design evolution...

The evolution of my sample website - the grid.

1. Basic grid – keeping things simple – 2 focal points, 1 main and 1 secondary
2. Addition of photo gallery and colour highlights at top – focal point 1
· Need high quality pictures to give the user a real feel of being in Peru
· Want to inject some colour to represent the vibrant culture
3. Addition of icon menu – focal point 2
· I was inspired by the design of the iPhone
· It is a very clean lay-out with metaphorical design principles in mind
· The initial background green is selected to represent freshness and lush tropical forest
4. Addition of header
· Peru is in red for contrast and add some ‘pop’ to the website
· The green colour is continued in the header with a wavy bi-colour design
· The wavy design is meant to represent the various altitudes of Peru
5. Addition of background image in icon menu
· I realized that the green I chose was horrible – not giving me the feeling I wanted to give the user
· I found a really great high quality picture of a tropical leaf
· The tropical leaf incorporates many different shades of green and adds even more of a tropical feel
6. Addition of new colour highlights at top of page
· I thought the new colour highlights are much more vibrant and add much more to the feel of the website

you win...

I found a copy of a marketing magazine in my office the other day that had a list of companies that won all different types of marketing awards. There were a few that particularly jumped out at me and had me thinking of this course.

The ad that I want to focus on was created by DDB Canada, based in Toronto for Bosch Home Appliances. The point that Bosch wanted to get across is that they had more efficient appliances compared to their competition.

The theme of the advertisement was the damage that all of our appliances are doing to the environment. When we describe this theme in words, we think of fog, haze, darkness, pollution, garbage, dreary etc… A couple colours that come to mind are black and brown.

In terms of layout, I think we can clearly see why it won an award. Talk about simple. One beautiful picture, depicting what the future may look like if we don’t do anything about the environment, that really makes you feel bad for what we are doing to the planet. The text is aligned horizontally – along with the horizon in the picture. There is quite a bit of white space used in this ad as well that guides your eyes from building to sky to the text.

I especially like how the BOSCH logo pops out of the advertisement. Great use of colour contrast.