Red Dog Productions Website – A Work In Progress

To combine the work I’ve been doing with RED Dog Productions (The New School’s in house production company) and my coursework for Media Practices: Interactive, my final project will be RED Dog’s website.

I’ve met with RED Dog’s administrators to identify their goals for the project and what they’re hoping to accomplish, identify key elements the site should feature.

Goals:

  • Showcase our work
  • Advertise our capabilities/services and appeal to clients outside of The New School
  • Demonstrate the professional training and real world opportunities student workers receive, which reinforces or compliments their classroom lessons
  • Portfolio for students who have gone through Red Dog’s training program

Important Site Features

  • Scrollable text (that doesn’t overlap menu or other text)
  • Embedded videos play easily
  • Student tags to allow for searchability

Inspiration:
(Sites that have similar purposes and design aspects and functionality we want to emulate.)

  • Blonde and Co – Sizzle reel upon opening, simple clean scroll through layout appealing. However text is messy and overlapping in some places. Clean up with div boxes.
  • Transient Pictures – Interactive collage for featured work

Navigation Elements and Site Map

Based on the preliminary discussions I have with the team, we identified the functional areas of the site: Projects, Services, Who We Are, and Professional Development. Projects will be a curated selection of our best videos, photos, and event documentation demonstrating to clients what RDP is capable of. Services will communicate to our clients what we’re capable of, how the company works, and will include contact information. Who We Are will be a breakdown of RDP’s faculty advisors from The New School’s media studies department, RDP’s professional staff (who I’ve been meeting with), and the student workers. Professional Development will describe a significant way RED Dog is unique, and that’s in the training program for future media professionals. There’ll be some background pictures of the students in action that can be used on the site. Furthermore, the assets in the Projects section of the site will be tagged with student identifiers, so that anyone visiting the site who wants to see the examples of what a specific student has worked on will be able to do so by clicking on the student’s name. The sitemap is as follows:

Proposed Sitemap for RED Dog Productions website. October 2014

Proposed Sitemap for RED Dog Productions website. October 2014

Design

I’ll receive feedback on my project proposal through my Interactive Design class. I had to submit the homepage for viewing, which doesn’t look as impressive as the sizzle reel video is the main component. But below I’ve include a sample of what the Faculty Expert page will look like. The faculty members names will be on a secondary navigation to the left. Selected one of the names will make the page jump directly to that professor’s bio. It’s all Ipsum Lorem text for now.

Faculty_Advisors_new

Notice how I’ve separated the text to make it easier to read. Unlike the Blonde and Co page. This is a work in progress created with Photoshop. I’m sure there will be other iterations before the final product.

Feel free to share any thoughts in the comments. Thanks for reading!

Transmedia Pitch – A Work in Progress

Transmedia Pitch – A Work in Progress

For my Storytelling Across Media class we were required to pitch a transmedia project to the class.  I’ve elaborated on an earlier concept that is The Rituals We Keep, a project focusing on the habits, routines, and rituals obtained while living abroad, and how adapting to those situations (or from those situations) shapes who we become.

 

Enjoy this prezi presentation. Transmedia Bible (an in depth logistical overview of the project) to come!

Work/School Collision

Work/School Collision

At my current job, we hire student leaders for the upcoming school year through a uniform application process. This year’s application theme is #leadership, as a play on the social media convention of “hashtagging.” Check out the logo I created for the application!  I don’t have access to fancy software at my job.  So this was created with good old fashioned publisher.  I’m pleased with how it turned out.

Good (Print) Design

Good Design

I found this site particularly helpful as I work to complete my final projects in Media Practices: Design.  Good Design should be clear and simple.  Excellent execution is key and it doesn’t hurt to be clever.  I’ll post my final projects when they’re done to see if I’ve met those requirements.