All in all you’re not just another brick in the wall…

Spring is here, and what better way to start the day than a meeting! Yeah, right?! Well, yes that is how I felt a few months back, but now I approached the team meeting with  bounce and vigor,  and more bounce! Bricklane’s arty 1001 cafe the venue for Gin, Pinar and myself to meet, and what a meet! A Highly productive, fun  and balanced five hours, with a no holds barred approach on tackling what was up until now our hesitant and a little cut and paste looking website.  Perhaps our website was developed out of the need to hit a target without knowing where we were shooting at first, needless to say it was a fair effort, but I felt that we could make  improvements.

My first impression was that our website looked and felt  pedestrian.This was more down to the inflexible nature of the tool that had been used to create the website than anything else, but nevertheless it was not working for us in my opinion. Gin’s renowned branding design had given us a voice: simple, clean and a little cheeky. It crammed in everything Passport2Guide is about and in a fun manner.

So this since last week’s 1001 meeting, I’ve added to our website hits with my increased and very precise scrutiny and note taking. I have literately examined 100s of websites, of similar ilk and beyond. My aim? To find a voice and read/see their language -  written and visual. I frequently returned to our website, and it was working less and less. But who am I? I am way too close to our project. So I asked people. And the answer was the same – it failed to appeal to them. Ok,  snap surveys are not really ideal but the point was made and I decided that I would raise the subject in our meeting.

I started prototyping. First on my happy technicoloured Poundland ‘creative paper pad’ with its ‘assorted multi colours’; and then I mocked up a Homepage.  My target areas, that is the areas which I felt we most needed to address:

• Typography
• Homepage content – we need to present exciting content in an exciting way. Sounds simple, it’s not. Very easy to get wrong.  I also felt we could do with both more current and alive content and more personal and subjective content.
• Colour/style guide
• Fun
• Tone, voice + language
• Image/text layout
• Header
• Branding (I felt that we had lost all of Gin’s original work)
• Simplicity yet style (The Guardian, The New York Times, Time Out  – great examples of where print content and online have merged successfully. The Guardian (with the original work by Neville Brody’s brilliant Research Studio) has lead the way). However, the click came from the BBCs football website (sorry I am a man after all!), not the best site but it’s all there information, simplicity and multimedia. Nods to go to Gilles Peterson’s worldwide/brownswood site.

Some examples of resources I referenced during my research.

Great playful use of type

Example spread of the New York Times Magazine redesign

Neville Brody's Research Studio's redesign

The Evolution

Second draft dispensed of the overtly bright yellow background + added content from the website's other pages to the homepage.

The objective of this mock up was to look at several issues: re-introduce Gin’s branding, add some elements of simple typography, add some playfulness, introduce more content from other pages to the homepage & greater and more varied use of images (all of which we have produced within the team!). A rough draft, I made it to get us thinking together about our possibilities + inspire debate on how we can achieve great things!

The Gin and Pinar were very receptive to the ideas and questions raised. It was not about suggesting that my mock up was gospel and we should immediately drop everything and follow my strict stringent guidelines. Instead, merely pointing out ways in which we could go forward together with a more coherent and styled approach, with leanings towards print and magazine language that many  relate to,  with all the advantages and immediacy of the online world. It was a starting point (again! But there is no point walking on in the wrong direction if you are lost hoping that eventually you’ll find your destination).

We toyed with the idea of trying to translate the elements and ideas, we liked from the mock up and beautifully designed websites we referenced, into weebly; however can to the general consensus that it was not the best platform. Very rigid and awkward it does not offer that much freedom.

Our conclusion? WordPress. After an extensive search Gin found a great template, we discussed its flexibility and Pinar, after experiementing with its CSS gave the thumbs up. Pinar organised and sorted out the hosting. Together, we discussed our content and future content, raised ideas (ate some cake!)  and have decided upon a framework which we hope will create more unity and continuity amongst the various page. We have introduced elements of editorial magazine  coupled with online production  process to enable us to streamline our productivity. Passport2guides is an excellent idea, however it requires us to be disciplined and strict in our approach, content and design – we set out with the notion of fun, personal and informative. Hopefully now we will have the platform from which to move forward and achieve our goals.

Spring is here, a great meeting indeed – fun, informative, a common sharing of ideas and highly productive – onwards and upwards!

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