Rationale and invision URL

Rationale

Our event is an apartment crawl, because we think people in apartments can be more isolated with less communal space. We believe a majority of apartment dwellers tend to be younger and busier, so we have chosen a night-time theme to make it more relevant. Our rhetorical strategy is a spin on the phrase ‘spin some yarns’ and ‘close knit neighborhood, which we have portrayed using a knitted texture and thread-like lines throughout. This idea has been constructed across the media forms, with the poster engaging initial interest, the website providing more in-depth information, while the flyer has checklists and blanks to fill out and refer back to. We took advantage of the real-time aspect of the website by including a countdown to maintain excitement, and providing a chat as a tool for pre-contact communication. We have also extended our concept by enabling them to begin conversations with bottle-holder conversation starters.

Website - https://invis.io/KD8YTP6FN 

Mobile - https://invis.io/JX9039ZNR

Some ways we could have continued to develop and refine our work is by working on our illustrations more and continuing to explore ways of laying out information and informing people. Some other students have been very creative with 3D objects and really considered their use and that is something we would have continued to explore had we had more time. 

Mobile version of website

After the website had formed and just needed some refinements, it was time to move onto the mobile version of the website. The basic concept and content was still the same but it just needed to be rearranged into one column. I referred back to the NZ opera website because it was a website that we had previously used as inspiration and felt was a good example of a website.
The main difference between the desktop version and mobile was the grid. Everything was simplified down to one column and some aspects simplified. Following along this idea, I first did some quick thumbnails in my workbook.

The mocked up the full version on photoshop.

Feedback I received in class on Monday was perhaps to explode out the speech bubble and have the lines flow off the page in the heading. It was really interesting that this comment came up because it had already been suggested to us during one of the interim presentations. Although we liked the idea of it, we felt that it wouldn't fit the website well since there was no definite boundary on the webpage. The mobile version, however, did and this idea could definitely work. So my next step is to explore this idea before hand in on Thursday as well as refinements and adjustments.  

Developments

Cushla and I both feel confident enough in our over all concept and style that we have started to focus on refining and developments.

This is the latest version of the website with improvements based on interim 2 feedback. 

From here we are going to focus on creating focal points and differences in hierarchy to draw the viewers attention to various points on the page so they are engaged with the page. We will also play with the scale of the logo and countdown and start adapting it to a mobile view. 

Poster 

The main thing to work on with this poster is making a more dynamic layout by playing with the scale of the speech bubble and cropping into it. At the moment the scale and layout are very passive and flat and we want to create a poster that's visually more engaging. We will also add more diversity into the image.

Flyer 

For the flyer we will work more on the layout such as making the list on the above page more like a list and make it pop more. For the casting on page, we want to separate the individual person's contacts out by perhaps adding in rules or symbols just to clarify.  

Object

Now that we have clarified our concept we have started considering how this could be applied to other media forms. We have use the example of bottle holders as a way of conversation starters. This is another way , just like the live chat on our website, to further build on our concept of Spinning Yarns. We wanted something extra that could help facilitate conversation. 

To improve this, we are going to include the original logo to make it more relevant to the whole concept and try out more conversation starters.  

Interim Two Presentation

Here is the full size poster, flyer and website that we presented today in class:

The overall feedback on the effectiveness of our message a style was positive.

With our poster we are going to play around more with the layout in order to make the negative space work more effectively. An option for fixing this is to have a cityscape in the background, which would then carry on across our other media forms. We are also going to change out the photographed windows, which are not working, for illustrated windows which will be more inviting and flow more from our style. We are also working on micro detailing such as kerning and will need to add in the current neighbours day logo.

With our flyer we mainly need to work on micro detailing such as fixing some awkward negative spaces. This could be achieved with the incorporation of the city scape that we are thinking of using in our poster.

With our website, we were given some really interesting suggestions about things we could to with the header and footer. These include incorporating the logo into the rule instead of having a speech bubble, and also transforming the footer rule into a city scape.

Website mock up for interim 2

In preparation for interim presentation on Monday we decided to have a full mock up of our website ready on invison for presenting. We had a wire frame and site map and a general thumbnail ready and i was just up to me to mock it up.
This was the initial idea we had. The concept was a alternative we had created from the doors concept we had abandoned.

A immediate concern we noticed was the fact that the writing was very hard to read due to textured background. Then i proposed the idea of having the background fade once the user clicked on the windows.

However, Cushla pointed out how this made the navigation of the page very complicated and could get confusing and i agreed. This page was later abandoned because we felt it was a bit redundant when combined with the rest and contained information that was repeated later in the individual pages. 

We then started proposing possible homepage idea which i tried out before we settled on the final. Once we had settled on a style it was a lot easier to just carry the style into the design of the other pages. Below are some of the early version.

Feedback on over all poster and concept

This is what we presented in class today.

Website-

In response to our feedback we made our font more legible and bold, and we are going to experiment more with cropping into the composition of the poster to make it more dynamic and interesting, making more interesting illustrations e.g scenes in the windows, and use more interesting pops of warm colours as it is quite cold and recessive at the moment. 

For our brochure we are going to think more about the way we use the knitting metaphor, as it is working better in some places than others e.g 'casting on' for the breaking the ice spread works, but 'knitting stitches' for the getting prepared spread is too abstract and not connected enough. We are also working more on creating more engaging visuals.

For the website, we are having a play around with different layouts and ways of presenting our information. Ideas we have had include having information in window frames, and having different symbols and illustrations. We are also working more on content and way-finding. We are starting to also look at how established websites work on both desktop and phone and what changes they make to their layout and way-finding across the devices. 

Action plan revisited

Based on the action plan we had created on Thursday, we went away and made mocks up of what we had decided.  On Monday our feedback from the lecturers made us realize that we were heading in the wrong direction with our choice of style as it was not related to our concept. We agreed because we were both getting lost and confused as to the direction we were heading in and the feedback made us realize what was wrong. Case in point, the following unfinished website mock up where it just wasn't working with our idea.

Researching websites and breaking them down

As part of the home work we were given on Monday we had to break down two existing websites into wire-frames as well as site maps.
This site map and wire frame was from the 350.org website.



We found that the 350 website was very cluttered and not easily followed. The bombardment of information was too much and actually made the website very hard to read as we didn't know where to look or start. There was not hierarchy of information. There was a lot of repeated information that was unnecessary. The aesthetic of the website was also very boring as the visuals were all just plain images of people.

NZ opera website

We found that this website was a lot better as the information was set out really easy to navigate. the aesthetic followed the latest show and created a cohesive look.

Favourite website- Panera website.

Purpose :

                Education of artificial ingredients within foods.

Goal:

                To raise awareness about the harmful outcomes of these ingredients.

Unique aesthetics:

                 miniature model combined to photographs to create a immersive experience on

                 the website.

Does the look and feel complement each other:

                 yes.

We have also been continuing to look at existing design and collecting some inspiration on our shared pinterest board: https://nz.pinterest.com/annawu127/neighbours-day-inspo/ 

Interim One (We made it to the table of success)

These three posters were the ones we presented in class for interim. The second spin some yarns poster was chosen as one of the ones that was singled out because the clever and engaging relationship between the words and visuals.This surprised us, as we did not think this was our strongest idea or visual solution to begin with. In this poster, we are playing on the saying 'spin some yarns' and a 'close knit neighborhood'. We are targeting apartment dwellers who might not have much time to interact with their neighbors, so we are making our event a night-time apartment crawl. We are exploring an urban style, to appeal and relate to our audience who are younger and live in the city.

We had a group critique in our table groups and the feedback we got was that the idea of a residential apartment block was lost, so we need to make that connection clearer visually. We also have opportunity to play with text hierarchy. There is also a threat when using yarn as a key visual tool, as it inherently has connotations of being targeted at old ladies and of knitting, when that is not our intention. We need to think about how we can twist and grow the idea of yarn and 'close knit' communities in a way that is directed at younger people and apartment dwellers. We also need to think about what day of the week the event is on, and think about other ways yarn can be used. We need to think outside the box!!