Assignement 2: Website Mock Up Analysis

Here are two page mock up designs of my redesigned Saatchi & Saatchi website:
I used photoshop to display a brief layout of how I intend my site to look.


Mock Up of Web Page 1



Mock Up of Web Page 4

Assignement 2: Website Critque Analysis

I have chosen to analyse two advertising agency websites Adam & eve DDB and Saatchi & Saatchi. Both of these companies are well recognised based on the types of clients they work for making them leading agencies in the UK. Both sites are targeted at companies looking to improve their branding and advertising. Other audiences these websites potentially target are graduates looking for opportunities and employees seeking for job opportunities and careers. Saatchi & Saatchi have two websites. I will be focusing on their global site www.saatchi.com. Both sites start off with a blank web page when first entered then loads in a coherent manner providing and loading icon symbol as a form of indication to the user the webpage is still active. This is a very important method of visual communication as many users will chose to go onto another site if website don’t respond quickly enough.

Saatchi & Saatchi (S&S) uses a very basic blog/tumblr arrangement. The site is displayed in a grid-animated flash player format. As the user navigates the gridded images with the cursor, brief information is provided in regards to the purpose of the image.

This is a good way of allowing the user to make the decision to access into that webpage or not without giving away too much information. The background colour being white is very boring but on the other hand makes the site easier to look at, as there are a lot of colours in the centre of the webpage and the grid images change every few seconds.

There are no subtitles or slogans provided to indicate that this is an advertising agency. This portrays value in their brand as they as so well known allowing users to navigate their way through the site. As well as relying on the brand the site should also cater for users who are not familiar with their company. As a advertising agency they need to prove themselves to clients to stand a higher chance of increasing their recognitions as well as maintaining their reputation. Macdonald (2003) states, “In the corporate area more business-orientated applications are likely to become of greater importance”. Whether or not that particular user which accessed to interest on not they could always refer it to someone else, which will help Saatchi publicise their brand. In terms of the site organization the alignment is very neat. The grids within the main border don’t have the area space but are all fixed very closely together. The navigation tool placed just below the “Saatchi & Saatchi’ logo is far from recognizable. This is one of the most important interfaces on the page and the type is way to small and the colour does not correlate with the background. On the other hand, the navigation tool does offer mass information, which is categorized to suit their different audiences such as potential clients, graduates and even other advertising agencies. Accessing certain subheadings in the navigation section leads the users to very little information and a lot images seem to replace the information, which should be there. Macdonald (2003) cites the “Use of language for instance in navigation needs to be carefully considered”, the ‘About Saatchi & Saatchi’ history is rather a poor navigator page. Once activated it leads the user to a simple layout of the homepage with grids. The short information listed below does indicate the grid images are clickable; this displays a form of user-friendly qualities. Moreover, it is quite annoying as the site once again provides another for of navigation in order to read on to smaller pieces of information. The amounts of webpages are highly unnecessary and create a form of delay to access information fast.

The Saatchi & Saatchi website definitely leaves the users wanting to receive more information as there is not really enough displayed on the site but visuals. As well as it being a design website, type is also very important to have written information too.  As they are a very well known brand this doesn’t matter as much as it would for another advertising agency. In their ‘Contact us’ section the do have a number of different emails to contact on in regards to the enquiry which is an advantage as it enquires the user their enquiry will be dealt with much quicker. Moreover on the homepage site in the footer section their display their contact details and a hyperlink in regards to email enquires.

The four graphic design principles overall have been met to a certain degree. The proximity and alignment on the homepage, the tumblr blog appearance has the images close together but does have an inch separation between the images. The site carries a coherent visual style on each page with has a sense of continuity for the audience to navigate through each page knowing there on the same site.

The interaction design on the site could have been improved especially considering the purpose of the site being an advertising design agency. The site uses flash for the images on the homepage. This is a popular and using for of interaction design to have to attract the audience as it grasps their attention displaying different news of the company every 5 seconds. The fact that if the user is interested in reading more on a headline which has popped up and changed, they are able to click on it immediately navigates them directly to the link. This save the user time from having to look through the long navigation tool bar on the left. The disadvantage of the site is that not all visitors to the site are perfectly enabled. Some users may be accessing the site through a mobile phone device whilst others may not have flash player. Often this tends to disturb the site and allowing the users to only receive half the experience.

Infrastructures on the site include the search tool in the navigation. Typing in a key word to narrow a search provides another webpage highlighting top results containing the key word entered. The search box as the first bars in the navigation section benefits the audience from having to scroll through the navigation bar. Rather they can easily type in their area of interest and receive results quicker.

Adam& Eve DDBs’ website contrasts in regards to layout user interface and structure. The homepage is introduced with a light grey grain textured background. The display is rather informal which shows off a form of originality in regards to the other advertising agencies. The work site is displayed as a photo hanger with flash animation when the cursor goes over the image. The site shows user-friendly qualities as the cursor goes over the yellow overlay navigation bar.  In comparison to Saatchi & Saatchi the site does not reveal too much information on the first page. They don’t give away who they are, but display necessary information on the front page for users to activate and read on. There is no footer provided although there is quite a bit of pointless space along the bottom, which could either compressed the webpage or had some sort of type. The alignment of the site is very intelligent as it goes webpage goes in accordance to width and the length of the page displaying the view in a manner where everything can still be viewed articulately. This is another user-friendly quality as it allows users who maybe accessing the site through our new forms of media technology other than a laptop or computer to still receive a full display.

The user interface also provides flash animation, which doesn’t work on phones, but the still provides a useful and mutual experience for phone users as well as people viewing from their laptop. The flash provided is not relevant as it just animation only happens on the clip design when the cursor is put the image to bring the site to life.

The homepage provides two forms of contacts; twitter and email. This is rather niche considering the amount of social networks provided in the society today. Furthermore the company does open up on a different set of platforms to engage to a mainstream out of other audiences through other medians of social networks. This minimizes their audiences. (Potts 2007, p341) address the idea that “The importance of testing different designs in different email clients, as well as testing subject lines and content ideas, can reveal telling results that will ultimately lead to better material and increased readership’. The Adam & Eve website achieves the criteria of a good accessibly and design structure providing easy navigation around the page and attractive imagery. Another final user-friendly interaction on the contact us webpage provides a Google map which helps find the location of the business linked to Google maps allowing the user to plan their journey from point A to B if needed.

 Word Count: 1,475

References

Potts. K (2007). Web Design and Marketing Solutions for Business Websites . United States: Apress. P97

Macdonald. N, 2003. What is Web Design? Switzerland, Roto Vision 2003. (pg, 341)

Staff, W . (2010). Information Architecture Tutorial - Lesson 1. Available: http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/02/Information_Architecture_Tutorial_-_Lesson_1. Last accessed 22^nd Feb 2013.

http://webguide.gov.au/accessibility-usability/accessibility/website-infrastructure-assessment/ accessed 22^nd Feb 2013

Nielsen, J., 2000. Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity. USA: New Riders Publishing.

Assignement 1: Design Research Portfolio - Poster Design

For my film poster I decided to recreate on of my childhood favourite films, 'Jurassic Park' renaming the next part 'Jurrassic Parking'.

 The three images below show the process of the textured dinosaur skin. Using the overlay tool and placing the texture onto of the dinosaur I was able to achieve this one after the other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My inspiration to recreate the poster 'Jurassic Parking' came from the image below:

 

 

Due to the title of my film poster, I decided to add a steering wheel to fit the theme. To blend it in with the title I used the 'pin light' effect.

 

I used the textured dinosaur I made on another page, dragging the image onto the lm poster creating numerous dinosaur overlays. I also added an image of a crashed car representing the film of Jurassic parking and revolving images around parking. This is to ensure the images on the poster are clear to the audience to understand what they’re about to watch. The choice of dark gloomy colours is to connote the genre of the film - thriller.

 

 

For the credits used below the poster, I downloaded the font 'accreditation' from DAFONT.COM to make my poster look much more realistic.

Below is the final outcome of my poster

 

 

References

 

Images

http://www.car2cover.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/shutterstock_97542812.jpg [Accessed on 28th July 2013]

http://www.rockshore.uk.com/ekmps/shops/rockshore/images/-basic-leather-steering-wheel-350mm-by-race-sport-2626-p.jpg [Accessed on 28th July 2013]

http://www.studiohajo.nl/wp-content/uploadedImages/2009/04/jurassic-parking.gif [Accessed on 28th July 2013]

http://chipkidd.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/jurassic-park-movie-logo-chip-kidd-dinosaur.png [Accessed on 28th July 2013]

http://www.walkingwithdinosaurs.com/suploads/edmontosaurus-scar_medium.jpg [Accessed on 28th July 2013]

http://zonters.com/image/2013/04/jungle-wallpaper1.jpg [Accessed on 28th July 2013]

http://themovieblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/18516-jurassic-park-logo-symbol.jpg

http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/ww245/suavezmonchango/20070923133837Jurassic_Park_poster2.jpg

 

Websites

 

www.dafont.com [accessed 28^th July 2013]

 

Assignement 1: Design Research Portfolio - Logo Design

The logo  I will create is for a friend who is starting a make up line called 'LAMRO' This make up name came from her British and Nigerian name 'Ro'semary O'lam'ide. With a bit of word play we came up with the name 'LAMRO' representing her bringing her two backgrounds together bringing diversity to her brand.

Before designing logo ideas, I did some secondary research looking at make up logo brands:

Below are my sketched ideas I intend to use for my logo design:

 

Looking at the well know make up brands I noticed that they all tended to look rather simple and mainly come across as non italic and rarely bold in a sans serif or serif format. I decided to stick to this convention when creating my logo. 

 

 

I scanned in my final type style in Photoshop and the lines came out rather rough. I dragged the type into illustrator then used 'live trace' to smoothen the lines giving me this outcome below.

dragging it back into Photoshop and rasterising the smart object, I added purple stroke across the type.

 

using a large size eraser with an opacity of 30, I lightly went of the strokes, creating a gradient making it look a bit glosser a s a make up logo.

 

 

I played around with the alignment of the strokes finalising the image below

 

 

To make my logo look more apparent for its purpose, I decided to add a female silhouette head. using the eraser, I got rid of all the unwanted areas. I put the image behind the head making the opacity level 19

the final touch was adding in Arial font displaying 'freelance make up artist'

Picture reference:

http://www.colourbox.com/preview/2308312-771264-vector-silhouette-african-woman.jpg [Accessed on 28th July 2013]

http://media.merchantcircle.com/28295916/Mpi-Logo_full.jpeg [Accessed on 28th July 2013]

Assignement 1: Design Research Portfolio - Album Cover

Album Cover [Front]

In order to give myself a challenge for this album cover task I used the link  http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days to come up with a random image which I was going to use to be my front and back.


1. Opened Photoshop using a canvas size of 800x800 pixels and centred my chosen image
2. Created a duplicate layer of the same image once going exactly across.

 

3. on the duplicate image layer, I used the effect of 'overlay to give the effect displayed across the bottom half of the image.

4. using the eraser I rubbed out the top half of the overlay effect leaving the original image above displayed.

5. using the link  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random I used this to get a random album title 'under nevader skies'.

6. using the link http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 I was able to get a random artist name from quotations as well as track albums for the back of my CD cover

 

7. The typography I used in the above image looked to boring and I don't think it worked for the album cover so I changed it to a bold Arial font duplicating the artist and cover title
behind the original using the opacity tool (19) to fade it. I made the type 'skies' blue to represent blue skies. I also changed the font to 'colours of autumn' to break continuity.

 

8. I chose for the album title 'under nevader skies' to go just under the rope in the image because the first name to the album title was 'under'

 



Album Cover [Back]

 

The back of my album cover I kept continuity to the front of the cover but removed the branch image by duplicating the image and moving it along so it looked like one long rope.

 

I also kept the font white as that was the best colour white complimented the background of the image as well as making the text legible for the audience

 

At the bottom right is a signature of the artists album. I added it there because there was to much area space making the cover look bare

 

Album Cover [Final Design]

front & back

Below are the final outcomes of my album cover. Only changes which were made was the alignment of the album title. The other change was making sure there was continuity with my front and back cover.