For the first brief set to us, I decided to create smoke-based typography text. This was probably the hardest decision I’d made, because it was incredibly difficult to handwrite each letter and then edit them in Photoshop before then finally adding the smoke effect. The brief was to create six uppercase letters and six lowercase letters, which I did do. It was easier to create the six uppercase letters, which I enjoyed more than making the lowercase letters, as it was harder to draw them on the computer and too much smoke or smudging made them difficult to read.

If I had the chance to re-do my text, I would have spent longer making sure to layer each smoke piece correctly so it would be easier to shift around and to stretch or shrink. However, if I had the time to re-do this brief, I would perhaps choose something a little less difficult which would be easier to mass produce. Saying this, I do like my design itself, as I feel it shows a lot of creativity.

For the second brief, I paired up with Natalie Kennett and Leah Darvell, as I felt because we were already friends we would have great work ethic and would help inspire each other to do our best work. However, once we had managed to get into a group, it was difficult making sure that we all knew what we were doing, that we all knew how to create what we needed to create and that we were staying correct to the brief itself.

We started the brief by choosing our audience, which was to be children of GCSE age (so children between the ages of 11-16), and by researching what exactly websites, apps and posters aimed at this age group looked like. We noticed a lot of these products used graphics to attract the children’s attention. Although originally we chose already-made graphics, in the end we decided to create the graphics ourselves, by drawing them on paper, painting them with watercolours and then scanning them in to be used digitally. This worked well for us because we wanted the products we were creating to look as if they had been handmade.

My job amongst the group was mainly to focus on the posters, although I did contribute towards the app and the website. To do this, I researched GCSE Bitesize posters that teachers would have in their classrooms and used this research to create posters that use graphics and eye-catching designs such as text being placed in different positions and vectors such as hand-drawn aliens to make the poster seem more fun. If we had had more time to create these products I would probably have tried to make the posters more fun and realistic by including actual information on them and by perhaps editing the planet graphics so that their faces would be different facial expressions.

The app and the website are my favourite part of the brief because I feel like they were so well done. Although the app includes a lot of text the positioning of each of them on the web pages is for me a good ratio, because it means that a child would not get confused from the amount they had to read. The website is also extremely good, although this ratio as mentioned above does need a little work doing to it. I do like the use of the stars placed on strings around the app and the website, as I feel like this gives the products a fascinating, child-like touch.

One thing I would perhaps consider in the future is, as a group for our second brief, it was sometimes difficult to communicate all of our ideas. Therefore some of our designs that we have created together don’t quite match up. Our research also could have been better orchestrated. I feel like if we had got more time or if we had communicated better these flaws could have been ironed out. This is something that I will consider in the future.

These are my final attempts at the app pages that I chose to create. The first two are Jupiter and the second two are Uranus.

I am quite proud of these designs. I have changed quite a lot about them since the first draft. I have altered the layout of the text on both pages, because once again I felt they were too cramped and difficult to read for children. I also added the stars as seen on the website pages, but I made them clearer because I felt this worked with the crispness of the app as it is closer so the children would be able to see the actual design of the stars.

As for the aspects of the app if it was created, again, I like the idea of the stars being able to move and chime like wind-chimes; however, because there isn’t a particular way for you to be able to hover your thumb or finger above the app like there is on a computer with your cursor, I think the stars should swing by themselves every couple of seconds and to get them to stop you just press your finger against them. I also like the idea of the planets independently being able to blink or smile. The use of Einstein also being on the planet would be fun for a child because I think it would be funny for them, especially if he blinked, danced and said words in a thick Austrian accent. Overall, I feel like we have done well on the app pages, which are in fact my favourite pages, and I feel like we have met the brief well. The only thing I would perhaps change is to include text for Einstein to speak.

Based on the research and Leah’s previous designs, this is my first draft of my app page for Jupiter.

These are the two drafts for Jupiter side by side. As you can see I have included a box that folds down from the top of the page when you press it, which can direct you to several other pages on the app. I also added text from the bottom of the planet to signify which planet this was; however, from our feedback given by our peers, this doesn’t look as good as we had hoped, and so I am planning to scrap this in the next attempt at the product. I do feel like the text around the planet would also be difficult to read as it has had to be cramped against the wall. However, I do like the use of Einstein sitting on the planet.

This is also my draft for the app of Uranus.

This is also pretty similar to the draft Jupiter. However, I did include more text because the Uranus graphic was smaller than the Jupiter; I don’t feel like this works so well though. Therefore I will change this in my next attempt.

Finally, I turned my attention to the app. Although Leah had officially master-minded the layout, Nat and I had helped with the overall design and now it was my job to create two pages for the app to add to this.

First of all, I looked at more research. We had researched apps together ourselves at the beginning of the brief but I wanted to look more in depth at the type of app that we were trying to create, at something educational that would work for the age group we were aiming at.

These were the top three that I felt matched our content the most. The first app in particular I really enjoy, because I feel like it is incredibly similar to our own and that we could draw from this into our designs. I also really liked the last app because it feels a lot more organic and easy to use, in that you can use your finger and thumb to travel round space and click on all the different planets. However, although the second app does match our content, I find it quite boring, although I do like the placement of the videos in a jigsaw.

 

After receiving feedback from my peers and teacher about the overall design of our website, including drafts, I decided to compare our website to other children’s websites on space. This was quite difficult because as we had seen before a lot of the websites were actually games, not educational, and so it was hard to find something that would exactly match what we were trying to create. However, I did manage to find a couple of websites that were similar to ours in the sense that they were also clearly fact-based.

These are what I have found. I feel like our design does match up quite well with these websites, and perhaps even looks better in some aspects. For example, these websites to me feel a little boring, because there is a lot of text and not enough graphics or bright colours to simulate children and to invite them to use them. Although ‘Planets for Kids’ does use more images than StarDate, I feel like these images are a little dull because they seem just to be copied and pasted from another source. This is one of the reasons why we decided to actually hand-made our graphics. Overall, I don’t feel like these websites do that good of a job in comparison to our website, which I feel is a lot more fun.