Bio - Third stage - Biography

In this stage of production, the biographies have been added for the majority of the group. Each group member was asked to submit 150-200 words about themselves to e displayed alongside their own images. To ensure each person was aware of the submission of a biography, I created an information sheet stating exactly what was required from each member of the group in order to complete this web page. Also on this sheet was information regarding the photo shoot time and location, which was set up to obtain photographs taken in the same setting in order to produce a sense of conformity in the finished web page, with minimal editing needed.

For the initial design the biographies were placed alongside their photographs, which as can be seen from the image below, did seem to work with the design already set in place. The only flaw was that of the quality of the text in the bio seemed to deteriorate when exported for flash. Many solutions were thought of to overcome this including trying to export from Adobe Illustrator.

It also seemed necessary, for space purposes, to remove the ‘end of year show’ title front the head of the page. Although initially a good design idea, the title was just taking up valuable space needed by the biographies.

Bio - Second stage - Script Editing

Once I had decided on the Flash presentation for the display of the biographies, the next step was to create a design which utilised the space available in the most effective way. In order to do this to my satisfaction, I imported all the necessary components of the page into a Photoshop document and arranged them as a reference plate. The smaller images would be along the bottom with the larger ‘Polaroid’ image shown above. The idea for the design was to display the smaller images at all times with the names appearing as subtitles underneath. This enabled the user move freely between the selections of which biographies to read.

A noticeable change to the layout is the addition of a key legend on the left hand side, showing which colours correspond to each of the teams involved in the exhibition. These colours can be referenced to the overlay tint colour of each person’s image. This was created to show a sense of conformity to the exhibition logo colours and also to give the different photographs a common similarity.

The font for ‘end of year’ was also changed to tie in with the script effect of the names written on the base of the Polaroid images which were given a handwritten effect to add a personal feel to each name against the person they represent.

Other small changes include the movement of the logo slightly and the addition of an interactional ‘Back’ button which will be used to navigate to the previous screen when the website goes live. All change and amendments were shown and approved by my team leader, who gave his blessing for future changes as the design progressed.