Dreamweaver// Workshop one..

Web seminar one:

1// Identify purpose of a website
2// Identify purpose target audience
3// Identify the audience needs
4// Demonstrate understanding of interface ad basic layout techniques

Purpose:

- To showcase work
- To get work
- Employment
- Freelance work

Target audience:

- Design studios
- Corporate clients
- Events/ exhibitions
- Independent buyers
- Collaborators
- Awards
- Like minded people

Audience needs:

- Work/ examples
- Contact details


- Look at existing graduate websites to see what they have on them
- Ask your audience what they would want to see on your website
- Ask your peers for their opinion

- At least 3 different sketches of ideas for the client
- Do not go straight to producing something digitally
- Create a site map to show what content will be needed on the web page
- Write a contract for the client
- Research into similar websites that the client would like theirs to look like

- 3-5 seconds is the average amount of time you will have to grab the attention of your audience

- Should try not to have more than 5 links on a website

- Avoid animation

- You dont need to design an amazing website, your work should be the ficus and what makes it look good

- Fonts, colour, size

- most websites you scroll vertically (web standards)

- www.awwwards.com

- Apple website:

- Expensive
- Structured
- Boring
- Busy

- Legwork studio:

- Engaging
- Fun
- Original
- Childlike
- Navigation doesnt work

- My own bike:

- minimal
- crisp
- boring
- Simple

- Slavery foot print

- Google
- Cheap
- Too happy
- Typeface mix
- No navigation

- No limit arcades

- tacky
- busy
- image vomit
- messy

- Evangelcathedral

- Awful
- too many different typefaces
- too many links

- Lingscars

- Ollymoss

- Intriguing
- 'is that it?'


- Tabs:

- Home
- Work
- About
- Contact
- (Twitter/ Facebook)

- Dont put all your work up, pick your best pieces

- Web standards//

- 800x600 pixels
- Vertical or horizontal navigation
- Web safe fonts (font family)
- If you want to use a custom font you must do it in Photoshop and save it as a web safe image
- Web safe colours (Photoshop, only web colours check box)
- Kuler.adobe.com
- Web safe colours look the same on any computer screen
- Sizes (6 different sizes):
- 800x600 will fit any screen

- Start to look at inspiring websites
- Technical drawings for our own websites

- You need a domain name and hosting to make your website go live
- Unlimited band width (the amount of people that look at your website a month)
- FTP (file transfer protocon)
- Try and get hosting based in the UK
- one.com (5GB) for hosting
- 123-reg.co.uk (for domain names)

YCN// Design approach..

Design

YCN// Heinz Salad Cream van..

As part of mine and lisa's ideas for the YCN Live Brief, we decided to create a salad cream van. The van sprang from the idea of having ice cream vans at festivals and the festival idea came from us deciding that a festival would be a good place to show our campaign to our target audience of 18-22 year olds.

We decided that a festival would be a good idea as many students attend so many different festivals over the summer. Salad cream is known to be a sauce of the summer, so works very well. What we are proposing to do is have a Heinz salad cream van that will be based at all the major festivals in the UK. The van will be giving away free samples of salad cream and they will also have a menu where people can buy food with salad cream. We will be giving away free food in cones, so trying to keep along the lines of traditional ice cream vans. We want to attract our target audience by creating an ice cream van that looks as though it has been taken over by Heinz salad cream, this will attract attention and also add some humour.

Our incentive to get our target audience to try salad cream is the free food. Every student loves free food! What we are proposing to do is create an app where students can share their thoughts about salad cream and photo share what they do with their salad cream. When they do this they will have the chance to have their photos shown on a big screen at the festival and then they would receive their free food with salad cream.

I have been looking at different foods that can be eaten with salad cream, including the most obvious and the unusual. I have found this information out by conducting a survey, looking on Facebook and researching into it. I will be designing the menu for the van as well as designing the van itself.

I first started looking at different types of ice cream vans and which one would best suite our concept. Me and Lisa decided on a more retro styled van as these look more fun and also the act that the 'retro look' is in fashion at the moment.

Here is what I came up with//

This was the first idea that I came up with, the ice cream van shape is a more up to date model, you see them everywhere these days, but not so much with the retro ice cream vans. In terms of the design I think it is very simple in terms of content but there is too much going on. The giant salad cream bottle works well on the roof of the van with the salad cream dripping out of the bottle onto the van. This would be 3D much like the Red Bull promotion minis. I havent made a place for the menu on this van which was a bit silly as this is our USP. The writing on the van is a list of different foods that arent commonly known to be good with salad cream, but actually are, along with the Heinz slogan 'Pourable Sunshine'.

I decided to add the writing to fill the space, and it didnt work at all. I did find designing the salad cream van difficult at first, hence the initial bad design of it! After showing Lisa this design, we then made the decision to look at a more retro shape and get rid of the writing!

This was the shape that I found that worked really well. It was very rounded, which I always associate with being fun, something with curves isnt so 'in your face'. I think the angle at which the van is, gives a good view of what the side and front would look like. Once I have settled on a design, I will design the back of the van too, to give a full 360 degree perspective. The angle of this image has also helped it to look more 3D without me having to make it 3D (if that makes sense).

This was my initial idea for the retro salad cream van. I think that the shape works a lot better than the one above, it looks more fun and interesting. I have kept the colour scheme in line with that of Heinz Salad cream branding to make it most obvious what the purpose of the van is.

I have then gone on from the above design and added elements to make it more appealing to the eye. This has been done by adding a few more details to the actual van and then adding elements to the design such as the stars and changing the position of the word 'Heinz'. I used stars on the van to make it look more glamorous and to add detail. The stars work a lot better than the writing on the first design, it adds a nice touch without having too much going on.

This is then a further development where I have added stars to the bottom half of the van, the stars are in reverse colour from their background to keep in line with the colour palette of Heinz Salad Cream. On this design and the one above I have also added a menu board, it is a rough version at the moment  as I havent yet designed the menu. It will be set out like an ice cream van menu to keep with the theme.

I then tried changing the whole van to cream and adding the green stars to see if I could make it simpler but still visually engaging. I think it works well although I do prefer the two colour designs more. With this design I have also changed the size of the salad cream bottle to see what it looked like. It doesnt seem to work as well because it looks as though it has just been stuck there randomly. 

This van has been changed to white and then I have made it look as though the salad cream bottle has squirted salad cream all over the van and its dripping down. This looks pretty cool and also works well with the Heinz slogan 'Anything tastes supreme with Heinz Salad Cream'. This design is meant to be funny as it is proposing that you could eat a van with salad cream and it would taste amazing, because salad cream is amazing!