Web_Design Blog 6

visual inspirations

For the website I will be building on the statistic, “There are 18 different animal shapes in the [Barnum] Animal Cracker Zoo” I wanted to design a site that was going to tribute animal crackers as a classic treat that may remind adults today of their childhood. I struggled with directions for visuals but I would like to do something playful, not too crazy, and find a way to mix contemporary elements of design from today with vintage elements to tie into old age of animal crackers. Because my statistic relates to the Barnum brand specifically having 18 cracker shapes, I needed to think of how to mesh together my design with their distinct packaging. Currently my plan is to create a “logo/headline” for the statistic and use a design with hues from the vintage Barnum color palette on a very light background. For the “about” page I think I can then input the Barnum picture from their vintage/collectors set and add a buy merchandise link that links to Barnum Animal Crackers. Because this site is not about trying to promote a new product but celebrate a classic treat, I think I can get away with this. My mood board is being used to inspire some playful ideas using pops of colors and styling. For type treatments I think the “Combine” logo works well mixing a slab serif with a sans-serf typeface that mixes an older style with new. I think something like this could work well for my site. A site that I came across that uses this idea pretty well is etc.com. They have a primarily black and white website with hand rendered illustrations of western style elements and then added small uses of bright colors while mixing typography styles. A site that I found that had interesting typography using texture and color against a white background was Abel&Cole.com. One last visual I wanted to point out was a packaging design I found for facial scrubs. The brand is Avelet and I really enjoyed their packaging. The pomegranate example shown is a clean design with a hint of color and hand rendered ink drawings that give a light organic feel to the product. Because animal crackers are supposed to be a more nutritional substitute for a cookie, I think this idea could work for my site.

structural inspirations

I have found some sample websites that are visually appealing and have different structures I could see myself using for this website. The revolver website was set up nicely, specifically the header because the bold logo sits in the middle and grabs the user’s attention while the nav sits conveniently right below it. Another approach to branding and navigation is not centering and to set the information off balance like shown in the Capital Awards 2011 site. This site is also very clean and uses their logo, soft textures, and one color for visuals. One site I found to be structured in a similar container size as to what I want to design mine like is Linneaslights.com. The natural hues with colors work nicely as well.

Lastly, as the visual aspect of the home page, I would like to use imagery for secondary focus to go along with the statistic. I also want to add some small content to tell the user what this site is about.  Below are two examples of websites using a central focus on their homepage with minimal text.