The virtual experience

The virtual experience is the main purpose of the site, it must allow the user to experience what other cultures have to offer in the same way a normal visit to that country would in a safe and consistant manner. Once the user has selected a country they would like to visit, they will be confronted by a confirmation page. They can be seen here;

On this page there is a faded flag in the background while the country name is written a typeface traditional to their history. Once they havee selected start and began the adventure, they will be presented with a screen where it tells them some basic information about that country such as a weather forecast for that week, the time difference, popular foods and attractions. This page should also offer the user the ability ot customise their frog with items from that country.

The next section is about a touristic area within that country, and a guide can give the user random facts about that place. This part is to encourage learning about that country and important facts about it’s culture.

The next section is about encouraging socialising between users, in this area all users who are on this trip at the same time are available here. Therefore this means people are able to talk with users around the world in this section. When they are socialising, they are able to speak in a chat or play mini games with that user. There is a ‘bot’ frog who speaks in both the users language and the language of the country they are ‘visiting’ who can speak to the user and also play mini games with them, this is ideal for realibility and also while there are no other users in the chatroom.

Once the user has finished in the chatroom with the other users, they are able to progress onto a new section that gives the user a lesson in the language of that country. This is done using images that relate to words as recommended by my research.

The next section is a modern connection to people now taking selfies. The user will find a picture of their frog dressed in the way they have been customised in the scene of the country. It is a great way to reflect on what they have learn at a later time.

The next section is quite important as it allows the user to start a conversation with a resident of that country, it shows the user the other persons frog, their name and some other basic information then encourages them to send them a message to say hi.

Postcards are related to the tradition of sending a message back home to people you know with a short message about your trip. These can be sent via messages to other users and can fully customised. The screen below lists a grid of postcards available to send.

Then once selected the user has the ability to be able to edit the postcards with stamps, drawings and pictures of their frog whil also being able to add a message to the card. This encourages other users to learn about that specific place too.

It is important to note that the screens are a mixture of textured backgrounds or gradients, this is something that has been noted as requiring further work in ther development stages of these sections.

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Fonts & Styles

Font research is important for this project because I have to pick fonts that are legible by a wide demographic, youngsters who may have only just started reading and may struggle with it. Also, when the demographic spreads across the world, there are going to languages the site is written in that uses the same font, therefore the site needs to be something that can be understood in all languages by very young children.

That said the main site wide font can be a simple sans-serif font, that matches the designs of large organisations like Apples’ ‘San Fransisco’ font and Googles’ ‘Open Sans’ font.

Looking through googles’ fonts featured at (https://fonts.google.com/) there are actually a lot of appropriate looking typefaces, it is simply a case of picking one.

The reason for using Googles’ fonts?

• These fonts are great because they are completely free to use, and require no liscensing whatsoever and are completely unlimited with no caps on usage.
• Cross platform rendering is fully supported by Googles’ content delivery network meaning font stability in different browsers and devices works perfectly.
• Loading times are much faster since they are compressed and are much more lightweight than self-hosted and Typekit fonts.

After the site wide font it is important to consider the other fonts that can be used to enhance the look and feel of the site. This is something I discussed in my design infleunces with the styled tourist guidebook of Amsterdam (https://akbrodie.wordpress.com/2016/12/09/design-inspiration-2/). Therefore I think it is important to look at some of the popular fonts in different countries that relate to the heritage of that country.

The system font I have chosen is based on a few different things, after a little research I found that a font that is popular with my target audience is comic sans because it big rounded and fun as seen below;

The problem with this font is that it has been rated one of the worst fonts to use in a design. Therefore I had to look a new, updated alternative version that has the same impact on the target audience. I managed to find the font ‘Varela Round’ which has a similar style;

The problem with this font is when it shown very small it seems too bunched together in terms of the letter spacing, therefore it is important to increase the kerning size;

With the site font sorted out, I was left with searching for the remaining fonts for the specific countries around the world that would require their own font to introduct the country. This was a reasonably easy process as I would find fonts that relate to the specific countries and then use that research to pick the specific ones. This can be seen by the the font examples below;

Target Audience of Logo

I started to research which part of the demographic my blog was for, I was able to look at the statistics for my blog, to find out who my target audience was. It turns out in the 2 months my blog had been available for the public to read, It had been viewed 401 times from 12 different countries;

This means my blog logo has to be simple enough to be understood by people whose first language isn’t english, the best way to do this is through universal language such as colours and shapes. Simply using my initials would be enough for people to understand that its relating to myself, in simple shapes, using colours with psychological meaning. I want to portray myself as a professional who is cool and dominant enough within the market to stand out from the crowd, a happy, cheerful & trustworthy designer, whose work screams simplicity. To portray this image, I examined my colour research and found the following colours to be relevant to my overall feel.

Red-Orange:

– Desire

– Sexual passion

– Pleasure

 – Domination

Gold/Yellow:

– Wisdom

– Wealth

– Joy

– Happiness

– Intellect

– Energy

– Cheerfulness

– Loyalty

Blue:

 – Trust

– Wisdom

– Confidence

– Intelligence

– Truth

– Masculine

– Expertise

White;

– Perfection

– Coolness

– Simplicity

Purple;

– Royalty

– Luxury

– Ambition

– Wisdom

– Dignity

– Independence

– Creativity

– Mystery

This gives me something to apply to my current designs that are still in the black & white stage.