Woodcroft Wildspace - Final Report

Industrial Practice Report

As part of the industrial practice module, I was required to emulate working conditions as a practitioner of my particular skills, in this instance of digital media and illustration. Although primarily an illustrator, I took the opportunity to work upon other skills to expand my repertoire and to gain experience in areas that I lacked.

 Woodcroft Wildspace is a charitable project revolving around green space in suburban Winchmore Hill. The way in which I would offer my services to Woodcroft, headed by chair Bob Ladell, would be through rejuvenating their website and creating digital media and assets for Woodcroft to use towards advertising themselves, and for their community.

The website of Woodcroft Wildspace as it stands has no identifiable motifs – nothing unique. Its design is outdated in terms of structure and aesthetic. From the impression of the website, it caters to adults from its contents. Information is displayed as blocks of text in terms of visual data in a somewhat impersonal fashion. I felt as through the website through its current iteration does not accurately represent its aspiration.  The usage of the internet as a way to spread information to projects is one of the most, if not the most, effective and cost-efficient ways to garner attention and interest. It is through that premise that I began to work on generating concepts and formulating a straightforward plan of action as to how to achieve the image that Woodcroft required.

I went with the understanding that I wished to keep as much as what was already in place intact, and to create content based on what was missing, in order to maximise what would be generated overall. This mainly meant that information already in place would be delegated to other categories on the website, and a re-arrangement of content so that they were visually pleasing on the eye.

In terms of coming up with new assets for the website, I decided that the visuals of the website – such as the background, navigation buttons, and font usage would need to be re-done.  Following research on nature themed websites, exploring different styles of website visualisation, I decided that a ‘laid-back’ motif to the visual of Woodcroft Wildspace would be best representative of the site; If the website was too ‘flashy’  and clean-cut, it would give off a corporate feel in which is an injustice to their cause. It was my goal to have reoccurring themes in the visual of the website to transfer to potential print versions of advertising such as leaflets, posters, etc. This would include the usage of fonts, colour combinations and of hand-drawn illustrations.  I would also have to design content in which could be used by anybody, otherwise they become dated and obsolete if they are dependent on one person (myself).

I did most of my preliminary work through writing down ideas and penning page structure through various stages.  These notes and light sketches I translated into a comprehensive list as to what I needed from Bob Ladell and of Woodcroft, and what I in return would offer to them in terms of assets in which can be used in terms of templates for any future content, and of using said templates to deliver the content already in place in Woodcroft immediately. The main issue that I ran into in terms of utilizing what work I had done was through the technical aspects of creating and maintaining a website – mainly coding. The ability to code effectively is a skillset in itself, and to do so in an innovative and clean way is a practice in which takes years to perfect. Not having experience in coding did hinder and stall my plans quite considerably, however by working within my means I can still create an outcome in which overall improves the experience of the Woodcroft Wildspace website.

Due to the scope of this project, I foresee myself working with Woodcroft for a length of time beyond the time frame of the industrial practice module. On one hand it offers an opportunity to see my own work evolve into a substantial and tangible benefit to a number of peoples, but it does make me question the practicalities of such an arrangement. Due to the voluntary basis of the working relationship between myself and Woodcroft, I can work to my own accord, at any hour and time of the day, rather than following a stricter regiment through a paid assignment.  If the conditions were different, there would be a stark contrast in terms of time allotment and content produced within that period. Overall, from what I have learnt from this experience is that time management, alongside confidence in both producing work and the quality of said work, are vital things in which to succeed in as an active creative.

Woodcroft Wildspace Images and assets (WIP)

Photoshopped birds for image replacing wildlife section

Woodcroft Wildspace Notation and Preparation

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Report on Visit to Woodcroft Wildspace
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  On Friday, June 8th, I visited Bob Ladell at the Woodcroft Wildspace. The visit mainly consisted on him telling me about upcoming projects that the wildspace is going to do, and got more in depth as to how he wanted the wildspace to be seen as. Those upcoming projects include creating a 'sensory garden' with home grown vegetables and of areas in which the community (ie a school) 'adopt' and plant things. The other being the 'eco-gym' where it's basically a bunch of logs / rope / etc that people can use to exercise with. I also gave him an overall summary of some of my website ideas, but the majority of the visit was him explaining and showing the new (from the last time I went) developments of the site.

As well as that, I inquired about the education aspect of the wildspace, since that was the area which was the most blank for me. He gave me an example of where a university student of biodiversity came to WW and basically did a field project where in the end instead of Bob having to pay an expert for a report on biodiversity, he paid for one day of the expert on the site and from there the student took over making said report. He was also very keen on Southgate College and the whole making sculptures out of logs thing , but didn't really give much insight as to how they/we could accommodate primary school children apart from the foregone conclusion appealing to teachers. The way in which he visualizes the education aspect coming together is through the old tennis court - which he has called the 'open air classroom'. Overall I gathered it was very much a give and take ethos, which I think hasn't really been demonstrated beyond talking in my opinion.

The main thing that I gathered from visiting is that more than anything I need to focus on the visual aspect of the place where there is virtually none. There is still a problem with signage, my dad drove me down and that's the one thing he immediately commented on. What I am pretty much convinced on, following my visit, is that I should focus on creating a unified visual stock for Woodcroft - such as making templates for posters or leaflets and redesigning the website background / buttons / banner / footer. advertising the projects I mentioned earlier - and then work towards creating a system in which this could be implemented as a secondary objective. Visiting Woodcroft really refreshed the ideas I had in my head, as well as gave some perspective as to how much there is to do and how having outdated information on the website is really hindering them.


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 Research results of website design and fonts
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http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/galleries/30-nature-inspired-websites/

http://www.experiencialecom.com.br/experiencialecom/Portugues/ - background is a square texture repeated

http://efficaxenergy.com/en - photograph as background

http://www.goateejoe.co.uk/ - stylized photo background

http://www.whitelotusaromatics.com/ - combination of background colour and background image centered

http://greenglobeideas.com/ - plain background, image for header

http://www.themusichall.org/ - overall website design

https://www.redbrickhealth.com/ - picture background without white table.

http://www.webanddesigners.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/nature-inspired-websites/web-design-nature-inspired-7.jpg - - I really like this

http://www.huxleyprairiefest.com/ - website considering of header image, background image, and footer image in a horizontal fashion

http://www.giselejaquenod.com.ar/blog/ - I like the illustration style which would be useful in the kids section

http://www.smashinginteractive.com/#work - a website in which all of the content appears on one page. Useful for formatting the kids section

http://www.from-the-couch.com/ - vertical navigation box
http://www.glass-tiger.com/index.php - box colours appear on highlight, opacity boxes good for photographic background
http://www.yellowoodstore.com/ - word colour appear on highlight, no boxes, good for simple background websies.




http://www.kidsfront.com/ - young children activities

(gonna need more research / discussion to find out what to do for primary school children)




Font selection: initial looks

http://www.dafont.com/multicolore.font - neat font, semi professional looking
http://www.dafont.com/biko.font * - friendly font, casual looking
http://www.dafont.com/alegre-sans-nc.font - Bold looking, strong font
http://www.dafont.com/blue-highway.font - a mixture of the first wo
http://www.dafont.com/fontastique.font - a curvier casual looking font
http://www.dafont.com/headline-hplhs.font - a font that could be used for advertising, to grab attention in stereotypical fashion


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Category notes for the website
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Old Categories
Home -> Should act as a summary of Woodrcoft Wildspace
Project    } Project and Siteplan should be combined: Who / What /  Where / How?
Site Plan }
Photos -> Ambivalent: Split into project / gallery (new category)
Trees     } What does this serve? Lacking direction / acting as filler. Can replace entirely.
Wildlife } If people want to know more information about these things they will seek it out for themselves
Events -> News should be on home page / In an archive (new category)
Newsletters -> Downloadable, in Archives
Friends
Sponsors
Support Us           } All these pages should be combined into one - called community.
People 
Contact Us 

New Categories
HOME - Welcome to WW, Paragraph description, A 'show' of the best bits of Woodcroft (photograph montage), Most relevant news article linking to a read more section in the ARCHIVE.

PROJECT - About WW, site plan, development, area descriptions within WW with photograph, Visual representation of Wildlife and Trees (pages ditched from old categories)

COMMUNITY - friends, sponsors, support us, people, contact us, how to get involved

GALLERY - all photographs, resources from the community, kids drawings etc. Expanded showcase.

ARCHIVE - newsletters, past events and news, downloads, anything that doesnt fit in the above categories.

Possible new category being a page for the latest event in detail. Yet to decide.

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Organizing Items and Assets for Woodcroft
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What I need from Woodcroft:

Photography = Photos of the following (based off my notes) 
      AREAS: Apirary, Orchard, Wetland, Meadow area, Boggy area, Scrubland area, Open-Air classroom, Events area.

      (this can also include photography of activities taking place in said area rather than them being standalone)

      PEOPLE: Bob Ladell, Gary Garber, Amanda Ladell, Mary Askew

  (I need to consult / email bob as to areas and people I may have missed that are as important)

The reason why I need these particular things is that I wish to have visual representation of the important aspects of woodcroft rather than just a description. From my visit, the specific areas of woodcroft is the main 'selling' point of the place and thus is the main talking point. I plan to take said photographs and photoshop them slightly so that they are more presentation pieces rather than stock photography. If necessary, I'll make another trip to woodcroft and take the photographs of the area myself (though I'm not sure as to how I'd get a decent quality camera at the moment)

For areas and people where I haven't listed photography, I aim to produce 1 x conceptual area drawing, 1 x conceptual person drawing (basically blanks the photographs don't fill). The conceptual area drawing can either be a standard piece to address photography that doesn't quite fill the criteria by itself, or they can be individually catered to each area - such as a drawing of a festive events in the events area. I'm leaning more towards the latter, but until I've finalized the design for the filler content it's still up in the air as to which approach I'll take.

Testimonials / Quotes = Comments about Woodcroft, of specific areas, of previous events, of upcoming projects and partnerships, information / comments from the volunteers who are regular, anything else that is relevant to the promotion of woodcroft.

Most of this I can source myself, however there are instances which I've spoken of with Bob that don't necessarily appear on the website. I would really love to convert that atmosphere of friendly conversation onto the website, and I plan to focus very much on the interpersonal connections people / the community could get from the area. I plan to utilize this by interspersing this into the text that is already on the website with the usage of font size / colour to create a hierarchy of what's the most critical to read from the website.

Tools / props that are available at the moment as well as what would ideally be there = Some areas, such as the open air classroom and events, require for there to be props and tools etc in order to be used by the community. I would like to know what's already available so that I can make a list of what I can do to fill perceivable gaps. Obviously I can't provide physical items such as chairs and tables etc, however by knowing what's already there and what's not there, I can take that into account as to what visuals I produce. For example, for the open air classroom you need visual stimulus such as labels for equipment. For the events area, you'd need signage as to what is used and how it's used etc. For what's already there, I need to know what their functions are so that I can create / draw visual representation of things that are being used right now.

What I will produce:

• 1x Website background
• 1x header visual (keeping the current logo intact)
  
• 1x Navigation bar visual with up to 6x category buttons in said navigation
• 1x Footer visual 
• 1x home page visual splash photoshopped montage of Woodcroft
  
• 1x drawing for plants / trees available on site to replace trees page
• 1x drawing of animals / wildlife available on site to replace wildlife page
• 1x title font template for pages when necessary
• 1x subtitle font template to replace that already on the website
• 1x quotes font template
• 1x newsletter page template to reinvigorate the newsletter page 
• 1x filler drawing for areas (as described earlier)
• 1x filler drawing for people (as described earlier)
• 1x filler drawing for the archive (to replace the 'dead text' that litters the website into one seperate category users can venture to if they really want to)
  
• 1x poster / leaflet template for gaining support and contact details (taken from the support page already in place)
• 1x poster / leaflet template for events (things that require people on site)
• 1x poster / leaflet template for flagship pieces (For detailed upcoming projects that require conceptual pieces as well as description)
• 1x poster / leaflet template for miscellaneous (such as labels etc as appropriate)
• I need to find a gallery application for the photography on the website. I won't be making this myself since it's based off coding, but it's vital to the website.

TESTY POSTY

preview of my work

Year 2 - Processes, Materials and Presentations - Work Schedule and Miscellenous Notes

Work Schedule

For this module I started with making plans as to how I would approach this subject. The way in which I work is that I tend to follow several strands of thought at once, getting into more detail once I am satisfied with the validity of my idea. As a result, I did not think to attach timed schedules to my planning, research and drawing developments; I only have a rough estimation of how long certain processes took.

I would estimate that the planning of my work is spontaneous; I can either get an idea to immediate effect, after a few hours of thinking, or it could take several days for my ideas to process and formulate into viable strategies. 

For the Another Skin module, it took me several days in which to write out my initial ideas. The time spent into the planning of what I would focus on, and the research strands in which to develop, was spaced between October and November.

My research coinceded with my drawings, as thus I do not clearly have an idea of how I could break this down into a time frame. Over the course of December to Feburary, I spent varying amounts of hours researching into my market, with the majourity of my time spent into designing the characters and the accompanying illustrations. 

For a detailed illustration, It can take a minimum of 3 hours to complete; from sketch to colouring. For a sketch it can take an average of 20 minutes, and longer depending on the complexity of the figure I am drawing. In this case, each 'animal character' takes around an average of 18 minutes (based on time frame drawings I recorded to test this theory) to complete to a standard in which is ready to be processed into a finer sketch or, if the lines are not that rough, to be coloured.

I realise that for this module I should have managed my time a lot more efficently, and be able to give more exact time frames rather than guessed ones.

Another Skin: Final Presentation