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