OUGD503 Responsive Studio Brief 01 Individual Practice Leeds Arts Party Complete Evaluation of all Briefs and Interaction.

Although I am treating each piece of work I have done for the Arts party as separate, because I had to design something new for each one and it was not simply a matter of applying the same aesthetic throughout, I felt it might be useful to do an evaluation for the entirety of the work I have done for them so far. Overall I am rally happy that I was lucky enough to get the chance to design for them. What they are doing is great and there is nothing better than designing for something you believe in. They are also very open to new ideas and fantastic at giving constructive criticism. So, for a early step into real life design I hit the jackpot. However, in hind sight there are a lot of things that I would have done differently. For example, I would have liked to draw up some brand outlines that would have from the out set helped to constrain the briefs and therefore induce me to be more inventive. I find that limitations in a brief in fact help me to try and be more inventive. I also think that I should have made more of an effort to finish all of the material I am going to do for the arts party before submission. However, there are problems with this because the information for things like the program simply doesn't exist yet but it would have given my submission more weight and been a lot neater. It took me a while to figure out the aesthetic that the arts party needed. to start with I leaned towards the hand drawn because they are the arts party. It seemed obvious. That is where the problem was. They are 'arts' but the are also 'arts education', in other words, arts organised and planned. This is why I feel I have finally cracked it with the digital poster brief. The trick it to use digital edges and hand rendered textures to create a meeting of the two ideas. If nothing else this is something I will take forward into the rest of the work I will do for them. Overall, I feel that it has been a difficult set of briefs that I don't feel I have done my best work for. I have learn a lot however and this whole process has made me realise that my confidence levels are, for me, what get in the way of doing my best work. As soon as I realise it is a live brief I instantly panic and start thinking about what I could do that would be the safest and most reliable route to take, so that I come out as unscathed as possible. This is not a healthy way to treat live briefs and now I am aware of this I will attempt to remedy it.

OUGD503 Responsive Studio Brief 01 Individual Practice Leeds Arts Part Website Evaluation

Although this website is a continually developing entity I have to put a pin in it somewhere for submissions sake. It hasn't fully come into its own yet because of the lack of content (which will become available closer to the event). However, as a first foray into actual functioning web design I am fairly neutral towards it. There are things that I like and feel work, for example the colour coding of the events and the open structure of the website because it fits so well with the printed content they already have and allow me points on which to draw for later cohesive design. However, I am saddened by the lack of inventiveness. It is a  fine website but, it doesn't do anything new. I doesn't push the boundaries in any way. This is sad because the arts party would be the perfect chance to do something really exciting and new with web design, all in the name of celebrating creativity. In this situation I feel tat I have missed an opportunity. If I had gone out of my way to learn coding ten this could have been a completely different experience. So, if there is anything that I take away from this it is the fact that I need to learn coding to do precisely what I want. However, because of time constraints I didn't sit down and really put my mind to how the boundaries could be stretched in this situation and I am disappointed in myself for not doing that. However, next time I will know to do so!

Please click the image to go to the website.

OUGD503 Responsive Studio Brief 01 Individual Practice Leeds Arts Party Website Changes to the Banner

Although I had already done the 'banner' on the website that told people about the date and place of the I had doubts about the legibility of the Leeds College of art banner and the dominating size of the banners. This was re affirmed when Fran (the illustrator) said that they felt a little large. So I went back to the drawing board and played around with them some more.

I really liked the way the mobile website came out because of the way that the first screen you see tells you the most important information instantly. Creating a really strong information hierarchy.

I started by swapping the College of art logo for straight text in the brand typeface. This is a lot more legible but I don't think the different text sizes work very well. They create a strange one sided visual texture that seems very busy on the page.

To allow for this and construct a more effective information hierarchy I shrunk the date placard but tried to maintain the type size so that that visual texture shown in the earlier images is avoided.

There is a slight alteration in the mobile website to allow for this change on the website and still made the quirky exact information hierarchy that I liked so much before.

OUGD503 Responsive Leeds Arts Part Website Development

After the meeting we had it was mentioned that a date and place banner would be really useful to have at the top of the website page. I spent some time doodling out the page in general and seeing what would best fit both the space and the established look of the arts party.

I had the idea of some placards like the ones in their main poster, which append to be done by my flat mate, so I got her back in to draw for me.

She produced two different illustrations with a coloured green grass base, so that it could fit into the green line that is already part of the header. It took some time and some playing around to get the right content for the placards. This was especially true when it came to straight out text. The font was the one we decided on for the entire arts party campaign but it felt very empty and stark, which doesn't match the soft hand made feel I have established through a lot of the other work I have done for them.

For the Leeds College of art logo I found that straight text just didn't feel right, once again it didn't communicate the college fast enough and also looked slightly un professional in a digital context. I tried the logo and this seemed to make a lot of difference because of the visual contrast it created with the illustration.

In context they look very different, if anything the date placard looks better in context because of the legibility of the text at this size. I tried this out on the mobile site as well and arranged it so it fit really nicely into the screen as shown below. This has a neatness and almost quaint quality that fits with the positive message of the conference.

However, I was concerned about the legibility of the leeds college of art logo, so I experimented with the proportions slightly and came up with what you can see below. I think this may nee some more work so tat the legibility is absolute. But I am pleased with the concept and am just waiting on feedback from Fran (not the illustrator).

Another new addition to the website is the illustrated social media icons. To start with Fran did them in full colour but I felt that this was too dominant on the page, and although these are important, they are not what we want to be noticed first, there is a lot of information that needs to be communicated first. Visit the website and have a look.

OUGD503 Responsive Leeds Arts Party Meeting

We had a meeting today in which everyone just got a good idea of where we were going with the prep for the conference and what each of us had to do.

The idea of adding a date and place banner to the website was raised which I will do in the next couple of days. This shows how the website is very much an ongoing project which might need slight changes at many stages to help it perform new tasks.

We briefly got talking about the program and how the complexity of the different events might need a day planner of some sort do that people can keep control over what they want to take advantage of in the conference. Someone brought up the idea of an app that might do this reducing the print costs of the program. I also need to do some research into this and whether constructing an app would be possible.

We also added to this list citing the possible need for collective business cards that could be handed out be individuals when the circumstance arrives. The next job however, is designing a roll down banner that could work promotionally and on the day of the conference. I will start research ing and sketching up ideas for this soon.

OUGD503 Responsive Building The Arts Party Website Wordpress or Wix?

Once we had made all the decisions detailed in the previous post, we went onto the basic Wordpress that had been serving as a temporary website up until now.

We struggled from the outset, getting the exact look and feel that we wanted. So many complications impeded us along the way, such as getting the logo in the right place. We had to make a full header width document and then import as an image.

We also looked into adding the tag line underneath in the highlight red we had chosen. We were lucky that this orange red showed up as one of the default colours of some of the wordpress themes. 

However, The main issue we encountered was that of getting the tiled layout to the blog posts that we wanted. Even when a blog preview showed the layout we wanted we could not, through any categorisation or portfolio filing, achieve the look that each theme promised us. We soon tried to upload our own themes, but found that updates to wordpress made this impossible, along with directly editing any code.

We then in a move of surrender tried out wix. This was so much easier. We instantly managed to mould exactly what we wanted from a blank template.

Wix allowed us to create the page system that we had planned and the drop down menus.

When it came to the tiled blog posts it was much more achievable and we started to add in details such as social media interaction buttons and structures to the other pages.

We also found we could edit the appearance of the mobile website and the way the menu sat on the page worked out brilliantly. It allowed for ease of usage and the fast communication of what the site provided.

It also allowed us to remove aspects of the website that worked on the main website but not on the mobile website to keep it from being cluttered.

We chose the orange highlight colours for the mobile drop down menu. This was so that we didn't over crowd the page with colours and push the logo into the background. The choice of the orange came from the development of the flyer and the decision to try and create a slightly more gender neutral image for a very pastel based colouring that they had already established

At the end of the day we had a functioning website with a few more touches yet to come.

The next day we just added a few improvements. Like lines in the green from the logo to provide some needed structure to the page.

I also put together the side menu with the colour coded events at the party and I think this really brought together the website. 

 On the mobile website we also added the slight drop shadow you see above because, looking at it on a phone the image needed a separation from the white background of the website.

Lightening the menu was a nice addition, keeping it in continuity with the light airy feel of the rest of the website. I also felt like adding the green as the clicked colour made the website feel more cared about and clearer in its usage and navigation.

Once again to maintain continuity I did this on the main website menu as well.

This was all in keeping with the reversed out theme of the buttons all over the website. As you can see the events menu at the side of the page also sticks to this.

For the moment we limited the seeable pages so that no place holder information comes up on the website. We also set the about page as the landing page, because fast communication of the cause is one of the major necessities of this website.

OUGD503 Responsive Building The Arts Party Website

Me and Fran (the initiator for the LAP) got together to discuss and start constructing the leeds arts party website. Although the pages below look like a lot of scribbles they actually detail a lot of decision making.

We talked about what the site needed to contain, like a meet the team page and links to social media outlets, and that we wanted an image based look with a tiled flow of information from the blog section of the site. We wanted the blog to contain info about up and coming events in leeds that could relate in some way to the arts party. This would fill and constantly change the content on the main page.

We talked about the established aesthetic of the Leeds Arts Party and how we would transfer this onto a digital format. This seemed to be most achievable through the use of colours. We discussed the limitations of web safe colours and the fact that the colours in the logo were not going to be consistently reproduced on older screens. On this point we made an informed decision to stick with the non web safe colours because the majority of our target audience would be creatives, so mac would be the dominant way our audience would interact with the website and therefore colour translation would be much more achievable.

We went on to take the colours from the logo and allocate it to  a type of event going on at the arts party. Beyond this we also made the decision to use the orange/red from the logo as the rollover button colour and highlight for the page. this comes from the subtitle colours used on the leaflet design earlier in the year.

We then talked about the links between the pages and what could be accessed through each page. This lead to the idea of creating a separate menu for the different event in the part and using the allocated colours we talked about earlier in this menu.

We went through all the colours in the logo in photoshop and got the hexadecimal code for each. This was so that we could maintain complete colour accuracy throughout the design process. 

OUGD503 Responsive Studio Brief 01 Individual Practice Leeds Arts Party Website Research and Analysis And Brief

Before we met up to start discussing the website fully, Fran sent me a few links to websites that she felt might be useful in relation to the website for the arts party. I can completely see how each of these could contribute to the Leeds Arts Party website and its good to see that we are both on the same page.

The colour scheme is what obviously relates to the arts party. These are not web-safe, but perhaps this is not something that we must conform to in this situation because creatives would be the target audience and the ones that would be mostly accessing the website (via macs). The idea of the colour coded menu at the side is really nice and could be improved and applied to the different events at the conference. Otherwise, the space that this website has is very refreshing look and something that I wish to emulate on the website. The logic behind this is the fact that the images that will be on said website are likely to sometimes be illustrations and art, with high visual texture levels, in order fir this not to feel busy, extra space must be allowed.

I believe it is the blog structure that is in the websites shown both above and below that Fran is particularly keen on implementing. They both use square tiled effects, that allow the images to do all the talking. On a conceptual level this works brilliantly with the entire cause of the arts party and its celebration of the arts. This tiled or modular grid may be more doable in formats other than wordpress, but this is something we will tackle on the day, because I know this will be tricky, but is important to the user experience of the website.

The element that instantly grabs me from the moment you enter this website is the slide show of all the latest blog posts that sits at the top of the page. This is definitely something that could be used for the blog aspect of the website once there is enough content. It instantly creates a sense of vibrancy , both through the simple fact that it is moving and the varied colours of the images, and vibrancy and celebration is what the arts party is all about.

Brief:
Create a simple functional website for the Leeds Arts Party. It needs to convey the positive activism at the conferences core and help establish a link between the printed promotional material and the online campaign that is just kicking off. 

Background Considerations:
The website will need to be designed with an eye to material created for the conference day so that visitors relate the two platforms. A system of organisation needs to be developed for the events on the day so that organisation and signage are easier to understand and the information on the website is reachable.

Deliverables:
A functioning website that the members of the arts party can access and update when needed.