Accessibility Vs Aesthetics

Thinking about my own designs for the ident project i have come accross a design problem; the opposition between accessibility and aesthetics. On one side of the problem a good design must be as aesthetically pleasing as possible but on the other side it's function is to convey information directly and easily. The best way to convey information such as text is using a boring font on a white background, not the most interesting thing to look at. If this is the case then users may not want to read it. As a designer i must find a way of making an interesting design that also is accessible by as many people as possible.

Thoughts about my Identities project

Here are a few thoughts I have had about my Identities project and what I will need to do in order to make a successful product.

Aesthetics;
Although I have decided I want the Logo's for each strand of Trent Media to include the same symbol. Do I want the designs for each to have the same aesthetic style (as discussed in the post below) Or will their visual qualities be linked expressly by the Symbol present in each design? Will each design have the same look and tone? Or will they be linked solely by the repetition of the "M" symbol present in my design ideas below?

Accessibility;
Will my Logo's, website, video and other work be as clear and understandable to as many people as possible? Will they convey the meaning in an appropriate way? There are guidelines for web design concerning accessibility; will my site adhere to these?

Audience;
Are my designs appropriate for the audience they are intended for? Do students of Trent Media like my designs? The best way of resolving this will be asking them, something I must incorporate into my design process.

Fly Logo ideas

These are design ideas for Fly radio station. I have incorporated The "M" Logo that represents Trent Media in each. I think these ideas are quite succesful, but in contrast to my previous designs the images are quite crisp with clean lines and colours. I am going to have to decide whether i want the different Logo's eg fly and platform to be linked only by the "M" Logo or also by an aesthetic style.

More Logo ideas

These are all ideas for Trent Media's Logo:

I am still unsure about all of these Logo's, I think they may all be too complex and perhaps i need to approach their design from a simpler perspective. Although hard to tell from these images i created a pixelated effect on the font by photographing it on my computer screen. This is also how i created the pixelated effect on the "M" symbol.

Media Installation

I have been set the task of creating a media installation about George Africanus (pictures above).

He was brought to England in slavery aged three, and went on to become Nottingham's first black entrepreneur. Gaining the right to vote and becoming an upstansing citizen working first as a brass founder and later starting The Servants' Register Office. The installation must be performance based and site specific.

Design update

In my previous post I suggested my design was too hard to read. I have added an outline to thewriting in an attempt to make it more accessable:

I have also created a negative verison although i think this is even harder to read:

Identities

In this project I will be designing a new identity for Trent Media http://www.trentstudents.org/trentmedia Trent media consist of Fly; an online student radio station, Platform; a fortnightly student review magazine and Trent TV an online TV station. I will create new Logo's for each and a series of supporting media for the company. This will include a website, a short animation advertising Trent TV and a radio advert for Fly. As well as small promotional items such as fliers etc.

I want there to be a running theme throughout the identity of the three parts of Trent media, whilst giving each quite an individual look. I am thinking about doing this by having a Trent media logo that is incorporated into each separate logo. Here are some of my first ideas:

This is a possibility for Trent Media Logo that will be in each of the Logo's

This would be the logo for the whole of trent media, used to represent all three strands

Platform is the Trent media magazine, This logo includes the "M" that will join all the Logo's

This is simply an inverted version of the above logo

I like these two a lot.

These are only ideas however I particularly like these bottom two, although i am slightly concerned whether the writing is easy enough to read.

Myplace

My Myplace projected is completed and accessible by this link http://www.lab.constellations.co.nz/MyPlace/d5/ .
I overcame the problems discussed in my last entry by using a tripod, and by removing only one object from the table at a time so the colour saturation of the image did not change between images. However I encountered more problems when i came to writing the script myself. As each page of the site contains so many rollover images, the script became very crowded. The repetition of the same rollover script so many times was meaning the site was not working properly. I first tried to combat this by writing one script to manage all the functions but this proved too difficult so I had to be extremely careful in naming the functions of each rollover image and try to make the script simpler and run properly. I managed to do this, and I also added more script to the rollover images that displays the text yes or no on the background image.

Having spent so long working through the script trying to make it run smoothly i then realised that my website only works 100% in Internet explorer, and users viewing it in Mozilla Firefox will experience some problems viewing the page. This difficulty in web design caused by the slight difference in the two programmes is something i have definitely learnt in the making of this project. I now appreciate the subtle differences between IE and Firefox and the difficulty caused in web design, but also that this applies to almost all forms of multimedia. Any product produced for distribution or the internet will be accessed through many different programmes, sizes of screen, or speeds of computers depending on the viewer and this must be considered at all times. What looks good on the computer I design something on may look poor or as in this case not work properly on another computer.