Colour Consideration 01

Using Adobe Kuler I searched for contemporary and warm colour schemes. I would really like to make this website contemporary and trendy but also with a warm feel to it.

Content background

Highlighted elements

Background

Header Background

Colours

Warm Colors

• Red: Red is one of the most powerful and attention-getting colors. Red symbolizes passion and fire, love and lust. It has been proven to raise blood pressure and cause perspiration. Red reflects energy and can motivate an individual to take action. It can also symbolize war, violence, blood, and aggression. Pink, however, is the softer side of red. Pink is romantic, calming and feminine.
• Orange: Vibrant and warm, orange is associated with autumn, pumpkins and Halloween. It inherits many of the traits of red, but is less passionate. Orange has been known to stimulate the appetite. As a citrus color, it can also symbolize health.
• Yellow: Yellow symbolizes sunshine and warmth. It can mean hope, light and energy. On the other hand, it can mean weakness or illness, or symbolize cowardice.

Neutral Colors

• Black: Black can represent power, elegance, and sophistication, but it can also represent death (Western culture), evil, anger and sadness.
• White: White represents cleanliness, purity, and spirituality. It represents life and marriage in Western cultures, but it represents death in Eastern cultures.
• Grey: Grey is the combination of black and white. It is a conservative color. Grey can symbolize security, maturity and reliability, but it can also signify gloominess and sadness.
• Brown: We like to classify brown as a "special" color. Sometimes brown can be used as a neutral and sometimes as a warm color. Either way, brown represents credibility and stability, the hearth, home and the earth.

Taken from: http://newark1.com/color/000055.html

Logo Revisited

How does the website make you feel?

By looking at my mood board the feelings that I get are...

• Warm
• Cosy
• Retro feel
• Contemporary

After speaking to Sally Bell, she advised me to research some websites that also provoked these feelings.

I decided coffee shop websites would be a good place to start:

• Costa Coffee

Feelings: warm, cosy, posh

I think they have managed to achieve this feeling by using the right imagery and the use of warm colours. Although I think the layout is a bit boring.

• Starbucks

Feelings: trendy, retro, contemporary, clean

By using this black and white image of an old starbucks shop, which looks like it is in New York it instantly makes me feel a a bit retro and as if I am part of something trendy. The colours are kept neutral and cool and with a plain background, small things such as the WISH star in red stands out.

• Irving Farm Coffe Company

Feelings: Rustic, warm, retro, country

The fonts used on free shipping and coffee company instantly make the website look retro, but my first instinct is that it is quite rustic as the imagery suggests this. Colours are neutral and add to the rustic feel using shades of browns.

Summary

• To create a warm cosy feeling I must use the right colours and imagery
• To create a retro feeling I must use the right typeface and imagery
• To create a contemporary feeling I must keep the website clean and slightly neutral in colour

Logo Prototypes

Wireframes

First wireframe Mock up:

Site Map

Taking everything that I plan to incorporate into the site I designed a simple site map

Going Forward

From researching my competitors I got some ideas which I could implement in the design of the Humber Mouth website.

- Search bar on homepage - this would be useful for regular and new visitors finding their way around the site

- More visual elements such as photos and graphics related to the festival

- News and features section on the homepage for regular vistitors wanting a quick update of up and coming events

- Encourage users to facebook and flickr page with buttons on the homepage

- Mailing list so users can be updated without having to visit the site

Mood Board

I had difficulty deciding on the images I would use for my mood board. I wanted the mood board to instantly portray what I wanted the website to look and feel like. I finally decided on these group of images.

Descriptive Words

From my brainstorm I was able to come up with a list of words I thought describes Humber Mouth Literature Festival. I narrowed my list down to 12 words.

This will hopefully help me in my mood board and also deciding on a final design for the website.

Passionate
Imaginative
Dramatic
Cultured
Educated
Creative
Stimulating
Visionary
Open-minded
Authentic
Warm
Bookish

Brainstorming

Alot of brainstorming!

From this brainstorm I was started to get more of an idea of how I see the Humber Mouth Literature Festival.

Humber Mouth - Website Analysis

Humber Mouth

Navigation

• Pages are clearly marked when you are on it and uses branded colours
• You dont have to use the back button there is a 'back to' button if you detour off a page

Content

• Clear short text which is easy to digest
• Reading River section of the website offers an email address to contact them about new events - a mailing list would be more useful for the user so that they didnt have to make the effort of contacting.

Interactivity

• Flickr page available but this is not promoted very well - the page has photos from previous events
• Downloadable PDF brochure

Design

• Nothing grabs the users attention on the homepage, no visual elements other than the logo

Competitor Analysis - Durham Book Festival

Durham Book Festival

Navigation

• Bold text used on page name that you are currently visiting so you know what page your on at all times.
• Hover over CSS buttons work well as you know what you are selecting

Content

• Content is kept short and sweet and straight to the point - easy to read on the screen
• There is information about the festival on the homepage, so new visitors have an insight into what the festival is

Interactivity

• Twitter feed on homepage makes the site have a youthful feel to it and integrates the social networking site nicely. Gives the user another way to interact with the event.
• Newletter sign up form -a way to keep your users updated on the site without them having the visit the site.

Design

• Website colours are bright and evoke happy feelings
• Vector graphics are playful and contemporary and compliments the colour scheme well.

Competitor Analysis - Port Elliot Festival

I visited similar literature and arts festival websites and analized them on their design, content, interactivity and navigation. Here is what I discovered.

Port Elliot Festival

Navigation

• Does not highlight your current page


• headings on each page are small and not bold enough to recognise what page you are visting

Content

• News and updates feature on the homepage is useful for regular visitors


• Homepage has no description of what port elliot festival is

Interactivity

• Videos or past events at the festival offer the user an insight of what the festival has to offer


• Gallery of photos from past events with nice pop -up JQuery windows to display larger images

Design

• Serif font used is not clear when alot of text is used like on this site, it becomes a little cluttered.


• Colours and photos used have an earthy country feel to the website

The Audience

Taken from our original brief, the audience profile is currently as follows:

• Educated to at least A level standard
• 60% come from Hull;
• 30% from the East Riding; 10% from elsewhere
  (for example Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Worcester, London, Milton Keynes, Barrow in Furness.)
  
• The audience majority are aged between 25 - 55
  
• In 2009 over 12,000 people either visited a Humber Mouth exhibition, event, workshop, schools project or took part via Radio5 Live, FaceBook or Radio Humberside

The Brief

The Humber Mouth Literature Festival takes place annually in Hull, presenting a wide range of events featuring authors, speakers and artists from the UK and around the world. Established in 1993, the Humber Mouth is the city’s biggest festival and is managed by Hull City Arts.

You are to produce a redesigned website for the event, Humber Mouth. Taking consideration of the following:

•Ease of navigation

•Quality of content

•Use of social networking sites - how to incorporate?

•Occasional events & workshops throughout the year - how can information be integrated into the website?

•Archive - how (and how much) should be archived from year to year?

The site should include some form of content management system, search engine optimisation (SEO), and consideration/implementation of appropriate marketing techniques.