Δ design.

cool new website.

now this is a clever website. I know term is over. but I couldn’t help but admire this great use of simple colour, user interaction, humour and the presentation of journey in just one window with so much to explore…

http://www.griplimited.com/

the final project.

the time has come to present, share and explain my final project work. firstly, some words….and then some pictures.

INTERPRETATION OF THEME

My interpretation of the theme ‘identity’ sprung me first to all of the online identities we are creating. Are almost sckitzo presence on the internet, and the development of our web presence as just another identity we are growing and working on. 

The current generation is one, obsessed! with their online identity. What profile picture, what status update, what they ‘liked’, or ‘tweeted’. These all make up their, and my, social media identity. 

But what if identity was more than just our individual contributions. What if it could actually do something more than commenting on what you had for breakfast.

THEME DEVELOPMENT

My theme has gone from considering the individual identity - to the collective identity and the power of collaboration.

Early on I wanted to see a transformation in identity of the viewer, from the innate, and lack of purpose to the resurrection of world changing behaviour.

This project has gone from tackling all social media - to focussing on twitter.

I’m very interested in collaborative projects and projects that include more than a passive interaction from the viewer. So users are required to actually transform their own tweets, or use our very own little superhero tweeter to make comments about social issues in the world.

AESTHETIC CHOICES

Most of the choices in colour, layout and design were kept to ensure that it was simple. I’ve had previous blogs about the choices with aesthetics - but the summary of those are…

• rough hand drawn lines (in photoshop) 
• simple colour palette of watermelon red, twitter blue and greys/blacks
• getting the eye to move around the page but at the same time have similar styles for similar page themes was important in deciding how each page would fit together.
• I also found an .mp3 song that rocked my concept to a whole new place. A song called ‘the great awakening’ by Leeland - this was used in the inner explanation page to support the purpose and vision behind the pages.

ISSUES IN DEVELOPMENT

I quickly narrowed my scope when realising that the formatting of more than one plug in for different media types could potentially explode my brain, as well this allows for making similar off branching projects.

My flash video didn’t end up coming together, due to a lack of time which was a shame, as I had some good ideas for how to turn our world into a big watermelon that split and then broke into four ‘bite-sized’ global issues to concentrate on. 

Scaling pages well ended up getting thrown mostly out the door. I was hoping to have a version of the site together for my iPad. But because I ended up resorting to absolute divs for most of the layout this made things a little more rigid. I probably wouldn’t use abs divs again.ever. 

Mostly I kept the website simple, because I wanted to illustrate the simplicity of our identities, and particularly how simple it is to be a superhero. As a result, there aren’t many complex elements to my final project. Mainly rollovers and region hyperlinks and the twitter embed.

HERE ARE SOME SNEAKY PICs:

so there are some elements of my final design.

our little superhero tweeter

let me warmly welcome you to one of the many transformed superheros of the future… a tweeter to look to for inspiration, insight and comment on the current issues in our world…all in the hope to see things change, improve and move forward. all part of the collaboration of world changers….

wisegianni asked: I like the way your thinking has shifted from {ego} indentity to a more collective approach then on to the whole idea of collective (branding) action. Some of those seeding sites that ask for a certain funding from individuals to start up a venture...

i think i might use the tetris concept to show the positive effects of collaboration. i’ll see how much time I have. I’m keen to make this in flash if theres enough time over the next week!

A giant Tetris

Yes an interesting metaphor. A matrix of sorts. I could see it move as a form of rollover or on its own as a basic flash movie imbedded into your site.

bits of the world….

today I spent most of my time doing some of the following tasks:

 > refining my world images… to look a little bit more like crayons. (i just used a sharper edged brush in photoshop)

> creating ‘highlight/hover’ layers that select the different nations

> centerring my layout in the absolute centre to allow for page scaling.

> and setting up some of my inner content for the social issues facing our world. 

> linking these all together to form a flow of pages.

here are some pictures of what the first third of the site will include… (now just for some time with the watermelons….)

this first picture shows the scaling function - see how the link from the footer is now on top of the main earth image.

this following image shows what happens when you click a region on the earth. i used polygon map hyperlinking regions.

twitter feeds that are arty?

today I spent most of my time coming up with the final destination page for my web design project. the artwork is in the conversation that is being had about social issues.

I had to use absolute divs to embed the feeds into. I had a lot of fun playing with colours today. I’m now going to restrict my colours to the watermelon, green, grey and black to make a sleek looking thing.

heres a shot of my final page, which i’m really loving. im going to keep the vibe of the hand drawn pics to show how easy it is to be a world changing superhero.

the parts that fit together.

the power of collaboration to make some very interesting artworks online as I have discussed in earlier posts (like the TED talk with the collaborative choir, and COMMON brand) got me inspired today.

I got thinking during our assessment in class about how the individual identities in our world all fit together to form a giant tetris and fit to form the global community. 

sometimes in our communities we fit together like a high-scoring tetris game, and other times we are very disjointed and have lots of gaps start to form. 

this has got me thinking about how to move from a culture individualism and me-centredness to a culture of community and collaboration, as we work on our ‘super hero/world changing’ identities.