OUGD504 Design For Web Task 1

The Design for Web brief requires us to use our summer brief topic to create a website based on our chosen subject. I research Saul Bass over the summer and aim to create a resourceful and functional website using this information.

Initially, I looked at what existing websites focusing on Bass were offering, in terms of information, functionality and target audience. I found that there wasn't much by way of an official website, the closest to which was saulbass.tv, which was sparse in terms of information.

Much of the information provided on this website is only via external links, for example above shows Bass' filmography but clocking these just leads you to IMDB. While the layout is reflective of Bass' approach to graphic design, this can be found anywhere on the internet.

Since there was little option for Saul Bass focused websites, I expanded my search, as I had decided on doing in the brain storm session, as something as specific as Saul Bass leaves little for me to do that hasn't already been done. I started looking into title sequences in general and found there were much more archives, agencies and images available.

This website artofthetitle.com is much more informative and provides plenty of examples and title-sequence related news. This pointed me in a better direction as the term 'title sequence' could fall into motion graphics which is a very vast topic, and could allow me to experiment more.

watchthetitles.com bares plenty of similarities to the previous website, in colour scheme and general make up of the website, allowing it to fall into categories like film, TV, interviews etc.

After examining a few similar websites and their target audience, I started to generate more ideas for my own, and altering my subject matter to specifically motion graphics. By doing this I can have a wide target audience in the graphic design world itself, and from examining some motion graphics websites, they mostly seemed to be more of an archive, not specifying more current or recent examples, and also seemed to be predominantly blog based.

motiongraphics.com is true to it's name and doesn't venture from that topic, but in some cases it makes the website quite narrow, which is mirrored in it's extremely simple layout, which makes it appear as though the designers were trying to make it appear dense with information.

motionserved.com is almost identical to motiongraphics.com, in colour scheme, layout and in limited content, however, motionserved.com seems to serve more as a design blog than of much informative design.

This gave me an idea for my website which would tie into the theme I was exploring for Design For Print. With a focus mainly on motion graphics, directed at graphic designers, I could design it as a counterpart to the magazine/newspaper idea I was looking into for print. Although it would not be directly related, I could allow them to fall under the same umbrella in terms of how I would be informing my audience.

After looking briefly at thetimes.co.uk, I wanted to pursue the idea of the website being constantly updated news based sites are, with recent incorporations of motion graphics in film, in design, in advertising and perhaps a brief history of motion graphics.

I identified that I needed to find a way to set this website apart from just any other fan site or design news blog, but after looking at designweek.co.uk I found that it was very limited by way of motion graphics and looked mainly at print based graphics in the media at the time.

OUGD504 Design For Web Studio Task

In todays session we got into pairs and discussed and brainstormed the potential of our chosen Summer Brief topic when translated to web, as it is this research that we will be using to create a functioning and useful website.

My research topic was Saul Bass, and since I didn't want to just make another fan page or a biographical website, I really had to explore other options, bearing audience, tone of voice and purpose all in mind.

My first two brainstorms really showed where I needed to do some more research and proposed the obstacles I may have. For one, Saul Bass is a very specific topic, and while I had the idea of creating a title sequence archive of all title sequences ever made, Lorraine pointed out that this would be no different to YouTube. Joe suggested I make it an interactive website, in which visitors could make their own title sequence, and while I think that could be successful, it is also very ambitious given my limited knowledge in web design.

Similarly, I hit a big barrier when trying to determine what it is that I'm trying to communicate. Simply communicating Bass' work would just make the website biographical and that is exactly what I wanted to avoid.

At this point Lorraine advised I do another brainstorm, this time just starting with Saul Bass/title sequences and finding as many links to that topic as I can:

I found this challenging as I usually work much more systematically, however, it did generate some results, and may be indicating that I need to change the way in which I generate ideas.

I started by making all the connections I could think of to my topic, things that I associated with it or just things that I thought of along side it.

From this I saw potential to look into a 'how to' theme, a minimalist website, motion graphics within graphic design etc. I realised that I did want to keep the website quite minimalist as it is an area I plan on working on this year, and that in itself is related to Bass'.

I took this as indication to map out and test some other ideas before focused on any other component of the website.

Design Principles Task 1

We were provided with 5 type faces chosen by someone else, each exhibited in upper and lower case a-z and using Identifont, we were required to identify the fonts based on the characteristics of the letters.

Identifont asked a series of questions about the characteristics of individual letters in order to determine the typeface, providing you with 'popular matches' that it could be:

The first that i was able to identify was Gotham Bold, easy to tell since Gotham and Gotham Bold were the only two options I was given

The second typeface I found was stencil which I had previously suspected given it's very identifiable format.

In some cases, as which the third font I was identifying there were some questions that I couldn't answer, usually based on glyphs that I wasn't given with the a-z's, however Identifont gives you a 'not sure' option that will provide you with another question.

This typeface turned out to be Imperial, the second of two options, however it was a bit more difficult to distinguish between this type and the first option, Bell.

The fourth I found was Apex Sans, which was described as 'an ideal companion to Apex Serif', which, when I looked at it appeared just as Apex Sans did with a serif being the only differing characteristic.

For the fifth, it was identified as Bodoni but I wasn't given the option of Bodoni Bold which after seeing regular I was sure it was.