Web Design Final Crit

In todays crit session we looked at our mock up home pages for our history of brief. I found this session really helpful overall. I was sceptical at first as I wasn't overly happy with my design or how easy it is to create and navigate. I came up with a few ideas and played about with the textures to kind of create a natural earthy feel. I definitely have some work to do improving the visual qualities I feel as this looks a bit childish and a bit too in your face I think.

 I am quite happy with the layout but I need I dont think it looks makeshift enough.

 I think the border spoils the layout a bit.

I added a texture to the image and also a reggae border round the circle which

I feel represents the theme slightly better.

Roll over Images

 Wire Frame - I just worked out the pixels for each aspect of the design.

 Although the colours are relevant I think it looks too childish to be honest

Crit Feed Back

Strengths

Background looks great

History and Artists are good Icons

Strong concept for website with a clear audience.

Icons music and Festivals work well.

Navigation seems well organised and useable.

Information proposed on the site would be useful to the audience to educate and inform them.

Areas for Improvement

The style of the website is slightly childish at the moment in terms of the bright colours, circles + icons, which slightly contradicts the primary audience who would take an interest in the music.

Music buttons looks too much like itunes - needs changing

Gradients make it look a bit tackier - push the wood texture theme.

Music and festival Icons need to be clearer.

Icons need to be more specific.

Type face for icons are too condensed. Consider alternative text.

Need to keep the consistency of the website even.

Need some kind of introduction and information about the site

What is it for? Who's it for? Why?

What is the purpose of the circle will it be repeated throughout the site?

Action Plan

I need to sort out by buttons, change the symbols and change the font used.

Also edit the gradients on the icons, need to play about and see what works.

I also want to try and get more wooden textures involved as it does like a bit childish.

I want to add some shadows and different tones to make the icons stand out and look less tacky.

I need to plan out the other pages and work out how to add a music player to the site.

REGGAE SITE - FINAL IDEAS

After the Crit I sat down and drew up the final version of how I wanted my site to look. I decided that the information would change only in the middle section of every page. So I had to figure out how I could display the information well in this circula format. I am mainly going to keep the colour scheme quite natural and woody. This conveys the message behind reggae music I feel. All about sticking to the roots. I hope to have some roll over features on the buttons also.

This is how the home page will look. It will have the reggae family tree in the middle

which will also be a roll over Image. The for buttons in the corners will link to different pages

Above you can see how the information will be laid out on each separate page.

You can also see the roll over features too in the right hand bottom corner.

As I will be making my website out of 9 separate Jpegs it will be easier to code 

if I only have to change the middle square each time.

PRINT BOOK DEVELOPMENT

For my Print book I decided to go with the obvious CMYK colour scheme. Although the colours are quite in your face, I think this helps to label and categorize the sections and make the book more readable. I started with the grid, I split it up into 12 columns leaving a large margin of the left hand side, this will allow the screws to fit into the book without going through the content as it will be perfect bound. I wanted to use lots of columns in order to 

keep everything neat and structured. I kept this consistant through out.

 Introduction

Using my design sheets as a guideline I mocked up each page in Indesign

placing image and text boxes ready to fill out.

Contents Page

Swatch Palette - I mainly stuck to the main print colours - CMYK. I also used

RGB and also some pantone spot colours. I tried to keep it quite limited so 

the theme will run throughout.

For each section I created a chapter page to split the book up.

I used the CMY colours for each chapter.

I experimented with many different layouts throughout the booklet to try and get some

variation and also to help increase my layout skills. I found this booklet has really helped

to try new things and styles.

I also labeled each section on the edge of each page to make it easier to

navigate through the book whilst flicking through. 

I tried to look at as much useful techniques as I could. I ended up narrowing the

book down in the end as I thought I had far too much content.

I looked at different paper sizes etc, and recreated all the diagrams in Illustrator.

Chapter 2 - Colour

I decided to try something different here and changed my grid, angling it.

Using Photoshop I edited photos to change them to greyscale using

the channels pannel to split them up.

I also looked at the different printing methods available and illustrated how they work. 

I also looked at printing methods I could do in college. I created 5 hand made pages to 

go in the book, I experimented with screen printing, foiling, embossing, debossing and laser cutting.

Diagrams

In order to illustrate the different printing processes I drew up diagrams of the various processes in illustrator.

 Paper Sizes ( A & B )

Printing Area 

Colour Model - RGB

Colour Model CMYK

Print Order - Mocked up in photoshop.

 Rotogravure

Offset Lithography

Felxography

MOCK UP

I mocked up the book to see what it will look like printed out and to get an idea

of the type sizes etc. This will help me to alter any mistakes.

Book Mock-up 

PRINT PROCESS EXPERIMENTATION

This is my screen printed example page

Foiled Example

Items will be trimmed down and used in the book.

Using the laser cutter I cut out my desired letters and shaped then using the Guttenburg press

I was able to Emboss and De-boss a few pages. I needed to experiment a few times to work

out how much pressure to give it.

I also laser cut some paper to show how fine a quality it can cut to.

I used the same process as before to emboss this page

MOUNTAIN TRIKE CONCEPT IDEAS

In order to make sure Emily and I were going down the right root we decided to research some different design styles which we thought Mountain Trikes image needed. From here we produced work which had taken inspiration from various extreme sports magazines etc, as we wanted to make the productmore about the fun and outdoors as apposed to a boring product spec leaflet. We mocked up some concept board to send off to Brandfuel in order to get feedback on what works and what doesn't. We didn't want to waste time going straight into our final designs so we thought this was the best option to start with.

We took inspiration from various downhill bike magazines etc.

In order to make the product look more fun and exciting. We needed to

emphasize its off road all terrain aspect of the product.

We put together a series of rough layout ideas using the photos supplied to communicate a range of different ideas so that when go into the final design, we know which style is the most preferred/appropriate, experimenting with fonts, shapes and colours also.

 

We experimented with tyre marks to emphasize the off road aspect.

We also included some graphics and geometric shapes inspired from some of our visual research. We wanted to make the leaflet design more up to date and modern, so we

used bright colours  and bold big shapes to do so.

We created rough mock ups of how we could display information and imagery in a fun

and eye catching way. We also experimented with logo placement and text.

The images and content that mountain trike wanted to include were not exactly exciting or sold the product, in order to try and give the product more life we used a variety of different methods to try brighten things up, mainly using bright colours and reference to imagery in our primary research.

Circles and tyre tracks

Lines and large images

Photo Selection

As we were sent lots of images to work with it was important that we narrowed it down to the ones that we thought promoted the product the most and ones which highlight the capabilities of Mountain Trike whilst also taking into consideration Brandfuels Feedback.

BrandFuel feedback e-mail RE concepts:

Thanks for sending through your concepts.

We really like what you have done and how it has been presented.

You’ve had a good thought about concepts, design elements, font and colour palette before moving along with the designs.

I’ve reviewed with David; here is our feedback:

What works:

- Good choice of reference material

- Page 3 – we like the treatment of font on ‘take yourself further’, the grittiness suits 

the product

- Page 4/8 – trace of tyre is a good graphical element and will work as a divider between images; try to combine to something in between both graphics

- We really love the sun/wheel graphic on page six

- Nice flow of elements on page 7 but try not to use one graphical element (circles in this case) too much, there needs to be a balance

- On page 7 also like the treatment of ‘Mountain trike’ in top right corner

- Page 10 – we really like the graph-like graphic on the left/middle

 - All colour palettes work well, also good choice of fonts

What doesn’t work:

- Page 7 bottom left – a brochure like this will sit in a brochure holder, so only the top part will be visible – ‘Take yourself further’ could mean anything. Branding MUST be on top as in design in top right corner

- Page 9 – too busy, stripy circles don’t work

- Page 10 right side design are too blocky and static

Could you please, based on this feedback, progress to next stage and develop two designs further.