Cross Stitch Competition Sites

As there are so many shops online at the moment, I have decided to take a look at what I am up against. I know from looking in the past as a customer, I found it very hard to locate what I wanted quickly and easily.

This first website is a company called Willow Fabrics, If I were shopping as a customer, I would have already gone back to my Google search as this website looks old and low quality. The first thing I notice is that the image in the middle of the page is the wrong resolution and the broken search bar. There isn't much that I do like about this website, and although it uses a lot of white space, it has still managed to look unorganised and messy. Where you can see the telephone number, this actually flashes red then black which is not only un necessary, but its distracting and doesn't go with the colour scheme. There is nothing that I will be taking forward into my designs from this particular site.

 This next website is by a company called CrossStitchUK. Unfortunately this website has managed to also make itself look old with boxes scattered and shoved into rows and so much on the header bar above the navigation that it is almost masks the navigation with its busyness. There doesn't seem to be a sense of branding here and again, I will not be taking tips from this website.

 After looking around for a while I came across this website called I Love Cross Stitch, this website has much more of a modern look with a background, a colour scheme and a search bar that works! However, this website has tried to put too much on itself, there is so much going on that I am not sure where to look, with a scrolling advert, a long list of different links, loads of text and not one pattern design in sight. While I like the textured background and I feel like this gives it a little warmth, this site is again unsuccessful in looking clean and easy to navigate.

Finally I came across a website called The black sheep wools, this website covers more than just cross stitch patterns. The professional layout of the images makes them look classy and there is a strong branding theme running through the site. Although I am not a fan of the blue background as I feel it looks like something you would have in a baby's room, it does finish the site nicely. My biggest issue with this website is the navigation, this site has the same issue as the previous one, it is trying to do too much, looking through the navigation drop downs, I can see hundreds of pages, although I imagine they wanted to give a link for everything so the customer could reach their goal quicker, having this many options is doing the opposite, its slowing the customer down as you have to read through what seems like a books worth of links. The header on this site is also cluttered and over powering, I like the stitched effect of the boxes but there are too many in one space and are taking away from the logo dramatically. 

After looking through quite a lot of bad websites, I am optimistic that my business will thrive. The main things that I have taken from this are to keep it simple. Although the website needs to look good, the main point of it is to sell the products, this is why I believe they should be the focal point of the website, clearly displayed with no clutter to distract from them. I am going to try and create a website that is professional, easy to navigate and above all, clean and uncluttered. 

Independant project

The project we have been given is slightly different from the rest as we have been tasked with setting our own brief. I have broken down the key points from the starting brief we have been given.

• Test of your ability to work independently 
• Duration of 8 weeks
• Goal is to achieve a personal balance of all of the separate corse elements
• Create a personal visual language to compliment the brief set
• Take responsibility 

For this project my main goals are to create something that both challenges me to learn something new and playing on my strengths to creating a finished piece that I can use in my portfolio.  

After a visit to a craft fair earlier this year, my mum and I found that we are struggling to get cross stitch patterns that suit our tastes as most of them are old fashioned. There was one stool at the fair in particular that focused solely on cross stitch patterns, they had some lovely packs that included a pattern, the correct coloured thread and a frame to show it off in, however these packs were very expensive and still rather old fashioned. The other good place to get patterns from is out of cross stitch magazines, however they are also not cheap, and sometimes you find you do not like any of the patterns that week and have to then wait for the next one to come out.

Because of all the issues I have been having I can clearly see there is a gap in the market for fresh, inexpensive cross stitch designs that you don't have to wait for. This lead to to decide on making an online shop for my own designs that will be young and downloadable straight to your printer at home. 

In this project I will be setting up an online business that creates and sells cross stitch templates. Throughout the project I will be building this business from bottom up, starting with creating the name and logo, creating the products it will sell and then building the online shop. The start of this project will be based around creating branding for the business, this will include a logo, font choices, colour selections and an official name for the company, having made these decisions, I will make sure that the overall look and feel of the business will be coherent and recognizable through business cards, website and the possibility of a magazine advert. The second section of this project which will be ongoing past the deadline, will be creating the cross stitch templates which the company will sell, these templates will all need to be exciting, young and current to compete with the templates already available, ranging from quick simple designs that customers can add together on the from of cards, up to very complex designs that will be a project for the customer. 

The online shop, however, will be the main bulk of this project as I will use Joomla to create it and I aim to have the entire site in working order with the ability to “add to cart”, pay for the products and then make the product downloadable for the customer. Along with the website working I am aiming to make it very attractive making customers want to stop and look around at the other pages and products. This project has a wide target audience ranging from beginners to cross stitch experts who are all looking for something more modern and upbeat to stitch.

Video

Here is the final animation for the posters, for these animations I have made each mobile device large and in the way of the image, then over time it moves out of the way to reveal the real image behind, after this the text appears saying "Some things are better in real life". The meaning behind these animations are to get the audience to think about moving away from their phones and technology, to see what is really out there. Its showing you that real life needs to be experienced and not just seen in pixels. 

Along with this I have made some of the posters into images that represent some of the places they could possibly be shown.

Posters

The three themes that I have selected for my posters are Castle covering the buildings section of the trust, Gardens showing the beauty of the trust and wildlife representing the good the trust does for nature. The three background images I have chosen are below.

For each of these I have added Pixel art that represents something in the original image as you can see here.

These are the finished posters without the branded frame work suggested by The National Trust

And here are the same images made to fit the frame templates given by the Trust

Pixel Style

Looking at the last mock up I did for these posters, I feel there needs to be a dramatic difference between real and on screen, to do this I have been looking into some classic computer graphics, while doing this I wanted to also keep current styles in mind so I dont end up disconnecting from half of my target audience. 
The perfect half way house between classic on screen styles and whats currently popular is pixel art. 
Pixel art can be dated back to the 1970's where it was used because of low graphics capabilities and low resolutions and is similar in style to cross stitching. The pixel style has made a come back in fashion with popular games using it such as Minecraft and Flappy bird.

For these reasons I feel that pixel art is the style that would best suit inside of each screen on my posters. I have set up a grid in illustrator so that I can have the appearance of pixel art with the connivence of vector images. Here is the first images that I have recreated in this style. The original image is of Bodiam Castle which is one owned by the National Trust.

Further Ideas

Following on from the previous idea which was saying the right thing in its concept but not in its finish and style. I have followed the idea of wanting to get people away from their technology and outdoors by having a photograph of a beautiful garden which is partially covered by a mobile phone that has a virtual garden app loading on it, the concept behind this idea is to make people question WHY they are not experiencing the real thing when it is right in front of them and to get them to realise that its much better to really be there.

I feel that this concept is very strong and is exactly what I want to develop further, however I am not sold on the look and feel of this piece as it stands. I think to make a series of these posters with technology partially covering the images in the background all look coherent, I need to define a proper style to show the dramatic difference between "the real thing" and whats on screen. 

Ideas

Having read over the brief a few more times I feel like the key point is that people arent going outside as much in todays society. Because of this I want my campaign to encourage people to step outside and not miss out on the beauty of it for the sake of their TV or their IPad. 
The idea that this has lead to to is to have someone missing from a poster, to show other people outdoors enjoying their time while the main subject is in cut out form, similar to when you join a social networking site and they have a simple face shaped outline where you are meant to insert your photograph. 
The slogans that I have come up with for this piece are along the lines of 
"Be there" or "Dont miss out"

Here are the slightly different variations of this initial idea

While I like this idea, I feel that it isnt quite showing as i'd hoped and I feel it could give the impression of a missing person or hidden identity rather than the idea of missing out on fun.