During my trip to Kenya two years ago I became passionate about girl’s education in the developing world, so I knew I wanted to focus on a non-profit organization with those goals.
My friend who I traveled with in Africa is starting the nonprofit Girls Change. It’s in its beginning stages and doesn’t even have a website yet. Hopefully my project can help her develop Girls Change’s webpage in the future.
I chose a dark background with bright colors and images. My hope was to use color to portray the idea that even in a seemingly hopeless and despairing situation there is always an opportunity for change and renewal. Many girls around the world could flourish if only given the chance for an education. I tried to use hopeful and happy photos because with a dark background, pictures of poverty would be overwhelming. And just as Prof. Harper said in class people want to be part of a solution rather than join a problem.
I also tried to emulate the format of other non-profit websites dealing with education in Africa. The straightforward layout with a banner photo and text underneath is familiar to the viewer and makes it easy for them to maneuver the site. I saw this format used a lot so I copied it for mine.
Since Girls Change doesn’t have a logo yet I created one for them using the cent sign as the C in Change.
Here’s a website that shows 40+ award winning non-profit websites. Amazing inspiration!
We’ve been talking a lot about Charity water in class and how successfully they have built a website and marketed their nonprofit at the same time. Well as I was doing my Christmas shopping I came across this shoe that combined Charity Water with Tom’s Shoes. I though the shoe was a brilliant move for both organizations. They have similar goals and themes and Tom’s target audience would be incredibly interested in a nonprofit like Charity Water.
While this isn’t directly related to the design aspect of our web projects I think it’s important to find and include connections like this one in web publications. It will be especially beneficial when we are designing webpages for our own organizations in the future.
I first started the project thinking I wanted to do a travel piece about Bali. However when I started working on it I felt like the images I was finding were either too overused or just not high enough quality. So I changed my topic to cupcakes. The images were great and I knew I’d have fun working on it.
I found it really difficult to keep my spreads cohesive throughout the project whether it was fonts or the color scheme. I think I limited myself by making my opening spread browns and cream. But I tried to follow that through the entire project. I used Helvetica for most of the body type and Snell Roundhand for my accent font. All my images were found from Google and are of large size from cupcake websites or blogs. I chose them because they matched the color scheme and based on how edible they looked.
I think this was definitely my most challenging project yet because there were so many details to pay attention to while also trying to create a pleasing and consistent spread.
For my magazine spread I want to center it around a specific location. But I was nervous a location might not be enough to fill out a spread. This blog is full of great photography that reassured me it is going to be possible to create a spread out of a place and its landscape. A single picture can go a long way if it’s powerful enough and the limited but obvious text also made the whole spread look very cohesive. the rest of the pieces on his blog are def. worth a look if you’re considering a mag. spread that will include landscape!
I loved this site for inspiration because I needed help starting to think about possible layouts and this gave me a variety. There are so many great examples of how to use font, color and photography cohesively across two pages without it becoming cluttered.
I loved these examples of business cards because they were unique without being graphically complex. It gave me hope that simplicity can create a lasting impression when it comes to branding ourselves.
White doesn’t always have to be boring! These business cards are striking without using any color. They stick to the themes of simplicity and minimalism without fading away into the backround.
I loved this blog because it not only gave me 46 amazing logos to gain inspiration from, but also WHY they were so amazing in the first place! It helped me see how type can be incooperated into a logo and act as an illustration and background.
