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 Its design is outdated in terms of structure and aesthetic.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.