Persona

Understand the user is vital to creating immersive experience to suit them. With research, discovering my target audience would be adults between 24 and 45 years old, I need to create a website that is accessible and easy to use whilst still creating desire to attend the exhibition. Also it is worth noting that to create a suitable marketing campaign, it is absolutely vital that I fully understand my target audience.

To maximize the sales of the exhibition, the success of the website, I must concentrate on marketing meaning that I create a brand around the exhibition and get people talking about it, something that was suggested by top marketer Sean Dromgoole at his TedX talk about “the future of marketing”.

Since the purpose and goals of the site were to sell exhibition tickets, I needed to cover as broader spectrum as possible therefore it was important to keep the audience very diverse in gender, age, education level and work experience. I would need the user to visit the site for the purpose of finding out more about the exhibition but then to buy tickets while they were there. For this reason I need the site to work on every device and every browser in aim to stop myself from loosing sales beside on the website design and build. The user will be one of two categories, encouraged by the element of making money by turning base metals to gold and the other group would simply be interested in learning more about alchemy on a factual level.

References;

Kar Yan Tam , Shuk Ying Ho, Web Personalization as a Persuasion Strategy: An Elaboration Likelihood Model Perspective, Information Systems Research, v.16 n.3, p.271-291, September 2005  

Alfred Kobsa, Generic User Modeling Systems, User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, v.11 n.1-2, p.49-63, 2001

Sung Min Bae , Sung Ho Ha , Sang Chan Park, Fuzzy Web Ad Selector Based on Web Usage Mining, IEEE Intelligent Systems, v.18 n.6, p.62-69, November 2003

http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/personas.html

 

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Font Research

Legibility in fonts is the most important factor, but next comes style. I have to use a combination of fonts to create the style I want, in this case I need to use a font that matches the magical experience I want the user to have. While the font needs to be mystical it also needs to be modern and user friendly. I have have made sure that these fonts are from google fonts to help loading time and accessibility. Below are the fonts that were tested;

Title

After discussion with the target audience the font “Tangerine” won by far, this is the font I will use.

Content

After discussion with the target audience the font “Libre Baskerville” won by far, this is the font I will use

References;
http://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-4/fine-typography/legibility

Composition rules of Photography

There are many composition rules within photography that help look an image look professional, you always need to consider these when taking photographs.

The rule of thirds

This is basic photography and can even be seen in modern smartphones, a grid is placed onto the screen consisting of two horizontal and vertical lines meaning there are 9 equal sized sections. The aim of the rule of thirds is to get the important element of thew image either on the lines or where they cross.

Balancing Elements

When taking a photo using the rule of thirds you will sometimes realise that there is a large portion of the image that looks empty, if you fill that space with something else, it will make the photo seem more interesting.

Leading Lines

Lines within images are great because we are naturally drawn to them, so as a photographer you can use this to your advantage by allowing the lines to lead to the focus of the image.

Symmetry & Patterns

As human beings we find beauty in symmetry, as found in a New Mexico State University study which “utilises a program called FacePrints, which shows viewers facial images of variable attractiveness. The viewers then rate the pictures on a beauty scale from one to nine. In what is akin to digital Darwinism, the pictures with the best ratings are merged together, while the less attractive photos are weeded out. Each trial ends when a viewer deems the composite a 10. All the perfect 10s are super-symmetric.” By taking advantage of this in photography, you can create beautiful images.

Viewpoint

Placing importance on the angles we take our images from is a good skill to learn as it can lead to some more abstract pictures. When taking an image I should take note of what angles I could take the shots at, be that with height, distance etc.

Background

If an image has a background that has a lot going going on, it will distract from the focus of the image,simply changing an angle and getting a plain background can help the focus of the image stand out.

Depth of Field

To create an image with a great sense of depth, you must understand the elements of a foreground, mid ground and background. These can create a feel of scale and depth by itself. By using objects in each section for the depth, it will allow the viewer to understand the scale much better. You can also create an element of depth by blurring the background, this can be done by

Framing

You can create a natural frame within an image, placing certain objects around the edge of the image you create a focused image which will draw the attention to the part of the image with most importance.

Cropping

Cropping is a very important tool to use as a photographer as it allows you to delete unwanted details to reduce noise, making sure the focus of the image is all the viewer can see.

References:

http://www.photographymad.com/pages/view/10-top-photography-composition-rules

http://legacy.jyi.org/volumes/volume6/issue6/features/feng.html

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