Sunday 16 February 2014

OPEN DOORS: BLOG / WEBSITE RESEARCH

Before designing the blog I wanted to research into design, fashion and art based websites to see what features they included the aesthetics.




Nasty Gal is a fashion blog and apparel store, I really like the manipulation of the images on this website which make the website stand out and adds texture.

Elise Rose


Elise Rose is a photographer, again I like the way she manipulates the images in her portfolio to add texture and colour. The grid of her website is very simplistic allowing the images to stand out and act as a main focus.





I think the layout of the page is very simplistic and creates a collaging technique for the photo's which makes it stand out. Also when an image is clicked onto there are links and information about the design which is a useful feature to require and is something I will consider.




Similarly to design inspiration the creative journal follows a similar grid. The images work it a light box format so when they clicked onto they grow bigger and text is formatted underneath. This feature is very common in the websites I have looked at and again is something I should include.





This website takes on a different approach than the other one's I have looked at and instead of a wall gallery it uses blog posts for the reader to look further into. I think a feature like this would be suitable for the type of website/blog I am trying to produce and is a consideration.





Baubau haus is something I would really like to create aesthetically, the simplistic colours against the photo's works really well and the logo / black navigation back makes it easy to navigate round visually. The website include features such as tags, social network links and drop down menus to get to specific art work.


After looking through these websites there are a lot features that I have come across that have influenced the way I want to design my work. I think that using a simplistic colour pallet will benefit the whole design of my work as it allows the photography to stand out and a collage style gallery for the images to work into creates a clean and professional look.

After looking at some design based websites, I decided to research further into the aesthetics of strictly fashion editorial websites to see the features they obtained and how I could use some of them in my work.




I decided to look at vogue magazine firstly, as it is high regarded in the fashion industry and globally. The website has a clean and minimal approach which allows the images to stand out for the audience to interact with.  The website uses clean serif type which makes it look professional and clean cut.

After looking at this website I then decided to look into the websites, of the magazines I wanted to feature. Although Vogue is highly recognised, the main theme of my website is to introduce magazine that have really interesting design but are not as commercially recognised as other leading editorials.




Derzeit is a Berlin based fashion magazine, that uses negative effectively round the boarder of the covers. 
The website follows the same conventions of the design of the editorial which I think is works cohesively as a brand. The home page uses a statement logo to attract it's users to interact with. The features of this web page include contacts, and links to social network pages which is something I will take into consideration when making mine. I also like the use of white and black on the website which allows the photographs colours to really stand out.





Bon is Swedish based magazine that experiments with really modern and futuristic type and photography. The website again introduced external links such as Instagram 'bonstagram'  so users can stay up to date with what the magazine is up to. 




Although Love creates a really good magazine, I think they are let down by their website as it is very hard to navigate. The home page is full of pop ups, motion graphics and landing pages which doesn't make it user friendly and is something I will consider when creating mine. However the feature pages are much more simplistic and the photography is set out clearly with option to look at the images in higher resolution. One thing I have learnt from looking at this magazine is the importance to maintain consistency throughout a design.







Pop is a british based magazine in London. their website is very clean, minimal and works with a lot of imagery. However the website fails to show issues of the magazine which is quite un-usueful for it's users. A important thing for me to consider is what content is relevant and irrelevant for the my website so that my users can successfully interact with it.




V is a american magazine based in New York, the website takes on a strong back background which also helps emphasise the text and images on the page and is a bold feature. Again it also has external links to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages for it's users to interact with further.





Used magazine is a London based magazine, I really like the layout of this website as it's clean and consistent throughout and easy to navigate. The website uses consistent use of type and photography making the design look professional and consistent. The aesthetics and message of this website is something I would like to obtain in my own.




Again dazed and confused has a similar style to the magazine above, however the website experiments more with the arrangement of content and grids which I think gives it visual variation.







Lastly i-D magazine is one of my favourite magazine, however I think the website is not very user friendly, the landing page makes it hard to navigate to get onto the home page and the brief naming of links makes it hard to find what you are looking for.

From all the research on these websites, I found that are a lot of interesting feature that I have come across that I would like to include in my website, such as social network links which create direct communication with the users. Also the layout and grids from the majority of these websites are minimalistic allowing the photographs to do the talking. Looking at these websites has allowed me to brainstorm some good idea's to move forward with when producing mine.

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