Redeye
Whilst at Ichameleon, I came up with various design ideas for a client, Redeye – a photographic resource network based in Manchester, UK.
Meeting the needs of the content
Physical appearances carry a lot of weight, but jaw dropping interfaces can often conceal a clumsy, ill-thought out user interface. My main concern was taking Redeye’s content and displaying it in a such a way that their users could get to it quickly and simply.
Redeye had lots of pieces of content – all of which wanted to be as important as the next. It was crucial to determine which sections actually were most important.
Images are everything
Despite being a photographic network there didn’t the site needed to focus more on information rather than showcasing photographic talent. The images used in these designs were intended to be easily inter-changed with other images to ensure the site could maintain a fresh look – without the need to constantly redesign the site.
Content managed
The Content Management System (CMS), is the designer’s arch nemesis, she takes your beautifully crafted design with pixel perfect copy and allows any number of images/text to be placed into the space. Therefore, each design idea takes into account that the site would be running on a Content Management System and would have to be easy to integrate for the development team and easy to update for the Redeye team without easily breaking the design.
Picking favourites
This portfolio page features 5 very similar designs – so, which is my favourite? Well, I have a really soft spot for those light grey vertical lines on design number 5 (the client didn’t share my enthusiasm) but, overall, I think the first design works best.
Decisions, Decisions
In many ways, Redeye were a very challenging client. Different stakeholders had different ambitions for the website and so the design went through many different iterations in order to try and impress as many members of the team as possible.
Sadly, after much discussion, Redeye opted not to use any of the designs produced.
