wkadventcalendar.com

http://www.wkadventcalendar.com/

Found this leading up to Christmas and thought it was bri

lliant.

Mock-ups for my homepage

More Images for the Website

Some more pictures for me to consider using when designing my website. I am going to make sure i use all the images i can get hold of showing the-rex in the 1930's but i will be able to experiment more taking my own photographs of the building as it is now.

The Gatsby Idea

This is one of the designs i have come up with for my page informing people on the Gatsby. (the bar/restaurant below the cinema) I like the Idea how down the right hand side of the page, the Gatsby link will change to take the user back to the homepage. The plan for this page works quite well, but i have now decided i do not want my homepage to be the same, it needs to stand out more.

Replacing Colour in a Logo

Wireframe of The-Rex

This is my basic wireframe idea for the opening page of the website for "The-Rex".

It has 5 links to:

• Booking Info
• History
• Listings
• The Gatsby (restaurant attached to the Cinema)
• Gallery

I have also included a short description of what the-rex is and what it offers. Along with two pictures, old and new of the Cinema.

The Gatsby

The Gatsby is the Restaurant/Bar that stands below the cinema. It is described as 'the perfect environment to relax, unwind, eat and drink. On the website that i will design although it is mostly representing the rex cinema i will do a link that people can click on to read up a little about the gatsby as it is part of the whole environment.

As the rex did, the gatsby shut down in 1988 and reopened a year later than the rex had in 2005.

www.thegatsby.net

BUILDING::STRUCTURE::ENVIRONMENT

The Building that I have chosen as a subject for my website is a cinema/restaurant called "The Rex" from at home where I live in Berkhamsted. The Rex first opened in May 1938 and then re-opened in December 2004. I have chosen this building as it has so much atmosphere to it and i think it would be a very interesting project to attempt.

The online environment will be aimed at adults, and used for book and finding out information about the bar/restaurant/cinema. The Rex shows 30 films a month on one screen from big blockbusters to tiny obscure titles. The website would need to be very informative as it would need to show cinema listings, times, menus, opening hours, optional booking etc.

The existing website is www.therexberkhamsted.com

Journal Task: User Generated Content

As part of one of our online journal tasks we were told to find three websites providing user generated content.

1. Chatterbirds

This website is for birdwatchers, the site is to bring bird lovers together and 'connect with a global network of birdwatchers' members can share their birding and nature photos and manage their own online bird watching diary. I think this site is very informative. As someone who is not very interested in birdwatching, i am not drawn to it but it has everything you would need. You can track and identify bird species and find birding hotspots by country and region. The website is not particularly eye catching i would say it relies on its information it provides as it is a site for a niche market. The content is clearly labeled and organised so everything is very easy to find and navigate towards


www.chatterbirds.com


2. Book Group Online


The second website with user generated content is one called the book group online. This site pretty much does what it says in the title. All the users can read their books and then review them on the networking site set up. All members have the opportunity to publish posts on whichever books they choose. The page is very simple and easy to navigate, its not particularly eye-catching or draws people in immediately but as with the birdwatching website it is the sort that would be visited by members who are purely interested in discussing books.


www.bookgrouponline.com


3. MagicSeaweed


The final site that I have chosen is called MagicSeaweed. On this user content site members can upload Videos, Photographs and discuss popular surfing sites etc. Each member can create their own profile and interact with other surfers. The website is very broad as the members can range from beginners to expert, even people that have never been surfing before. I think this website is very informative as it not only acts as a site for people learning how to surf but also tells people good spots to try out surfing . This website is my favourite out of all three as i think the other two websites the user has to have an interest in the topic. whilst surfing may not interest all people the page certainly draws in peoples attention attention with the photographs and videos playing as soon as the page has loaded up.


www.magicseaweed.com

Joel Schafer - "I'm into minimalistic clean design"

The designer talks a fair bit about research and how he gets his inspiration. He gets asked what the mistakes he learned from most while in the web design industry and mentions that he rushed into projects without writing a manuscript to follow and now spends days writing before starting a project. I feel like i can relate to this although obviously I'm not as experienced as him, in alot of projects i find myself taking quite a while to get into and understand fully what it is that i want to try and get across to people and how. Schafer plans his webpages completely making sure he is positive on what problems might occur.

Dan Saffer - "Interaction Design Is An Applied Art"

When reading Dan Saffer's interview it is clear that he has a passion for interactive design. Dan Saffer points out that a designer needs to understand the properties of the medium that they work in. He suggests that you cannot do good design work unless you are aware of the design work that surrounds you. I think the most interesting and important issue that Dan Saffer raised in his interview was that when he was asked the elements of interaction that web designers measure during the creating process, he said that "if the design fills a need in people's lives, works well and looks beautiful, you've got design gold'. I agree with what dan saffer says here as often designers will not manage all three, sometimes only one of them. It is very easy for someone to become comfortable with designing one particular way and never really changing the way in which they do things, as Saffer points out ("falling in love with one direction and not being able to see others")

A Cloud showing popular social sites. We had to List as many networking sites as we could think of and put them in a hierarchy of popularity. We decided sites such as Google/Facebook/youtube were most popular and sites like Yahoo/Myspace are now not so regularly visited.

A Day In the Life Of Me

This is my pixilation of a day in the life of me

Who AM I?

This is my Who Am I element but the music is wrong..It doesnt flow well and the ending doesnt work.. but one of my attemps.



I found the video quite difficult in the end as some words that people chose I already had a number of times off others and some people had tried to be really different and I found thier words didn't at all link with others. I have included all of them as I wanted it to be a fair representation of what other people think of me.

Whiteboard Identity..

These are two of the pictures I have taken of people I know. I have asked;

• Friends I have known for years from home
  
• New friends i have made at uni
  
• Family
  
• Employers

It has gone well, The people that know me the best have found it harder to try and sum me up in one word than those that i have worked for or only known a few months. .. I have got all of my pictures now, I am now in the process of making them into a short film of images. 

fuck the whiteboards

I found this blog today called fuckthewhiteboards. it can be found at 

www.fuckthewhiteboard.blogspot.com

It is a guy that explains his work as "taking club photography to another level". He takes his whiteboard out and camera and asks people to write things on his whiteboard.

This is obviously quite similar to one of my elements for my showcase as i intend to take pictures of friends/family etc after they have

 written a word on my whiteboard that they think describes me best.

Body of Avatar Rendered

AV, A day In the Life of me... Editing Images..

After I had taken all my pictures for one day, It is now time to start editing them in photoshop the way i want them to be seen in the movie. I experimented with three different pictures that i had taken because from past experience with my pixilation project last term, i found that some pictures from different settings didn't look as good as others.

Here are three images that I edited from different times of my day. 

After playing around with all the settings i could find, i decided on "Fresco". The reason i chose this application was it gave a sort of comic feel to the images but you were still able to make out what is going on. 

More Logo

This is My final idea for my logo that I have been developing. 

Developing Logo Ideas

Logo Work

After some thought I decided that i wanted my logo to have fairy wings in. My idea is to

 have only one wing, not both.. but these are just some research  and idea sheets that I have put together just to try and get some ideas down. The colours that i am going for are pink/purple/white. These idea and research sheets are also acting as moodboards for me to look back and refer to when I am coming up with more final Ideas. As i have decided I want some text in my logo I have produced a quick type page, with a range of different type faces on so i can pick one easily when it comes to putting my final idea together. 

Update

I Have just taken all my pictures for my AV idea yesterday, "A Day In the Life Of Me"... It went well in the end, but took alot of patience. I decided not to use a tripod, it would of been too difficult and all my images were meant to be seen as if it were my eyes looking at an object. I chose to do a normal day for me that wasn't in the week, so things i would be doing in my own time. Although i shot the pictures on a Wednesday as i needed to get things moving. 

Pretty Loaded

Today I went on bigspaceship.com after being advised to have a look at the website if i was thinking of going onto online environments, I then went on to look at prettyloaded.com which was produced by bigspaceship, I found pretty loaded really usefull to find websites to look at, it was a little easier to follow than the FWA as you got a really quick taste for loads of websites at once. However, i did find that everything was going so fast that i found myself having to keep restarting it to find which websites I liked and disliked the look of.

Moving Biped

Objects That Describe Me..

Worm

This is my Worm sequence rendered before I put them into an animation.

Logo Research

This is a sheet that i quickly put together of existing logo's that are well known. Not necessarily aesthetically pleasing but, well known all over the world. My idea of a successful logo is one that the customer will automatically know the name of the company when looking at their brand logo. For example when seeing the windows logo, everyone knows what it is for although there is no text on it. 

On my logo I think I would like a tiny bit of text, perhaps just my initals. I want the logo to mainly be an image, Too much text and image will make the logo too busy and confusing to look at. I've noticed how most logos don't really have any text at all, some perhaps a caption but at the most about 4/5 words. 

Journal Task: Myself as a Shape

I decided that the shape that best descibes me is a cone. Originally i thought it would be a sphere but when thinking about it i decided that it needed some edges. I wanted a shape that had some corners in but a square and triangle was too harsh and bold for me, so a comprimise seemed to be the cone. I think the cone represents me well because i can have two sides to me, not quite as opposite as the cone but i am very quiet and shy at first but once people get to know me I'm really not very shy at all. 

I chose a light blue because i think of it as a calming and peacefull colour.  Which reflects me quite well, However I think the fact that blue is my favorite colour has been then main influence on why I chose it. The lighting that reflects off the cone shows how it is smooth and shiny. 

SPP Journal Task

In the past few years i have found that my creativity has been for myself. Whilst working on school projects set, the ones that i found myself enjoying the most were those that I worked on myself . I would often make up scrap books from holidays/trips away and certain experiences. Whilst there i would collect random things to make collages and books out of.  I much preferred doing this to just sticking photographs into an album.  One project from back at school that i particularly remember enjoying was making a log book of my summer in 2006.  We did not know this at the time but the log book would act as research for upcoming projects in my final year such as ones called "My Life". When I have finished my projects they are mostly finished in the way that I wanted, however i do find getting other peoples comments on my work very useful and will sometimes alter how my project appears if i agree with them. 

In terms of research helping me to get to these new places, Looking into successful creative environments will help. At the moment i have been going on the FWA website every so often, looking at companies websites and analysing them. When looking at the websites i can see how well they have done and if they have received any awards etc. I also think that getting as much work experience in related areas would really help me to decide what it is exactly i would like to do. In my last year in school and my foundation year I did about 5/6 Individual work experience placements, all different, but i found this really helps to see what the industry is like and how things happen. 

Looking at the different starting points, the one that i feel most drawn to is "behind". I think this is because by looking at this you can get to find out most about a creative design. For example why the designer has done something a certain way and how they have done it. Other factors such as influences can be looked into. I would also say that "In Front Of" draws me in as i have mentioned i find it useful getting feedback off people and using their comments weather I apply them or not. 

Layout of Car Parts in 3d Max

Hooky

I've just been on the fwa again to see what's new. The website i went on today was called hooky. you had to collect lemons on your journey to the lemon factory, and on your way you had to throw your lemons at the baddies - this would free all your buddies. But the aim was to make it to the lemon factory with some spare. I didn't really think much of the website - it made me a little dizzy with the continuous moving screen. 

After having a few games i looked into the company to see what the website was all about. It said that they are a 'premium digital creative boutique specializing in the conception and development of rich media advertising and advanced interface design'. They say that their main philosophy is to play by creating bold creative vision with unparalleled technical initiative.

Website: www.hookyinteractive.com

Company: Hooky Interactive

My Octopus on 3D Max

This is the Animation of the Octopus that we learnt how to put together in todays Seminar.

More Toothpicks...

These were some of the other ideas that i came up with when experimenting different ways to advertise the toothpicks...

Not Just a Toothpick....?

This was some advertising I did last year. The brief that i set myself was to see how successful advertising is. I took an object that is never advertised and experimented different ways of advertising it. My final idea was to do a series of posters, each of them i had done something more interesting with the toothpicks. I also designed my own logo for the advertising. I made up a company called "goodpicks", the logo went in the corner of each  of the three posters.

The Tale Of Desperaux - Storybook Adventure

Today I looked at another website from the fwa, this was The tale of desperaux, a storybook adventure. This was an interactive website where you get to make up a story, you choose weather to make it about yourself or a friend. I did mine on myself so you had to pick a name, age, make the character look like you and choose where they are from. Once you have given in all the information needed you get to watch a story about yourself. 

You also get given the option to play games throughout the story, for example, at one stage I had to make "the vegetable man" have a real face by using vegetables for his eyes, ears, nose and mouth. Another game was finding my way through a maze successfully without being caught by flying creatures. You cant 

move onto the next stage of the story without completing the task, which i think keeps people interested in what is happening. 

Address: www.desperauxadventure.com

Company: Ralph