Project 2 Design Brief - Pop's Corn Emporium

For the second project in our web design class, I'll be researching, wireframing, and developing a website for one of my favorite (and OK, entirely fictional, but have fun with this) popcorn shops in the area:

Pop's Corn Emporium, in the historic downtown section of Geneva.

Now before we delve into design details, it's good to know the history of how Pop's Corn came to be, so let's check out Pop's history...

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Around the turn of the 20th century, Gilbert and Rosemary St. Germaine owned an expansive farm in northeastern DeKalb County, Illinois, northeast of the town of Sycamore. While Sycamore was known in those times as a manufacturing center - among Sycamore's early industries were Marsh Harvester Manufacturing, R. Ellwood Manufacturing, and Sycamore Preserve Works - the St. Germaines knew one thing, and one thing well... how to grow corn.

Gilbert and Rosemary's vast knowledge of growing different varieties of corn in DeKalb County was extremely helpful to other farmers in the area, and the St. Germaines were more than happy to share their expertise in farming matters to their neighbors. While many local farmers at that time would keep their secrets, well, secrets, Gilbert and Rosemary wanted the whole region to prosper, and prosper it did.

With the creation of the DeKalb County Farm Bureau in 1912, one of the first organizations of its kind, the entire corn crowing region of DeKalb County grew and strengthened, and the St. Germaines were at the heart of it. Little did they know that their generosity would be repaid in a huge way a few decades later.

Carving up some fun designs...

Happy Halloween, folks! As a fun diversion to the usual grind of schoolwork, lemme show you some fun pumpkin carving I did last night. After some time on the internet, my kids and I picked out some neat templates to use on this year's pumpkins.

I hadn't tried the technique of shaving before, so I was happily content with how the Angry Bird's reddish color ended up.

Now I've done it... I'm gonna have to go above and beyond for next year.

New and Improved Version

After lots of good feedback in today's class, here are the latest updated Photoshop mocks. To lessen the boxy look but keep my original idea, I've redesigned some of these boxes to have the same color as the main background. The three headlines now seem to fill in an empty hole in the background, instead of laying on top of another box.

Also, the hierarchy's more defined here. In the previous mockup, I had everything at about the same size. Now, the artist spotlight's featured more prominently, with the headlines shrunk down a little as well.

The navbar's also got some color changes, as I've dumped the teal look in favor of another eye trick, making the little navbar items appear to fill in more background holes.

The artist spotlight page has also been tweaked, with the artwork grouped a little better and larger as well dumping a few decorative boxes. I've still got a lengthy bio copy, but I don't know if making this a two-column div will make the text too small here.

Lookin' For Feedback

Alrighty... since I didn't get the chance to show my updated Photoshop mocks in class on Wednesday, I'd like to get some feedback if possible before Monday. So go ahead, take a peek at the two screenshots, and tell me what you think. I left off the Google Chrome template so you could see the whole page more cleanly.

Guess Who's Redesigning Their Website?

So maybe someone leaked out the word that C.O.D. was taking dead aim at the uncultured Art League sites infesting our state, as the Danville Art League just wrote this on their Facebook wall this past Sunday:

"DAL is working on a NEW WEBSITE! What NEW FEATURES would you like to see implemented on it?"

Well, since they're asking... I sent them a link to my blog here, so they can check out the homepage mockup at left, via Photoshop.

Web Page Sketches And Logos

Here are some quick sketches of how the home page and Featured Artist pages will be composed. I didn't stray much at all from my earlier drafts, but I did add an artist directory to the second page. One suggestion I took from the classroom feedback was to minimize the bottom navbar/footer. No need to have that navbar the same size as the one on top.

I'll also add to the featured artist page a link to that artist's own website if there is one - it'd be a nice feature to have, so people could look further into a particular artist's catalog of work. I don't want to show the artist's entire collection here... just keep it to three main pieces. I'm mentioning this here, as I forgot to add that to the sketch at left.

Gridwise, this won't be too difficult to arrange once I get started on that. However, I would like to try and extend the man navbar a bit further out on the sides than the rest of the page, just to break up the total box look.

As for the logos, I'm not sold on any one of the few logos I've sketched out so far. I'll really need to dig into the font catalog to pick out something that'll fit with the city of Danville. It's a rural community, nestled east of Champaign, and very close to the Indiana border. So in other words, I'll be looking for a more homey and antique font than one that's polished and sleek. I don't want anything TOO antique, or it'll give the impression the Art League's filled with grandmothers and retirees, which is definitely not the case here.

The Art League Homepage & Featured Artist Page Wireframes

Here are some quick sketches of what I'm planning to do for the Danville Art League homepage and Featured Artist page. Nothing really fancy in the way of overloading the pages - just keeping it simple, keeping it clean, and keeping it to the point. The colors are just used now for clarity, so I'll be tweaking that as I go along.

Same thing for the font you see here... right now, I'm just pointing out where things will be, so I'm not too concerned about fonts, pics or colors just yet. This is just the wireframe of where I'd like everything to be positioned.