Attending Google Polymer

 

Google Polymer project held an event in London to learn about Polymer and meet other developer. It was a fantastic experience, where there was lots of information about new technologies and ways to develop.

Arriving at the venue, the branding was everywhere, and it was possioble to find the venue by simply following the crowds of people from the station.

I was to go to the main desk where I checked in, collected my pass, shirt and was directed to the breakfast lounge.

Arriving early at 8AM breakfast was served, this was free and seats were provided around the venue in a typical Google fashion, it encouraged conversation between developers. It was fascinating to meet professionals much better than I had ever expected.

It was at this point people were discussing what the days events were going to be able what they were most looking forward to, people were crowding around these moniters, checking out the days itinery.

At 9AM the doors opened and the opening speech began, luckily I managed to get one of the front row seats.but looking back there were the 700 attendies from over 100 different countries.I spent the day watching talks on cutting edge web technologies.I also attended workshops where I would get involved with coding apps.When the days coding was over, Google had an open bar with free drinks and food to allow for conversations between coders.

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Initial design research

I am creating a photo portfolio of pictures taken in Paris, I thought it would be valuable to examine a few examples of current designs online. Since we Have to have a search feature. I think that the site should be more like a search engine. The landing page is a simple image of Paris with the search bar on top allowing the user to search. Once the user has searched it will bring the relevant results back with the option to search again. Here are a couple examples of the landing pages for search engines, bear in mind that I am not providing any other content than the image so the more content heavy pages will be irrelevant so I will be looking at the most simple ones.

Firstly an clean simple landing page is vital, as you can see above from Bing and Google, there is the search box and not much else, apart from Bing strands out a little more as it has an image behind it, this works well and I think I should use this in the design I make.

http://pollenlondon.com/carine-marque/

Have a brilliantly designed homepage, it combines an image and a white box with the title and the category of the industry that they work within. This could work really well with the search bar for the Paris site. Since Paris is seen as luxury, romantic place to be, it would work well to market this site as a more luxury service, and this has been achieved well through Pollen Londons’ website.

Flickr has an unusual way of presenting the images, just by using a grid where the images are only aligned with vertical size, it makes for an interesting format.

Since I am only placing ten images on thew site, there is only going to be a small return for any searches conducted. Therefore, I have found the design of pocketsquaredesign.net to be quite relevant to mine, they have created large views of the images, with text above to describe it, I think this would work really well in my design.

Third Design Stage

The third step In the largest step in the process of the design, there are a lot of key factors that come into play between this and the previous stage of my design. Here’s the design;

Firstly, the biggest change you will see is the colours, I searched through http://www.colourlovers.com/ and found a colour set based on army colours;

It seemed appropriate to use army colours since I was illustrating the effects of the war and the military has large role in this. By using the colours I have done, it makes it much more obvious that my site is about the military than the bland colour palette I had previously had. Next you will notice the video the top has been removed and been replaced with an image.

I thought this would be moire appropriate as again, the purpose of the site would be the impact of the facts, so I didn’t want any distraction, by having an image that visually helps the user understand what the page is about it seems much more effective and works better with the flat design. You will also notice how I have added images with a low opacity to blend into the flat colours to give it a little extra detail so that the user has something as to relate to, therefore the budget section has an image of money, oil sales section has an image of oil rigs, the deaths section has a soldiers hand in the air, and the 9/11 section has an image of the twin towers with smoke billowing out of them. You can examples of this here;

You will notice how I have now completed what the military did and could have bought with the budget section again with their own colour schemes to set them apart and making the war side darker to illustrate the greed.

Relating the design back to the first concept on paper (https://akbrodie.wordpress.com/2014/12/30/initial-war-site-design/) you will notice how I have kept in line with the way I split up the different sections to give them different content. At this stage I was I was reasonably happy with the design being almost complete so I decided to add some interactivity into the page so that rather than just it just being scrollable there are actually areas for the user to click on. First was to decide the areas which would be most shocking and then deciding to use those areas for the interactivity. I decided to use the statement made by each president an interactive part so that you could actually click on a video icon and watch him saying it. You can see both examples here;

 

Next was adding more detail about the more important facts so that it wasn’t just more interesting, but also more believable. I did this to the only two sections that I felt it was appropriate to explain more about, the first one being who made the most money from the war, you can again see my example of this below of the 11 different sections;

The next section was about the oil reserves that Iraq had when the US invaded, and I believed this was an important part of the war because it was one of the main reason why the US invaded in the first place.

 

Something else I have changed since the earlier design is the font, which I changed to Century Gothic, I did this at it features in movies and games that focus on war and violence, you can see three examples below;

Something that I believe needs change is the way the viewer purchases tickets, if you are to capitalise on the experience the user is having, you need to make it incredibly easy for the user to buy tickets to the exhibition, preferably without leaving the page, this means the user doesn’t get sidetracked or distracted, so that you can capitalise on the emotion of the viewer while they are still shocked by the facts and want to learn more. This is the current state of the ticket section before I change it;

The final thing worth noting about the design so far is the call to action section, in my research I found a site (http://www.digitalrainforest.co.uk/) that had an excellent call to action at the bottom of the page, you can see it here;

The site is about how corruption and poverty leads people into cocaine farming in Peru and also how hard you must work and the health risks if you are to farm gold, cows or even chop down rainforests, so it basically sums up with three images what you purchase as a result of everything on in Peru then has a simple statement “if you think this has nothing to do with you, think again and get involved” which I thought was really empowering so I stole it for my design but changed the concept to keep it in line with the general design of my page. I placed a oil drum on the page which went to a petrol pump which led to a car with the same statement below it. I think this is an excellent way to get people involved, you can see my version on my design below.

Researching luxury brands

What sets luxury brands apart from the rest? If I want to give the impression my design brand has a luxury, very good quality service then I have to do some research into what people consider to be luxury brands and what sets them, apart from the crowd. In 2012 the US the luxury fashion market was estimated to be a value of $274 Billion with predictions of the value reaching $290 Billion by 2015. This would obviously prove that it can be very profitable to advertise your business as an outstanding service with a certain luxurious feel to it. Obviously, to come across as a luxurious brand you must offer an extremely good service, but a lot comes down to the branding and advertising, and this is something worthwhile knowing for my self-promotion.

Something that should be noted here is the work Sigmund Freud did  when he completely changed the way we consume, he was the one who had the idea to promote things so that the customer had an emotional connection to the product. Due to Freud, we now connect certain emotions to products, so power would come with expensive cars and watches, nice clothes would make someone more attractive, drinking expensive champagne would make someone classy and so on, this is partly how these luxurious brands manage to charge so much for their products, they simply appeal to consumer nature with emotion and psychology.

Chanel – The colour black is relatable to elegance, mystery and prestigiousness and the logo is symbolic of the luxury products they sell

The famous interlocking C’s were originally in chapel which had stained glass windows which featured them. You can see the window here:

Their website is full of attractive, well off people advertising their product in the best possible light, thew website itself is a wonderful experience complete with white space, nice hierarchy and beautiful design. When shopping their products section they keep it really simple and they actually have no models but instead show the product against a white backdrop, this means the entire page is entirely white other than the menu and the products themselves. Even after selling the customer this lifestyle of beauty, extravagance and wealth, the site then sells the product itself rather than an image. It used the image for the basis but then relies on the quality of its products to do the rest, so mixing the quality of the product with a vision of a certain lifestyle is how Chanel brand themselves. You can see the two different screens below;

Burberry is another famous brand given the luxury label – it has a value of $4.1 Billion and is rated 8th most valuable brand in the world. Again their logo;

is in black which has the same connotations as Chanel, these are of elegance, mystery and prestigiousness. The logo, designed in 1901, features an equestrian horse and is one of the most iconic logos in modern fashion. The shield of the rider is a symbol of protection but also the equestrian stands for pride, purity and grandeur, these things give the brand a certain luxurious feel before you have even stepped into their shop or looked at their product. The same can be said for Burberry’s website as Chanels, they feature images of attractive people on the homepage wearing their products but then when you click on the indivual products is ore about the quality of the product than the experience that goes with it and as you can see they have cropped out the models face for this reason.

Rolex is an expensive watch brand which has a market value of $7.9 Billion and is the worlds 5th most valuable company.

Their logo is also in black, which has the same connotations elegance, mystery and prestigiousness. To add to this though their symbol is of a crown which is recognised to be worn by royalty, so again, the logo gives the brand a certain feel of luxury before they have even looked at their products, this is something my logo doesn’t do so would have to make up in other ways. The word ‘Rolex’ is mean’t mean’t to have some french relation to the word exquisite.

The Rolex website is a bit different to the two previous sites, the homepage simply features the product with a small amount of text. Then when you click on the product you get lots of images with more text, there are no models, no impression of a certain lifestyle if you buy their product, simply just shows the quality and detail of their product in all its all glory

Finally, the Bugatti logo depicts the initials of Ettore Bugatti who invented the company in 1909 in the oval which is meant to represent elegance and technology.

The Bugatti website like Rolex amplifies the quality of their product rather than likening them to a certain lifestyle, while their products are things of beauty, even when you click on the different sections of the site, all you see is the car itself. Therefore you don’t need to show a certain lifestyle too become a luxurious brand, just present your product in the best light possible. You can again see their website below:

So, what have I learn? I believe to come across as a luxurious brand, you have to consider who your target audience are and allow them to relate to your product. Everyone wants nice things, and they want to come across well, and just like Freud’s early ideas about connecting emotions and feeling with products, you can very easily make people think in a certain way. By showing respectable, good looking person using the service, then the consumer will almost look up and aspire to be like him. By putting this image in their head of what they could potentially be and look like is enough to drive them to believe that your service/product would do that for them. I need to take full advantage of this psychological manipulation to make my audience perceive my brand in a certain way. I need to focus on being seen as a luxury brand but not forget about still having really good quality products to back up the psychology.

References:

http://www.therichest.com/expensive-lifestyle/fashion/10-most-powerful-luxury-fashion-brands-in-the-world/3/

http://www.iep.utm.edu/freud/

http://fashionista.com/2011/11/the-origin-of-chanels-interlocking-cs-logo-and-six-other-cool-things-we-learned-about-the-history-of-chanel

http://famouslogos.net/rolex-logo/

Good and Bad Branding

There are a lot of factors to take into consideration when creating a good logo. Colours, shapes target audience, competitors, message and meaning. Here are a few examples I found of each.

McDonalds logos one of the most iconic of all, regardless of age, gender or ethnicity this worldwide brand is instantly recognisable. Which it simply represents the M at the beginning of the word, which is actually originally taken from the original statement “golden arches”. The restaurant when first opened, had two large yellow arches on either side to make the building stand out:

When the logo was redesigned in 1962 they decided to design the logo as if someone was standing at an angle to the restaurant looking at it. As yellow has connotations of happiness, it would appeal to people passing by as a happy well-presented restaurant. It’s simplicity is key to making it instantly recognisable, containing no words, and language can understand what the logo is and what it stands for.

To fit in with a younger, a more social demographic, McDonalds rebranded itself to Macca’s in Australia, Macca’s is Australian slang for the restaurant and they picked up on this and decided to take advantage of this in their rebrand. The company’s chief marketing officer in Australia said “What better way to show Aussies how proud we are to be a part of the Australian community than change our store signs to the name the community has given us?”.

Coca-Cola logo is very iconic, again is a worldwide brand that was originally, in 1886, branded as an ‘intellectual drink’ that contained coca plant extracts to cure all nervous affections. The logo scroll typeface was based upon the handwriting of the pharmacist who created the drink. You can see both his and his handwriting in this image:

It is also worth noting that coca-cola is also responsible for the santa claus we all love and recognise today, in 1920 , they created a campaign where santa was shown as over-weight with a large white beard, this became the norm decades to come. The idea behind coke now is more about the experience of sharing happiness and positivity rather than enjoying a drink, and this can be seen in many of coca-cola’s marketing campaigns.

What’s interesting is that the companies that have been most successful all play on the ideology of the american dream. They all, In some capacity like to link their products to the classic american lifestyle, and you can actually see evidence of this in a lot of their products and their marketing campaigns. McDonalds have gone all out and even created a “tastes of america” menu featuring the burgers of different states:

Coca Cola have played on the american dream with almost every single advertisement they have ever produced, below is an image of a complication of all the different adverts they’ve made. It features happy soldiers, nice cars, beautiful people, american inventions such as the lightbulb, landing on the moon and fashion. All about a time when the people has ultimate trust in their governments, corporations and science in comparison to today where people are much less trusting of these things than they used to be.

Cadillac has a very interesting logo, one that isn’t as instantly recognisable but is probably seen as more luxurious brand.

The logo has laurel wreaths around a crest, the wreath is something that can be related to luxury right back to about 3BC when they were handed out in Greece to the winners in the ancient olympics. LaMothe Cadillac was the person who founded cadillac in 1701, and used his family crest in the logo.

The target audience of Cadillac is primarily middle aged businessmen, and they also like to play on the ‘american dream’ you can see it in their modern advertisement for the Cadillac ELR:

This very carefully constructed advert appeals directly to the upper-working class, displaying things like the pool, kids, new technology, nice home, attractive wife, nice clothes and nice car. The character questions consumerism, then provides the answer by stating “As for all thew stuff, thats the upside of only taking two weeks off in August”. He basically states that hard work pays off and then makes examples of wealth american businessmen, discusses the landing on the moon and then states “were the only ones going back up there”. This advert goes a long way to promote the american dream in an age where the american dream isn’t such a thing anymore, by talking about and showing luxury items and thing connected to america. You can watch the advert here;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGJSI48gkFc

On the other end of the scale are some really poorly designed logos, the biggest ‘fail’ of all time is the one created for the 2012 London Olympics.

It was called racist by Iran, and they threatened to withdraw from the games because of it. It can be see to be a rude act by Lisa Simpson on a man. While unique this logo had a massive backlash within the media, as designers across Britain believed they could have done better. The typeface was seen as looking very greek and unprofessional.

Pepsi rebranding took their logo and changed the direct on the curves in it. The upwards strokes could almost be seen as a smile, or the happiness that would occur when drinking pepsi. It is also very similar to the logo used to promote the Obama campaign, the light at the end of the tunnel/sun above the horizon means a new, brighter day. for look. You can see the old, new and Obama logo here:

This was also seen as a clumsy rebranding though as with a small addition to the logo, it looked like a fat man with shirt too small for his stomach.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Arches

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/9787581/McDonalds-rebrands-to-Maccas-in-Australia.html

http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/our_story/our_history.html

http://www.burgerbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/McD_Aussie_Tastes-of-America.jpg

http://envisioningtheamericandream.com/

https://bandt-au.s3.amazonaws.com/information/uploads/2014/08/JPcocacola.jpg?870196

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgZUaLTSAQI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_wreath

http://www.luxurydaily.com/cadillac-targets-business-minded-consumers-via-mobile-ads/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/26/this-commercial-sums-up-e_n_4859040.html

http://emagining.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/pepsi-farcical.jpg

http://www.billjacobscadillac.com/blog/history-of-the-cadillac-logo-what-does-it-stand-for/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/26/this-commercial-sums-up-e_n_4859040.html