First logo designs

After sketching out my first designs for the logo of 'motive', I decided on one that I thought worked quite well for the brand and decided to experiment with different colours. The meaning behind the logo is that motive is a brand that is thinking ahead, this is why I chose this as a slogan. Therefore the thought bubbles demonstrate thinking ahead, which relates to the slogan of the brand.

Our Invitation To You from IDEO on Vimeo.

Stickers

Due to my survey results I found that people were forgetting to do simple things such as turn off light switches and recycle materials in the home. So I thought of a way to solve this problem, this was to create a set of stickers for people to place around the home to remind them to do these simple things. Each sticker features a different message for different appliances that people may have in their homes.

After spending a while getting my work up to scratch I have put together my new website www.benstrowman.co.uk, and is now online. The website showcases all of my favourite projects and the type of design that I am interested in pursuing when I graduate.

To visit the site please click here

Final identity

I have been working on developing the idenity for the brand as I felt that the weight of the lines that I created before in the previous design were far to thick, the spacing between the lines was far to generous and also I felt that the colour of the identity needed more experimenting with. This is the final design of the identity which I am pleased with in terms of colour and also the detailing of the lines that I used.

Naming the brand

I have been through various names for the brand and have decided on one which relates to the connotations to the brand, the name that I have chosen is 'motive'. This is because the website is all about motivating people to lower their carbon emissions and energy they use at home and when they travel.

Final outcome of the one week experiment

After conducting the experiment on myself for a period of 8 days, I gathered all of the data that I wrote down and visualised this by drawing the objects that I used in the home from the photographs that I took of the objects. Underneath each object features the data, including how long I used the object for, which day I used them on and also what setting I used them on.

I have recently downloaded an piece of software that allows you to record anything that is playing on your screen, which I thought was pretty impressive. It has come in useful for me as I have recently been thinking about having animated pieces on the website. With this software I have been able to record other animated websites that I feel have used techniques that are inspiring for my project. This website is called Speakvisual.com, the reason why I found this site inspiring is because it features a variety of different people on it, as my idea for the splash page for my site was to have a variety of different faces to represent different peoples lifestyles.

When the user clicks on the image of that person, a video appears on the page with that person talking over the top of it. I thought that it would be a good idea to have a similar scenario, where the image of the person explains how the site helped them reach a certain benchmark. Then the image of the person on the site would ask the viewer who is watching the "What's your benchmark going to be?"

Identity

I wanted the viewer of the site to get an idea of what the website is all about as soon as they come to the first page of the site. After sketching out different ideas of what I could design, I thought of bringing in elements that are associated with the brand, such as cars, light bulbs etc. This would then signify to the viewer what the website is about, or at least give them some idea.

Technology

After thinking of my final idea on how the website will motivate people to lower their carbon emissions, I needed to see if this idea of monitoring peoples energy use would be possible. My idea was to monitor how much energy people use at home and when they travel by car, and that if the user reduces how much energy they use each week then they will be rewarded. But to do this I had to check if this was possible. Whilst researching I found some new pieces of technology that allows you to monitor how much energy you use in your home via a wireless energy monitor, and also a car mileage tracker device.

With this new technology I will be able to create a website that will monitor people energy use at home and when they travel, making the statistic that I found which states over 40% of the UK's man-made C02 emissions comes from energy we use each day at home and when we travel.

Tutorial

After todays tutorial I feel that the first draft designs that I have created for the website are not to the right way of going about this project.

I was told that the designs look too common and that they are quite dull, I completely agree with this feedback and intend to develop these designs further. So I now intend to start creating some sketches to plan out what is going to be featured on the pages of the site, hoe the navigation will work etc. Hopefully this will help me decide what the look and feel of the website should be too. I was expecting the first designs to be quite rough so I am The designs that I showed are featured above.

This is the first design that I have started on working on for the home page of the site after creating the final identity. I thought of drawing appliances in that we use in the home each day to use as the buttons for the user to use to navigate around the site. Then the other content on the page would be the identity and also the a box that would allow the user to enter their home reference code to receive their results.