Project Evaluation – Lastminute.com/Neg 2
To produce advertisement for ambient media was an interesting subject to me and an area that I felt I would benefit from exploring. The lastminute.com project at D&AD provided an opportunity to design something within everyday use and had a target audience of young people and working professionals which I myself fall into so what would I like to see was again something that made me choose this project as I could add an aspect of vibrancy to this project
My ideas began by looking into where people stop and wait in a normal day and hopefully throw some design their way. Park benches, airplane seats, fuel stations, check-outs and cash machines all came to mind. A few areas that I began to develop ideas for were conveyor belts in supermarkets (everyone has to wait in line at some point), Turnstiles for trains/the tube (particularly in London very busy area and people will scan tickets and look down to do so) and Pedestrian crossings (people have to push the button and wait before crossing). I felt that these areas affect all types of people but interestingly young adults and working professionals would use for example the Tube and trains maybe due to living in a city for work and therefore would be walking around the city rather than driving so maybe the pedestrian crossing would be useful and most definitely the target audience would be popping into shops for essential items and bits and bobs.
I decided to go with supermarkets and conveyor belts as out of all my ideas this one would see most of the lastminute.com target audience visiting and then waiting in line to pay.
Above was one of a selection of images I took at Sainsbury’s in Oswestry and these formed the basis of what I thought would be interesting: separator blocks or next customer blocks. As the image shows they are usually just one shape (triangle) and are functional if not very interesting. In Google Sketchup I looked at different shapes that could be associated with ‘getting away’ and thought that I could build upon the original shape by adding a nose, wings and a tail to make a plane, then on the sides remove the windows etc and detail of a plane and add some design not to dissimilar to the style/size of ads at the moment. I was happy with the 3D model and it was sturdy apart from maybe the wings but then these could be used smaller than normal and closer to the main body so they don’t snap off.
In terms of design my reasoning behind ad was colourful and vibrant to attract the eye while getting information across. At the outset I put too much information on – over time I took more and more copy out so what was being said was obvious and clear. At this point I was also looking into QR codes, the reason behind this was I wanted some interactivity with the blocks and the good thing about QR codes was the instant link up to a website via the use of a mobile phone. People who are spontaneous will forget a message yet with QR codes people can instantly logon to a website and sign-up or add to mailing list or just get a price etc and this would be more effective in terms of getting the most out of the target audience. As people will be looking down on the blocks I needed to put the QR code on an area that was facing up which would help in terms of taking a photo of the code and not irritating the user by making a difficult angle for them.
The actual conveyor belt was interesting aswell and after placing a photoshoped 3D model on a source photo (similar to the picture above) I noticed that maybe the plane could be sat on a runway adding a little more playfulness to the concept.
It was at this point that I began considering other ideas for shapes and after using a place for travel I had a discussion with a visitor to my blog about festivals from around the world. I could really visualise this working and I looked at many different festivals on YouTube. In terms of supermarkets and food I narrowed down some possibles that would suit the theme of being in a supermarket such as Spanish tomato throwing, British cheese rolling and the Munich Beer Festival. I decided to keep the plane idea as a direct link to travel and ‘jetting away’ and chose the tomato and cheese based festivals as this would be fun for all ages and shelved the beer idea as it may promote drinking to younger audiences.
I focused on the tomato model first, mocking it up in card so that I could get a feel for how it would stand up. Based on the model I developed the ‘feet’ of the tomato by producing a ‘splat’ effect. This worked twofold in my opinion as it was functional but also added an element of play as I had in mind that the conveyor belt would be someones face being hit by tomatoes – emphasizing the main thrust of the festival. After my initial model I was able to get the help of Mike Frodsham who illustrated a tomato for me so that I could base my designs around it. This was definitely a positive move as my model and designs were now unique and also playful.
Following on from this I was able to refine my Photoshop skills by adding the QR codes to the splat area and a small amount of copy. I eventually decided that the black lines of the QR code on a red background would make taking a picture and scan of it using a mobile phone difficult to decifer so I later on I changed the black lines to white on this tomato model. What was left after this was getting the conveyor belt images looking correct, at first I used copyrighted images to set the scene and this gave me an idea of what images I would need to capture. After this I went out and look to take a good image on location for the cheese rolling hill and then mocked up someone getting hit with tomatoes – focusing on the face. I chose the face as this would show more expression in terms of having fun or being shocked. Either way the aim was to engender a bit of fun when placing the splat-tomato block down.
The cheese block idea could well have been similar to the circle-based tomato design as the cheese in reality would be round to get down the hill. Yet I thought for functionality and stability a segment of a round block of cheese would be better, so I balanced functionality in this case, plus I would have struggled to get the ‘feet’ on the cheese circle and to do so may have lost the instant recognition of cheese. A segment of cheese is widely used and recognised.
Overall I feel I have learned a lot in terms of placing design within everyday items. Design needs to be balanced with functionality and needs to fit within the systems we take for granted each day, so for example the conveyor belt wouldn’t be changed in functionality but adapted with a new look and playful interactivity. So its fine tuning really and the finer and more slick the better. The more wild and outrageous would attract the eye but may impact on functionality and become more look than use – the balance needs to be addressed in ambient media and I have thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of this project.
Personally I feel I have improved with 3D design and expanded my skills away from just using Photoshop. I have been able to work with illustrators and produce something unique that is aimed at a target audience. I have also had a chance to be playful and to push boundaries in terms of advertising and interactivity.
Project Evaluation – Make Museums Sexy / Neg 1
A challenging but interesting project looking at changing the perception of how certain people may view Museums. Why I chose this as a project was due to the challenge of producing a concept that would attract maybe a younger audience to museums, those who may view such places as boring, stagnant and non-interactive. I remember the TV show ‘The Tudors’ and this was a big hit – bringing sex and relationships to the table in a Hollywood style that drew audiences in like ‘Sex in the city’ or ‘Gossip Girl’ did. So it can be done – museums can be sexy and interesting and this gave me the inspiration to take on this project.
My first ideas were based loosely around computer games and interacting with people, drawing them into a world that inspires and interests them, under the title of ‘Live The History’. I visited museums and galleries in London and after collecting some source materials produced a mock-up movie of someone being sucked into the history and living it. For this I used computer game intros and gameplay to represent the ‘world’ of history. It was an interesting starting-point but did lack a ‘sexy’ edge (unless you were an computer game fanatic) yet I did produce some posters that aimed to draw people into their own worlds based on history/legends of history.
My next ideas were based around artefacts and interesting points from history based on my visits to museums, such as the invention of soap ‘If it wasn’t for Babylon…you’d stink’. Again it had to be ‘sexy’ so I began looking into areas such as the invention of rubber and which warrior had the biggest weapon etc. One interesting area was the invention of volleyball dating back to the Villa Romana Del Casale back in 100 BC – so this was change to say if it wasn’t for the Romans we wouldn’t have beach volleyball…
I developed this idea but with but the problem was that the original painting wasn’t in a museum so would it stand up? So I left my ideas on the drawing board with that one and looked into relationships and being ‘on a promise’. For example it could have taken the shape of a viral clip of two people running off, taking clothes off, short of breath etc and you would assume they would be going to a motel or bedroom yet the twist would be they would arrive at a museum, go inside and look all around taking it all in. So here my ideas were moving much more towards the ‘sexy’ and it was this theme of ‘being on a promise’ that began the project really moving and away from anything that could be perceived as boring. In hindsight I probably should have developed this idea further instead of using it to springboard onto other ideas. I Maybe should have mocked up a promotional poster and mock viral as I began looking at the promotional material for the film ‘Date Night’ which went along with this ‘on a promise’ idea which evolved into an idea of ‘Where were you last night?’. Anyway I did move on from this and began looking at artefacts again.
My ideas took on the form of a split screen between an original artefact and what we have now such as MP3 player and the Gramophone. It was an interesting collection of ideas but again lacked the ‘sexy’ aspect. I also went down the road of styles and hairstyles down the ages one idea was moustaches – Genghis Kahn > Albert Einstein > Hulk Hogan. Bit of a laugh and would have connected with people but maybe lacked longevity as a concept – seen once funny, seen again boring?
I decided at this point to choose two characters from history that are well known and had a scandalous record – I chose Cleopatra and Henry VIII for obvious reasons. My idea in basing it around well know figures gave a focal point to a concept as people would instantly recognise the character. My initial thoughts were of a newspaper cover story displaying scandal or maybe a gossip mag but I found out that this idea had already been developed so I decided to look at and produce ideas based on a ‘censored’ stamp such as the one below:
I developed a style of branding that gives the concept a theme and is used across the different designs using Cleopatra’s sleeping around past and Henry VIII’s wives and severe breaking-up tactics. The dirty, inky, decrepit style of a stamp I feel goes well with gossip and scandal and emphasises the concept of ‘digging up dirt’. Below is a first draft of this branding:
Overall I am happy with the concept of ‘digging up’ some juicy scandalous past as we all today are intrigued to read gossip mags, tabloids that relish on stars and relationship stories and TV programs that delve into a part of life we all know about – relationships. I feel that younger audiences should respond well to an ad campaign for museums that goes down this road of ‘see what you can dig up’ or ‘who was the most scandalous’ and maybe will be an extra bit of gossip to look into instead of reading about Katie Price/Jordan all the time! Daily Star type headlines such as:
You think Jordan is scandalous…check out Cleopatra
Cleopatra makes Jordan look flat
I believe that the audience museums want to attract such as young people who maybe don’t go to museums very often (if at all) would react with curiosity to something that they may watch on TV or read about everyday – which is scandal and celebs.
Conclusion
I am pleased to say that I have finished the site ready for the deadline of the Wrexham Food Festival this weekend.
www.localfoodfirstwrexham.co.uk
www.bwydlleolgyntafwrecsam.co.uk
I have had many a learning curve throughout this project due to the clients requirements yet feel I have been able to fulfill all areas. Following on from the meeting recently about final amendments I was able to change the navigation buttons by simply renaming the pages in admin yet I did have to consider the fact that the new navigation names were slightly longer and this knocked out the design as the buttons collided with the search field. To fix this problem I loaded up the stylesheet in admin and changed the font size and slightly altered the spacing. One of the other final points I needed to tackle was making the gallery operational.
Gallery
Previously I had installed the plugin DM Albums into wordpress and now was the time to get it working. It was very simple just a case of going to a page and clicking the DM Albums tab on the right and then making an album folder. Once the folder for that page was created it was just a case of browsing for you pics and uploading them. Then DM Albums would create a piece of code that sat on the page:
[album: http://www.localfoodfirstwrexham.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/localgallery/]
Have a look at the gallery live at:
www.localfoodfirstwrexham.co.uk/gallery
I did have some problems with the gallery though – one part being the clash of stylesheets as the gallery comes with a preset stylesheet that you can customise. The main problem was the navigation through thumbnails on the gallery was clashing with the navigation on the actual site. The way I got around this was to remove the stylesheet coding for the navigation on the gallery.
Overall I am happy with the final outcome and importantly so is the client who will be taking over all day-to-day updating of the site and the excellent side to wordpress over other CMS systems is its very easy to use even for non-technical users.
Live screenshot below:
Alterations
The project is reaching an end point and after having a meeting with a member of the Northern Marches team I was provided with a number of alterations to get the site hitting all criteria and looking right. One of the points raised was to change the ‘Map’ page to ‘Campaign’ as it was thought the interactive map could go in the producers page as the map was a tool to locate local producers. The campaign page could then display the graphic design work that has been produced for publicity.
This was relatively easy to do by just renaming the page in the dashboard of wordpress yet I needed to be aware of knock-on effects. Firstly I would need to change the hyperlink at the bottom of the page located in the footer.php page to link to the newly named ‘/campaign’ instead of ‘/map’. Once this had been saved and tested, I then needed to do the same in Welsh using the Google Translate to get ‘campaign’ into ‘ymgyrch’.
One problem that did crop up was the navigation became too big with an increase in characters and collided with the search box. Therefore I went back to the style.php page and changed the nav text from 15 pt to 14 pt and changed some of the padding to fit (this had to be done on the welsh site also).
Another point that came up from the meeting was adding some further images to the about page and also some links to partner sites. I will be looking to produce this shortly.
Language issues
Have been working on making my new site bilingual and its been really useful to get hold of a Welsh language file for WordPress ‘cy.mo’ from:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress_in_Your_Language
The codex site has been really useful and has been a fantastic source of help for bits of code to my many questions. The installation of the above .mo file was easy enough just had to change the wp-config file by opening in a text editor and changing the line “define (‘WPLANG’, ‘cy’);” to add ‘cy’ as it shows. Then upload the file to the root and make a ‘languages’ folder in the wp-content folder and upload the cy.mo
When I reviewed the site all the dates had changed to Welsh which was great yet some of the text that introduces the comments was still in english so maybe that’s just the parameters of the language file. Some bits of code that were included in my footer page & main index page had to be changed manually in the php code to Welsh and also the buttons in the navigation - basically anything that is visible text in any php file will not be changed and will have to be switched manually (which kind of makes sense really). Good thing to remember for next time when doing a bilingual site - keep as much text and links in pages and posts as possible. One thing that caught me out though was the Dashboard completely changed to Welsh – yikes – good job I know where most things are by now!
Further Developments On WordPress Theme
I have continued to progress with setup of my wordpress themed website, in particular with plugins and widgets.
In regard to translation I have tested the new plugin and it works fine of blog or page ‘body’ text but it does not affect buttons, navigation or side widgets. Therefore if it was decided by the client to try for one site bilingual then these areas that the plugin does not translate will need to show both languages all the time and Im not sure this would look right. It seems at the moment that having two sites, one for each language, would be the best and keep the translation plugin as useful option for people to quickly change a blog entry or an article.
New widgets and plugins have been interesting and I have been looking at http://wordpress.org/extend/ where there are lots of choice. To include a plugin to your site you simply download one for free, unzip it and upload it to your plugin directory in the wordpress area of your domain. Then by logging in to wordpress admin area online you can access ‘plugins’ on the left hand side menu and it will automatically appear and you just need to click ‘activate’. To change any settings on a plugin you can do this easily by going to ‘settings’ on the left menu and choosing the plugin listed there. Recently I have added a plugin for adding You Tube movies with ease and also a Feedback Form plugin that can be dropped into any page or article post – very handy!
Will look next to get the logo and images on to the design and play around with the style.css file to get the most of the design. I am awaiting images and text for the site from the client but should have them shortly on CD.
New client for wordpress design
During the last few weeks I have quoted and won a web design job for a local council inititive. This has now replaced the previous client who decided not to progress the wordpress design.
The client.
Northern Marches Cymru are who I will be providing a service for and they have specified the use of the existing logo and that the site should have a local, community feel to the design. I attended an initial meeting recently where I was able to ask different design questions in regard to source images and text and the main focus ofthe site from there point of view. The client has specified a deadline at this stage for the ‘go live’ date due to another event running that they would like links to and the need the site live for then.
First steps
Included in the quote were three sample designs that I had produced in Photoshop as sample layouts and the client made it clear thay would like to progress with one of them. With this in mind and being concious of the deadline in a month, I began last week registering the domain names that were requested by the client and hosting with an ISP I have dealt with many times over the years: Virtual Names. Once this had been purchased and confirmed online I was able to login to the control panel of the domain and setup databases. From my experiments a few months ago I had a good idea of how to setup WordPress on a server and naming the database and changing the wp-config file to match was all ok. This time however I had a new issue – the site had to be bilingual. I searched WordPress.com for advice on translation plugins and found a well rated one from Google that was free to download and install. I did this and then uploaded it to the WordPress Plugins folder on the new domain and was able to configure it easily for welsh and english. The plugin provides a link under text with ‘translate’ and a drop down menu to choose language (very simple). The one area of this plugin that I would like to investigate further is if it can change the text on the navigation and in addition to the text on a blog post or page? If it cannot then I may have to have two seperate websites (one english, one welsh) to save the fluid nature of the language throughout instead of being ‘patchy’.
I was also able to install a plugin for removing spam and also a plugin that will help with images (I will explore these two more fully later on). I feel that the plugin feature is a fantastic tool and really helps you find an easy solution to a clients requests such as bilingual text. I will also be looking at widgets soon but next will begin writing the new CSS and adapting my original php pages from my initial experiment with my own site at www.theiceage.co.uk/wordpress
P&O ideas & thoughts
Above are a couple of ideas I produced that could be built upon for an ad for P&O ferries.
The idea behind the top image: ‘Baggage Claim’ links closely with airports and the negative aspect of waiting for your baggage and the disaster of your bags being lost at the beginning of a holiday. Going on holiday with P&O Ferries would remove any worries with baggage claiming as everything is in your car and stays there – piece of mind and no hanging around at the end of the journey. I felt that this was a positive aspect of ferry travel over flying, and my ad looked to visualise this by using the icon from an actual baggage claim sign and similar font. The play on words here was the word ‘claim’ which in P&O’s case would be there promise to customers of a different method to waiting around and potentially losing bags – put everything in your own car and drive away at the end!
In relation to the design, it was quickly produced and I am not sure it communicates well enough and quickly enough. The child next to the car could be seen as too predictable even though it emotes happiness which emphasises the positive nature of the ad. I think that time needs to be spent on making the ad more original and different from the ‘usual’ holiday ads so that it doesn’t blend into all the other holiday ads seen around.
The second idea produced was the ‘bar’ visual. This idea was based around the questionnaire I had produced which provided some interesting responses, one of which was ‘having a beer on the top deck’. The exhilaeration and experience of being at sea while having the freedom to go where you please is an advantage over the cramped, restricted seating requirements of flying. The image used shows a car parked up in the parking bay of a ferry with a large sign pointing to the bar. This composition sets the scene of relaxing, chilling out – park up, get out, get a drink – thats it! The style of font used was based on actual existing writing on the parking bay walls that was in the same ‘stencil’ style – it had to look realistic whilst being clear. The style is ‘no frills’ – almost like a cargo box that has ‘This way up’ stamped on it, and this suits that ‘matter of fact’ style of ‘this way to the bar’. The size of the font was also considered which makes it bold and informative and the fact that it is just a one word sign with no glamour adds to an expected feeling, or a ‘this is what travelling on a ferry is all about’. The colour of the font was considered to link in with P&O’s corporate colours which would be seen throughout an actual ferry.
Overall I am happier with the idea behind the ‘bar’ ad as it is simple and clear. It wouldn’t appeal to a younger audience though due to its content so a series of ads looking at different aspects of ferry travel that holds the same one word description would be needed. I also feel that using the parking port of the ferry is a bit dark and dingy and may not show off the professional side of P&O. With this in mind this ad may not appeal to those who look to travel in style due to the setting…but then is this who P&O are targetting? There main push are travellers with cars who are looking for no hassle, affordable travel. Something to consider for future development.
P&O research
Reflections TV advert by P&O
Interesting that the big talking point for this ad in 2007 was the song used by Feeder – feeling the moment. Popular song and emphasized the overall message.
Link to a later campaign looking at P&O Cruises which focused on everyday being different and unique:
Professional Practice – WordPress Theme
I have been asked to design a website by a client in WordPress through my design company Ice Age Media: www.theiceage.co.uk
The client has provided me with a design that he would like converting into wordpress – see below:
I needed to know how to fully customise a wordpress theme. I spoke to Adam who pointed me to downloading a version of WordPress and uploading it to a server, I looked into my hosting for theiceage.co.uk and noticed that my ISP provider did in fact provide a MySQL database! Armed with this I downloaded WordPress from the WordPress site and unzipped the file on my local drive.
I found a great tutorial at
http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/building-custom-wordpress-theme/
The general jist of the whole customisation is to begin as normal with HTML files designed in Photoshop. Then to bit-by-bit custoimise the HTML files with PHP code and save the files as PHP extensions. Sounds easy…
Using Dreamwever I was able to follow the tutorial above with some pre-designed HTML pages and look to split the home page into header, content, sidebar and footer. This was similar to using Frames in HTML (which I have used before) yet more about editing code and understanding it. As I worked through I began to understand PHP and why it was present in the pages, eventually I was taking things out such as blog posts on the home page and replacing with static text (like a regular website and not a blog). I was able to customise the pages so that it mocked an actual standard website rather than a blog which would help me when customising my clients wordpress theme.
After I had customised the HTML files to PHP files I uploaded them to the WordPress extension of my site: www.theiceage.co.uk/wordpress
Before doing this however I had to login to my control panel for my hosting and setup a database. This was quite easy to do and I noted the database name and password for WordPress. Once I had this I was asked by WordPress to customise the wp-config.php file with name and password and then upload. This then activated the database and WordPress’ admin section was enabled so I could login etc.
After upload and logging in I met with a few areas to customise. I looked to add pages, add widgets and customise the style.css file so that everything looked and worked well. I was very happy with how this all went and now I am looking forward to editing the clients design and sharpening my skills with CSS.
