Month: February 2016

Having locked down the company logo, I decided that I wanted to work on integrating this into the site design. Using my wireframes from before as a basis to work from, I created a number of assets within Adobe Photoshop which can be seen below.

Firstly, the website banner which will be placed prominently at the top of the page, allowing users to navigate quickly around the site, and as such it is essential that this element contains tabs to allow for this easy navigation.

The other assets I worked upon were the icons for the home screen of the website. These icons would appear as the user first enters the site, enabling them to quickly select how they’d like to browse content.

When I initially set out to produce the project’s logo, I knew that I wanted a simple design that utilised the name in some way. After looking at design trends last semester, I knew that interlocking initials were a popular way of representing a company in a sleek and instantly recognisable way.

I began with the initials WA and experimented with these letters, creating a number of designs which can be seen below.

The first design seen here was far too basic for my liking and I felt it looked unprofessional, but I could see that there was potential within the design, and as such I kept with the idea of the initials, and used this design as a starting point for development.

The largest changes made throughout this development process were the addition of colour to the design, and the way in which the letters adjoined. The colour scheme was a result of feeling that black and white was too basic, but did provide a nice contrast between the letters, which was something I was keen to keep. Films often use blue and orange lighting to create contrast and as the project is a website for viewing film and television content, blue and orange seemed like a viable option, and as can be seen below, I feel it works very effectively.

During the lecture this week we discussed composition and James discussed particularly the process of wireframing for website design. This was a process that I thought would be hugely beneficial to my project and within my own time I mocked up several wireframes of the site, which can be seen below.

After submitting my initial proposal, I realised that the process of producing both the functionality required for the videos as well as coding a fully fledged website would be too ambitious for this project. As a result of this I have decided to produce a working prototype of the video functionality, and a design for the final website were it to be produced.

In addition to these elements, I also aim to produce a 30 second animated promotional video explaining the purpose of the site, and how to use the site.

The only other change that has been made to the original proposal is that the project will now be titled ‘Watch Act’ as I feel that this name is snappier and rolls off the tongue easier than Who Act did.

During the first weeks I looked at a number of potential ideas, by looking at issues I have within the digital world. A problem I have very regularly is recognising an actor or actress within a television show or film, but not knowing where I’ve seen them before and being unable to easily find them on another website like IMDB, which also requires me to open a new tab or window, ruining my immersion within the film.

My proposed solution is a platform (initially web based) that allows you to click on an actors face whilst watching content, to bring up an information window that tells you the actor’s name, a picture of them, and their best known films. This platform will be called WhoAct and below is my proposal for this project.

There are a few existing projects that have similar ideas and these have been mentioned within the proposal below, but I feel as though these projects are either too closed in their platforms, or do not function as seamlessly as I intend this project to.

WhoAct Proposal