Adobe Live 2007

I have decided to pursue the Web pathway and i have been thinking of ways i can prepare and improve my knowledge, so i can hit the ground running when we return in september.



So when i came across an advert for the Adobe Live 2007 exhibition i thought it would be a great place to start, get some insight into where web design is headed and check out the new cs3 software aswell.

Despite the main hall of the event feeling like a huuuge sales pitch for the cs3 stuff, the professionals giving talks made it worth while. My highlights of the show were as follows -

Kieron Matthews

This talk was about internet advertising. As marketing director for the Internet Advertising Bureau he provided valuable insight into this rapidly developing market. Something that particularly interested me was that he pinpointed advertising within online games (also console games) as an area that is currently under exploited but is showing signs of taking off within the next few years.

This is a screen shot from the game Second Life, with a Sony BMG logo in the background, just one example of how advertising within online games is starting to take off. Advertising is a big part of the internet and is something i am keen to explore in the future.


Rob Lawrence

"From functional to funky – online shopping is changing from a drill down, list based, task oriented, smash and grab dullfest into the most exciting thing you can do in your spare time.
Rob Lawrence looks at where we've come from in online shopping and shows where we're going as broadband, flash and hardcore e-commerce collide creating a rich, deep and immersive online shopping experience on a single page."

Watch Rob's talk by clicking the picture below


I found this to be a highly engaging talk, and it has really encouraged me to think outside of the box. To start taking risks, not just to stick to what is generally expected and accepted.


Neville Brody

One of Britains foremost graphic designers gave this talk on where he thinks the graphic design industry is at the moment and where it should be going. Graphic design is something i am becoming really interested in and it is highly relevant to web design. I found this talk to be really interesting, much for the same reasons as Rob Lawrence's. The overall message from Brody was that he feels people have become afraid to think outside of the box, and we have become submissive to societies apparent want for simple, dumbed down design and messages.


It is very easy to look at whats out there now and follow it too closely, risk taking is something that needs to be done to move things forward and has given me plenty of food for thought. I think i have been scared to take risks in my work this year and in hindsight it has limited me more than i realised at the time.


So thats my thoughts on the Adobe live event, i picked up some inspiring words from several professionals and got a look at all the shiny new cs3 software, it rocks and i want it!

Actionscript Task

In the past few weeks we have been learning the basics of actionscript. This culminated in us being set a task to create a actionscript based game.

I chose to adapt something i had done earlier in the year, a small flash animation about 5 a side football. Click here to see the original

This task has been a useful one, i intend to delve a lot deeper into flash and actionscript and now i have a grasp of the basics i can build on them and hopefully produce a lot more impressive work in the future.

Click on the thumbnail below to see the final result

Same But Different - Reflection on a failure

Another belated update here, this time focusing on the Same but Different task. We were set this task earlier in the year, read about it here

When the time came to present this my group and i were left wanting, we didnt complete the task on time and to be honest let ourselves down. Despite the abject failure of this task i can still take a lot from it. Trying to quickly hash something together at the last minute as Jools was asking us to present made me feel a bit of a twat and is not really a situation i want to be in again.

With every group task i have done this year there has been difficulties with communcation and planning, something that i need to improve upon greatly in future group work.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

For the record, we did actually have a plan and were on the way to completing. The idea was to have a map of nottingham and to place hotspots on the map at the site of each abandoned kebab box. It was to be presented as some kind of crime investigation/database kinda thing.

Here are a few screenshots of how it was starting to take shape






So that was the same but different task, a shame that we didnt get it completed but some valuable lessons learned in the process.

Site Specific Performance Review ( better late than never!)

You may recall earlier in the year we had a task of putting on a site specific performance about a famous person hailing from Nottingham.

You can read about this in my earlier blog posts here and here (excuse the shocking last minute attempts at flyers, they were awful)

Well i had intended to give a review of how the actual performance went right after we did it, we filmed the perfomance and i was waiting to edit the footage and post it up here. Sadly the person who recorded it never gave me the tape and as Idents arrived i totally forgot about this.

So better late than never, here is my summary of events!

Apart from a few organisational hiccups everything went very well, we delivered a good performance i feel and taught our audience some important historical facts.

Our performance took the shape of a guided tour around St Marys Church, at each point on the tour the audience were given a piece of a puzzle. Once the tour had been completed the identity of the subject was revealed as George Africanus and as we stood over his grave the pieces of the puzzle were put together to reveal a picture of him.



This was an interesting task, quite a difficult one to come up with ideas for but i was pleased with how the end result turned out. I feel with a bit more organisation and teamwork we could have enhanced the experience with more visual aids rather than just talking to people.

One last poster

Throughout my project ive been thinking of ideas for an overall trent media poster, one that advertises all elements. But due to my design approach of being uncluttered and fairly minimalist its been difficult to fit all 3 elements together without compromising those things, so i settled for just using the individual posters.





But last night as i was looking at my website i thought i would try and have one more go, i have been experimenting with different ideas and have decided to go for a layout that is similar to the information pages on my site. With images hovering over the corners of a simple rounded box, and ive continued the theme of being simple and direct with the text. Ive played on a sub-theme thats developed throughout my project which is the use of the words 'Listen Read Watch' under the main logos by including 3 images that reflect those words.





Right that was quickly heading into the land of birdseye potato Waffle! So here is the design, not sure whether i will actually include it in my final submission as it isnt quite up to the standard of the others, but i shall make a decision once i get it back from the printers.

The Business Card

Just 3 days to go now before its all wrapped up and handed in, so with that in mind i think its about time i update you on some of the elements of my package that ive yet to talk about on here.

First up, the business card. This can be handed out by any trent media representative when they are out filming/recording/reporting and is a quick and easy way of advertising.

After talking to several students the overiding opinion was that they would be more receptive to a business card than a flyer and would take it more seriously, but they key element in this is that it would be handed out after the people have seen trent media out and about and had spoken to them, or been filmed by them. Its not just designed to be handed out randomly on the street, as i dont think it would work too well as a standalone piece.

It is something that is already in operation by the current trent media team and it was one of the ways that i found out about them. I saw them filming and was intruiged and the business card with the relevant e mail and web addresses was given to me which i was then able to follow up. I beleive this is something that should be continued within my identity.

So here is the design, nice and simple as with everything else.


Front

Back

Podcasts part 2

Whilst i was playing around with the podcast page for my website earlier it got me thinking about my poster design advertising the fly fm podcasts.

The original entry about that poster can be viewed by clicking here

It was the first poster i designed and i had kinda forgotten about it, and my design approach has moved on slightly since then so i thought it was appropriate to go back and revise it with the deadline so close.

I simply replaced the photo of the ipod with my fireworks mock up, changed the text and included the logo at the top of the page rather than just on the ipod.

I think this one fits in a lot better with the 'identity concept' than the original. It's clean and simple, if your reading this please leave a comment and tell me what you think

Podcasts part 1

Today ive been continuing to work on my idents project and i have been concentrating mainly on the website, all the content is in place and the page layouts are sorted, just got to add a few little touches here and there.

This evening ive been specifically working on the Fly FM downloads page, i made a little ipod graphic using fireworks and edited a picture i took of a studio microphone to include next to some text informing the user what they could download.

The studio mic is still a little rough and ive been struggling a lot with tracing the outline in photoshop, this is about as clean as i can get it and ive used fairly heavy feathering to try and hide some of the scrappy edges, i dont think it looks too bad though.

Here is the page...

Web Design - Compatibility Issues Arrgghhhh

I'm finally making some progress with my website, which is good because the deadline is less than a week away! However ive been quite naive so far in designing my site, ive been happily designing away looking at my pages on my nice 1280x1024 size monitor and it all looks splendid.

So whats the problem? Well i found out today that 49% of web users still use 800x600 size monitors, my question to these people is WHHHYYYYYYY! 49% is a hefty chunk of potential viewers to my site so i'm going to have to rethink some of my page layouts and try and get them to be viewable in smaller windows.

Here are the articles ive got my information from

http://www.jgtemplates.com/learn/web/browser001.asp

http://www.webmonkey.com/99/41/index3a_page2.html?tw=design

Although this could be a significant problem, it might not be as bad as i first thought. I'm willing to bet that although 49% of total web users still have stupidly small screens my specfic target audience is unlikely to have the same problems. The majority of university students will have a computer that is up to date and fairly new and i beleive most of the computers on campus facilities will be 1024x768 if not bigger. With that in mind maybe i can breathe easily and not completly overhaul the design of my site, however what ive just said is an assumption and something i need to verify,quickly!

With this in mind ive been changing the layout and size of my pages today and heres the results

Weve gone from this (suitable for viewing only in 1280x1024, anything smaller and you wont be able to see everything without scrolling, scrolling is bad)

To this (viewable in 1024x760 without any problems)

The E mail - Part 2

Ive been playing around with my e mail again, and its proving to be a bit of a headache. Essentially its just an image, that would be put into dreamweaver and either sliced up or hotspotted(is that a word?) and i'm starting to question its relevance.

However questioning members of my target audience has indicated that as long as the subject and sender is someone they respected they would open and read the e mail. Which is all i need, because once weve reached that point the content and design of the e mail will overwhelm them into visiting the website (perhaps?)

But its just feeling a bit flat, like a watered down version of the website at the moment.

I have also been trying to find ways of actually loading it to a server and sending it properly as an e mail, but that has been very problematic. Half the images wont upload correctly, and i cant seem to get it to format properly into an e mail.

Maybe i shouldve listened to all those web articles that said HTML e mails are a bad bad thing!

http://www.georgedillon.com/web/html_email_is_evil.shtml

Oh well, in the hope that i do sort it out and get it working as an e mail then this is what it would look like

Website Design - Tables and Images

With time running out until the deadline of my project ive been working hard on my website today. Ive had to rely on the use of tables and linking images together in dreamweaver, its not ideal and isnt good practice but for now it'll have to do until my CSS skills are up to scratch.

Design wise i'm sticking with the simple,direct style that is constant throughout my project


Here is the homepage of my site, its straight to the point and serves as a node where users can choose which of the 3 medias they would like to visit. The header is a png image created in fireworks and the 3 smallers logos across the middle of the page is a gif image created in photoshop, to make each logo linkable i just created hotspots over them in dreamweaver. All fairly basic stuff, but i think its ok from a visual point of view.

Next up is a potential page for the Fly fm section, displaying the different shows available to download as podcasts. This is one was layed out using a basic table and the boxes are png files created in fireworks

Website Intro

Ive spent much of today working on a short flash into for my site. Its taken quite some time to get it right but finally it is ready.

I will of course have a skip intro button as i know lots of people can find these things annoying, but for those that do watch it it helps to strengthen the concept of 3 medias as one.

Click the thumbnail below to watch the movie, ignore the slight blurring in places thats because the movie gets converted from the original swf format upon upload and loses some quality. The final version on my site will be smooth vector paradise!

Oh not another poster!

Its 12.20pm on Monday night and i have been sitting here all night struggling to get to grips with my website, currently it is in a right mess. So out of frustration and boredom i abandoned it and decided to create another poster/flyer design.

This idea came to me when i was playing around with the layout of my logos on my site. When postioned correctly the combination of my main logo and any of other 3 logos look a bit like a clapper board.

So this is what came out of that little bit of inspiration.


I dont like it much at all to be honest, but i guess its all trial and error.

At this point i think its appropriate to comment on my audience, naturally in a project such as this your audience should always be priority. Theres no point producing work that pleases me if my audience thinks its crap, however in this case i find myself in the posistion of actually being part of my target audience.

Does that mean i can just continue to produce matierial without asking anyone else if they like it? No of course not but it does give me some ingisht into the sort of things that will be popular or not and is a significant help as a continue to progress.

More Poster Designs!

Yes thats right, i have designed some more posters. This time for Platform, i kinda feel that platform is the unloved child of Trent Media. Its not quite as flashy or interesting as the other two, and just has something about it that makes it a bit awkward, and because of this ive struggled to come up with as many ideas as i have for its more attractive and popular 'siblings'. However i have finally got round to do designing a poster/flyer for it and here it is. I am not sure which effect i like more yet,( what i should really say is i'm not sure which one would be more popular with my audience! leave comments people please!) but look for yourself and let me know

For those of you unfamiliar with the word 'meh', please click here

The e mail

As part of my package i am also producing an HTML E mail, this is part of my concept of reaching out to more people and making Trent Media as a brand more pro active. I used a tutorial from those clever people at computer arts magazine to make this, the results are ok but i'm not sure they fit in with all my other design work that well. I will continue to experiment and will look to create one from scratch now i have the techniques, its all about slicing and saving for web in Photshop.

Click here to view the tutorial...

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials/new_media/branding_online

So here is the finished results, ive uploaded it as an image file so you cant click on the links or anything but it isnt just an image, its an HTML page with working links.

Some more poster designs

Ive been working on some more poster designs today, one for Fly fm and one for Trent TV.

These posters have been designed to encourage people to get involved with Trent Media and also to just view its output. I'm trying to keep a certain amount of continuity amongst my poster designs so they all have black text on white backgrounds and are largely clutter free, i'm consciously trying to be different to the effects laden brightly coloured posters that are everywhere on campus.

So below are the two designs ive come up with today, they are only first attempts and will be refined further over the coming days.

More Web Design

I have been travelling further down the photoshop design route, i like where its heading but a part of me does feel like a fraud,ha!

Well this time ive been experimenting with designs for the podcast page which will be in the Fly Fm section.

Take a look at the pics below to see the refinement process so far...

Website Design

I have recently been spending my time working on the design of my website for Trent Media. Its been a difficult process as i find it very frustrating at my skills not being as good as i'd like, i am learning a lot but its a slow process. You cant become a web design guru overnight!

I have been experimenting with different methods of design, initially i was going for a more traditional approach and creating the whole site in dreamweaver. I have also played with the idea of a CSS based design but that proved too difficult at this stage. Another approach that i have considered is creating the design in photoshop and just linking images together using dreamweaver, this approach is being used by Gav Cooper for his Idents project and after discussing it with him the other day i decided to give it a go too.


Each approach has its good and bad points, the dreamweaver approach is more technically sound and would make for a more accessible site. Designing it in Photoshop gives me more freedom over the aesthetics and can make for a more visually pleasing design, but would be a bit of a shortcut way of doing things.

I have not yet decided which approach to go for yet, which is probably a bad thing but i will have made a decision within a few days and will crack on with getting the whole site finished.

Here are the results of my experimentation thus far....

This is the design made entirely in dreamweaver






This is the design made in photoshop

Online Branding Tutorial

Stumbled across this recently thought it may be helpful to people in relation to the idents module.


http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials/new_media/create_a_brand_package

A word on why my blog has not been updated much recently, my crappy net connection at home does something weird to my pictures when i upload them and makes them go all fuzzy so ive decided to not post anything until i get back to uni where i can upload photos to go with my words

Farewell for now

Idents - Poster Designs

Ive been playing with this poster design right from the earliest design stage of my project. It's for Fly FM and is designed to promote downloading podcasts onto your iPod or mp3 player.

I like the simplicity of it and the use of the i pod will instantly draw peoples attention, but those same factors might work against me. The use of the iPod and the simplistic apple like design it kinda makes it look too much like an advert for the iPod and not Fly FM. Another problem is assuming that everyone has an iPod, which is clearly not the case as there are a wide variety of mp3 players on the market but i think people will get the idea.

So here is the design, i imagine it will be tweaked and played around with before the final hand according to the problems i discussed above, but from a purely visual stand point i really like it

My Final Logo

At last i have come to a decision on the final designs of my logos! Its been a drawn out process but a very rewarding one as i have done lots of research into what makes a good logo. I feel ive learned a lot from this process, its very easy to just choose your design too quickly and gloss over the details but i wanted to make sure i chose the right design for the right reasons.

I had been experimenting with 3d effects,glow effects,changing the shape of the background,different fonts and in the end i felt it all got a bit too much. So i decided to go back to basics and keep it 2-d as this will work best in print and equally well for the web.

So here they are



This is the main Trent Media logo. After experimenting with the Eurostile font i decided to revert back to Myriad Web Pro. You may also notice that i have used lowercase, i changed this because i think it looks more friendly and just more aesthetically pleasing than uppercase. The grey border rounds the design off nicely and gives me the options of placing it on a white or black background with it standing out on either colour.



This is my secondary logo for Trent Media. By taking out the red t:m from the main logo i can use it in conjunction with the individual logos for fly,platform and trent tv or i can use it on its own if neccessary. It will increase continuity of my ident constantly reminding that each part belongs to the trent media family. This will also work well when i dont have space to fit the full trent media logo, for instance on my business cards and bottle openers.




Here are the 3 logos for the 3 parts of trent media. Each one has a colon included in the design which will remind people of the main trent media logo and they all have the t:m in the corner which will again enforce the point that they are all part of the same family. There is the possibility of animation for the website, i'm thinking that each logo can appear from behind the t:m gradually on each separate page.




There are still a few issues to address such as the file formats and getting all the sizes to match each other. If the logo is constantly changing size on each page of the website then it will look poor. But the overall design and concept is finished as you can see. Now onto the small matter of the website and dvd, oh and the posters and the business card and the bottle openers, aaarrrrrggggghhhhhh!!!

An interesting discovery

Its 3.21 am and i cannot sleep, i decided to try and do some work on my seemingly never ending logo process. I was doing some research and i found this site called Pimp my safari, something to do with a web app for macs. The interesting part was the typeface and colour scheme of the logo. Take a look, notice anything familiar?





Yes thats right they use the same font and colour scheme as i have chosen for my Trent Media logo, what a coincidence! I dont know whether to be encouraged by this, that i have chosen the same style as a professional organisation or whether to be annoyed that someone else got there first.

It's interesting to note that they use grey also in and around the logo. This is something ive been considering but think that it makes it look a bit to corporate and serious. I want my logo to be professional but it still needs to appeal to my target audience which is students, it cant be too corporate or i feel it will be dismissed as boring.

Photoshop brilliance!

If you think your good at Photoshop then watch the below video and think again!

Same but Different

Recently we were set a task to get into groups for a project called 'Same but Different'. This task involved choosing a mundane object and taking photos of it, and showing how different instances of a mundane object might initially look the same but can actually be quite different depending on the environment its in.

Not sure ive really explained that too well, as i update you on the projects progress in the coming weeks i'm sure it will become more evident to you. Anyway i bet your wondering what object my group chose? Well we went for that staple of student life that is the 'kebab box'. The small polystyrene boxes you get your doner meat and chips in of a night out.

Below are some of the pictures i took for the initial stage of the project.

The next step of the project is to gather all the groups photos and construct them into some sort of order. We are considering doing some kind of interactive map of the city, looking at the relationship between the student areas and the amount of discarded kebab boxes and also whether it has anything to do with a lack of bins.

Store Wars

I was shown this link by my girlfriend, who apparently saw this on Richard and Judy, and i thought it was hilarious. Thats all ive really got to say, just sit back and watch the 5 minutes of magic that is 'Store Wars'

Ive had Surgery

No i'm not injured or ill in anyway, but i earlier this week i intended a graphics 'surgery' with Roma Patel. It was pretty helpful and i showed her my logo designs to see what she thought and to gain some feedback.

The main thing that came out of it was that i should continue to explore the curved border for my logo as it reflects television/computer screens which is of course related to media.

The square design for the border has been commented on by a number of people and they have all likened it to a number plate or car logo. Not neccessarily a bad thing but still probably not the effect i'm looking for. So with those comments in mind i went back to the design drawing board and below are some of the latest refinements of my designs

Here i have gone back to a curved shape and i have added a glow behind the text. I have also toned down the border of the logo, the previous bevel effect was a bit too heavy and overbearing i feel.

This is the same as above except with a different colour for the glow and its a fuller glow too.

Yet more bloody logos!

I am still experimenting with logo's, its a frustrating process when your searching for the right look. I made a breakthrough today though, ive started to use Macromedia Freehand as i like the effects it offers you and its relatively easy to use.

Anyway so my latest ideas look something like this, i really like them and for now they are in my opinion the best version yet, please leave comments if you read this and let me know what you think

This was the first attempt, i used the Bevel and Emboss effect to give it a sort of 3D effect and to create a nice border around the edge. I also used the fish eye lense function to change the shape of the box.

Then i refined the design on this idea, went for the original rectangle shape and used an inner emboss rather than an outer emboss for the border. I think this is more effective, but it will be tested on an audience sample before finalised.

Website Usability

In our seminar today we learnt about website usability, this was a very interesting seminar. Highly relevant to the Idents module, i hadnt thought about any of the usability issues relating to websites before this session so its definetly something i'll be considering when constructing my website

If you are making a proper accessible site you must consider people that use text only browsers, people that are visually impaired such as blind people or colour blind people, or even just the elderly. Also people that use screen readers need to be considered, if your website isnt properly coded then someone using a screen reader will not be able to understand your site.

I have tested the usability of a few sites and evaluated them in the report below, click the link to download the document.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/2/2/725270/Website%20Usability%20Seminar%20Evaluation.doc

Forget Trent Media,what about my Identity!

Hello reader, as you are probably aware by now i'm heavily into my idents project and i am actually quite fascinated by the whole issue of 'Identity' it can be taken in a number of different contexts and when you think about it it's so important. Identity defines who we are, defines who a company are, what they stand for, without Identity then you are nothing.


This got me thinking about my own Identity, what is it? What do i stand for? What do i represent? What do i beleive in? Where am i going, where have i been? How should i present my Identity to the world?


This train of thought led me to think about creating my own Identity, in the same way i'm creating one for Trent Media. I want to eventually move my blog to my own independently hosted site and i want that to be the basis for my new Identity. I want a place to showcase my work and who i am, and i want that place to be synonomous with my Identity.





I have been doing some research and have found some cool blogs which relate to what ive just been saying, take a look at these











This a blog i randomly stumbled across by a web designer called Christopher Scott. His blog is really nicely designed, and it contains lots of useful links for web design related stuff. It was of particular interest to me because he is currently in the process of re-designing his own logo and I.D and i found it helpful reading some of the commentary on that process.



http://www.christopher-scott.org/

This is the site for a company called Hicks Design, an oxford based web design company. I found this through a link on Christopher Scott's site, and the blog entry that interested me in particular was the one about the re-design of the company logo. He detailed his design process and gave reasons for his eventual decisions, this again was a valuable reading exercise. It made me see how much thought must go into things like this on a professional level. I really like the new design of the Hicks brand, to see more visit the site.

http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/tag/logo/

Thats just two sites of the millions of bloggers out there, i just happened to stumble across these two as i went on my everyday journey through the web. Which makes me think about what else is out there that i havent even seen, that i may never see. Anyway, it has all got me thinking about whats possible for the future. In the meantime ive got the small matter of my Identity Project to be getting on with so farewell for now.

Flash Experimentation

Ive been experimenting in Flash lately as i want to use it for part of my Ident website, but ive found its quite a frustrating process at times. The animation below took me the best part of 2 hours, but i'm working through a textbook and slowly everything is starting to make sense.

Anyway, what you see below is a top down view of a game of 5 a side football, me and my mates play every friday in the uni league. We keep conceding goals because of poor marking and i made this to demonstrate where we are going wrong. My team is the red circles, notice how two of them are not in posistion at the start which leads to the rest of the team having to move out of posistion to compensate, which leads to the opposistion scoring. Hmmm, if that made any sense then watch the video below....

Identities - Yet More Logo Experimentation

Hello all, ive been continuing my work on my Trent Media logo, i'm still not satisfied with it. From the previous post it seems logo D is the most popular,however thats only from 11 people. I plan to take to the streets of nottingham and ask some random students for their thoughts.

For now have a look at some of my experimentations....

I used Macromedia Freehand to create a 3D effect for this idea, i like it but not sure how good it will look in print. I think this would be better suited to an animation for the website

For this design i simply changed the font from Myriad Pro to Eurostile, not sure which one i prefer at the moment.

I received a helpful comment from Rimante on my last post. She mentioned i should try putting a white border around the logo to make it stand out a bit more, i had not considered doing that but i think it could be very effective so i'm gonna try different variations of that.

Thats all for now, i'll be posting more frequent updates on Identities from now on so keep checking back to follow my progress ( i bet your excited!)

Trent Media Logo - Cast your votes

Ive been thinking of ways to gain public opinion on my Trent Media designs so i decided to conduct a poll on my blog. This will also serve the purpose of showing me if anyone actually reads this thing too!

Please bare in mind that image quality will not be at its highest due to the constraints of this page, but you can still get an idea of how the logo will look when finished.

So take a look at the 4 logos below and vote for your favorite

A

B


C

D