A quick graphical poster mock-up created within an hour from photographs being filled in and layered to create depth of field.

The idea behind ‘Goodbye 100’ is a glimpse into the  one hundred years from now, looking at what will become of our world when the energy, food, fuel and ultimately human race  struggle to surive.

It is not our future, it is theirs.

All marks and feedback have now been received following on from the convergence task and R&D presentation and although I am pleased with the grade I received, you can always do better in your work.

Therefore moving forward into the main research and development semester B piece it is time to think about what direction I can move forward in and fully expand my creativity into something productive and engaging. This term I will be looking for inspiration and ideas around a simple “free project” based on either the European Youth Award themes, or our completely own theme, this is a time therefore to enhance my skills and begin to create a working portfolio and designs and creations, leading into level 3.

Presently I am looking at a platform around visual presentation, incorporating both visual/ special effects, branding and photography as key areas of interest, although this could change within time. The next 2 weeks will now be placed around research into these areas and expansion of hopefully a good design and/ or idea.

– Jack

This week brought me to experimenting with Abobe’s “Capture” app in relationship to Adobe illustrator and branding designs.

Basically the app allows you to capture the ‘look’, ‘colour’, ‘brush’, and most importantly ‘shape’ of an image. The app then automatically connects to your adobe account and uploads these images and shapes, now vector graphs straight into your illustrator side bar. I had a practice with a few images of the web of Lana Del Ray and experiment with capture and colour.

Although simple enough  it will take some time to get use to the app and how to produce the best vector images, here’s a few practice designs from my first session using the app.

When creating a successful website, I undertook research (found here: http://everydaydesigner.net/design/top-10-successful-web-designs-trends-of-2015) into finding what works and what doesn’t, making ultimately this core list of basic website design elements to succeed:

• A responsive layout (Mobile friendly and easy to use).

• Clean and Simple (Visually pleasing and easy on the eyes).

• Minimalism (Keeping everything tidy and accessible).

• Parallax imaging (Making scrolling enjoyable and desirable).

• Fixed Headers (Keeping your brand always visible and reminding users where this information comes from).

• Background imagery (although this can take away from a minimalist approach, it can make a website more welcoming).

• Story telling/ Galleries (imagery and designs will attract users to revisit websites and further develop their interests within the product).

• Animations? (In the case of some websites animations and interactive design making the experience feel more unique and user friendly).

• Single page scrolling (Keeping everything to one page stops new pages and over loading of the website which can look messy and become annoying).

• Know your audience (Understanding what an audience wants and what fits in with the ‘theme’ of the product is the most crucial element into making the website work).