elements on the screen. I look forward to hearing the feedback so I can work out what is not sitting quite right with these logos.

Cross Stitch Competition Sites

As there are so many shops online at the moment, I have decided to take a look at what I am up against. I know from looking in the past as a customer, I found it very hard to locate what I wanted quickly and easily.

This first website is a company called Willow Fabrics, If I were shopping as a customer, I would have already gone back to my Google search as this website looks old and low quality. The first thing I notice is that the image in the middle of the page is the wrong resolution and the broken search bar. There isn't much that I do like about this website, and although it uses a lot of white space, it has still managed to look unorganised and messy. Where you can see the telephone number, this actually flashes red then black which is not only un necessary, but its distracting and doesn't go with the colour scheme. There is nothing that I will be taking forward into my designs from this particular site.

 This next website is by a company called CrossStitchUK. Unfortunately this website has managed to also make itself look old with boxes scattered and shoved into rows and so much on the header bar above the navigation that it is almost masks the navigation with its busyness. There doesn't seem to be a sense of branding here and again, I will not be taking tips from this website.

 After looking around for a while I came across this website called I Love Cross Stitch, this website has much more of a modern look with a background, a colour scheme and a search bar that works! However, this website has tried to put too much on itself, there is so much going on that I am not sure where to look, with a scrolling advert, a long list of different links, loads of text and not one pattern design in sight. While I like the textured background and I feel like this gives it a little warmth, this site is again unsuccessful in looking clean and easy to navigate.

Finally I came across a website called The black sheep wools, this website covers more than just cross stitch patterns. The professional layout of the images makes them look classy and there is a strong branding theme running through the site. Although I am not a fan of the blue background as I feel it looks like something you would have in a baby's room, it does finish the site nicely. My biggest issue with this website is the navigation, this site has the same issue as the previous one, it is trying to do too much, looking through the navigation drop downs, I can see hundreds of pages, although I imagine they wanted to give a link for everything so the customer could reach their goal quicker, having this many options is doing the opposite, its slowing the customer down as you have to read through what seems like a books worth of links. The header on this site is also cluttered and over powering, I like the stitched effect of the boxes but there are too many in one space and are taking away from the logo dramatically. 

After looking through quite a lot of bad websites, I am optimistic that my business will thrive. The main things that I have taken from this are to keep it simple. Although the website needs to look good, the main point of it is to sell the products, this is why I believe they should be the focal point of the website, clearly displayed with no clutter to distract from them. I am going to try and create a website that is professional, easy to navigate and above all, clean and uncluttered.