We were given the details of a new assignment last week in my WordPress class. Suffice it to say that building a Blogazine for Special Topics would be a little pre-emptive and redundant. Sooooo, instead I’m switching gears and quarters. Originally I intended to work on the Blogazine during the first 2 quarters of the year and save the last quarter for some After Effects work. Now because of this new project, I’m reversing the process; pushing the website out to the final 2 quarters and starting After-Effects training now.
Monthly Archives: October 2013
Wall Of Sound Site Redesign
Worked with Megan Harris on a redesign of local vinyl curators Wall Of Sound website. Just in time for their new location opening up on Capitol Hill. Check out the fully responsive site here.
More Research
I spent almost all of last night reading through and soaking in the polished blogazine design and eloquent copy that is http://dustincurtis.com/. The guy has one of the most engaging blogs I’ve read in a long time. Part of that is due to the way it’s presented.
Dustin uniquely crafts each post/article as if it was going to print. It makes sense, he has a background in print publication. Combined with a well developed, concise and cohesive writing style backed by seriously interesting and relevant topics makes for an incredibly addictive experience. He has since moved on to a traditional static blog format at a different url (http://dcurt.is/) for the sake of rapid updates and faster posts, but his original layout remains up and contains enough content to keep you busy for some time.
Dustin’s layout style is something I feel has been severely overlooked in the past and is just now becoming a topic of attention (see Smashing’s ‘Death of a Blog Post‘). And it goes without saying that attention to detail goes a long way into crafting a unique and engaging user experience. It may be more work, but it’s worth it.
I’ve been looking for an excuse to get into storytelling design; one-of-a-kind dynamic scrolling environments possibly utilizing parallax and other scripted events. And with news of a new project hitting soon in another class that focuses on that very subject, I may have to re-evaluate my project timeline and adjust/switch accordingly.
Roll with the punches.
Stay tuned.
Branding Research
Starting this week, I will begin the comparative process of combing the web for competitors and evaluating their design approaches, content delivery and overall presence. The key is to get a better understanding of the current environment I will be up against and fortify my web presence with the best practices deemed most suitable for employment, but also to gain perspective on how to set my brand apart within this blog/editorial/lifestyle-niche landscape.
The Juvenilia embodies a certain youth-centric playfulness that’s not lacking on interesting content and well written copy. They’re focus encompasses nearly every medium I foresee covering and, as far as pure content is concerned; it’s as close a match as any. Delivery, however is another story.
They seem to be between a radical change in architecture and are currently offering an archive of blog posts containing all of their various artistic exploits over the years as well as an issuu.com flash controlled e-pub view of their first printed publication. The first issue is a sort of “best of” leftovers of their old web-format ways. Again, this is familiar territory for me being that the print version of my zine will follow a similar approach. Though that is the only similarity I can draw at this time. The site is aggregated by the usual navigation elements, but divided in it’s approach. Nearly all content is posted within the blog where it’s then categorized by medium. Where as the Issues section tries to break down the physical publication by taking the user off-site to a third party–No bueno.
Overall The Juvenilia is similar in content approach, but they’re content delivery is split in two different directions (at this time) and makes for a bipolar viewing experience. Integrating print and web into the same delivery system has it’s caveats, but it can be done with the proper understanding of each forms strengths and weaknesses and focusing both within their respective boundaries. I feel having a solid understanding of the end product will inevitably lend to the proper placement and architecture of the site both from a user experience perspective and a design forward one.
I will edit this post with more site research to come. Weeeeeeeee
Joshua Pitney 