Final Project Artifact: Magazine

In order to explain my contribution to the group I have to start with the company chosen. This is my soon-to-be Father In Law's landscaping company. He is a landscape architect in Gold Coast, Australia. Most of his jobs are targeted towards the highest concentration of wealth in the country. Right now his branding is limited, and he gets most of his jobs through referrals. As we discussed taking on the project, we analyzed our ideal client and tried to determine "How can we gear this towards wealth?"

We first came up with idea of clean design and a color scheme to match the surroundings.

Here is the style guide I came up with that night.....pardon the typos!

 We were brainstorming artifacts that would appeal to this clientele. We know they aren't going to respond to adds in public transportation, nor are they going to respond to door-to-door flyers. Our ideal client is going to make emotional decisions, they are going to choose a landscaper because his work is desired, essentially an architect that will make them look good.

This is why I chose my artifact: A magazine. I created this fictional local magazine from literally nothing. I didn't want this brand to just casually appear on a page of a random tabloid, instead I wanted to find my target audience.

This fictional magazine is exclusive to the Gold Coast. It features locals, it interviews locals and it shows off the best homes in the area. Basically, our clients want a lifestyle to match this magazine, and that's why they read it.

For my actual add page I decided to break continuity, the main font doesn't match any of the fonts found in the rest of the magazine or style guide. Instead I wanted this add to look like a note from your neighbor, your best friend, or even yourself! After all this add isn't appealing to a broad audience its targeted towards specific individuals within the wealthy communities.

Go ahead and flip though!

Axioms of Web Design

Chris Burkard is one of my favorite go-to sites, I love his work and I find this site soothing. His interface is much like a gallery, his main focus is on his work, this makes for a very intuitive understanding of what he does. I first found him while researching some goal zero products. Chris travels to remote destinations primarily focusing on surf photography.

When you reach his landing page there is very little text, instead his background loops through a few definitive pieces of his work. Its hard to tell from these screen shots, but all of the images chosen for the landing page actually have the subject of the photograph in the lower right corner.  I found this especially intriguing after talking about this axiom in class. Also-the first image on his landing page pictured above (surfer in Iceland) has a strong diagonal line within the landscape imagery, another selection for the site's main page.

His navigation bar is pretty straight forward, each has a little drop down menu with more options, its very clear and intuitive to navigate.

When reaching his gallery we get to my favorite part. I love the grid of images, I especially love the fact that there is no text or explanation. Its very quiet, you can literally sit back at the screen and try to imagine the context of each photograph. All of his galleries have the same interface. I selected to show the commercial gallery for the variety of images, I love how the images are so different but because of their placement there is some sort of cohesion.

Any first time user would be able to understand this site belongs to an adventure photographer, long before they click to his bio.



 

 

http://www.chrisburkard.com/