During the past few critiques that I’ve been involved with at school for my thesis, I’ve found that I’ve run into a few issues.
1. A -- People aren’t very responsive in giving me feedback. I’m to believe that either I’ve got everything nailed and it’s perfect or nobody knows what the hell I’m talking about. Therefore they have no ground to base any opinion on.
2. B -- Is my topic so niche and specific that it’s hard to communicate its essence without dumbing it down? I believe in simplicity, but how far is too far. Granted, the demographics of people that I’m targeting IS a small community. A community, I feel, that is turned on by cutting edge aesthetics and over the top intensity. So the real challenge is interpreting this small minute culture in a way that is broad and mainstream acceptable. It’s all rooted in pop culture anyway right? What’s not to understand?
At any rate, progress has been fairly smooth and uncomplicated. I’m fortunate that I chose and stuck with my direction throughout the entire process and thus enables me to fine tune it further as I get deeper and deeper. At this point, design and conception is 95% done. He next big stepping stone is production and making it come alive.
Here is a few designs that I put together for the website portion. My plan is to build it in After Effects where motion graphics will dictate how this whole thing works. This way, people can just watch the site in action without having to interact with it. It will also play a snippet of a podcast that I made as well as streaming video webisodes.
The prime objective is tie into this “crafty whimsical” sort of vibe while appealing to a hipper younger audience. I don’t think going for the corporate look would work for this. I’m also trying to “box” in certain aesthetics to help better separate the different options. An example of this would be the feature spread where the main box has the feature story, but then on the right hand side of the screen, everything else will be organized in smaller spaces to better help navigation. I agree it might be a little “chunky” right now. I’m wondering if there is a better way to connect the boxes without getting too cluttered. daytrotter.com is a major influences. As well as vbs.tv.
Yes, I am aware of the typos. This is all IN PROGRESS work. I may go in a change a few of the images too. I'm also leaving some room available at the top to incorporate an advertising web banner. These websites don't pay for themselves!
