brief:

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TRANSMEDIA

This project was to create the media pack for the annual transmedia exhibition at the University of Winchester. For this project, I was in a team which was all designers, so we had to work out how to play to each persons strengths. The role in which I undertook was the website design as I wanted a chance to strengthen my website and prototyping skills.

Early on in the project, we decided to go with an idea that I had come up with which was centred around trains. This was because we wanted to reflect the creative journeys that our students undertake between 1st year to 3rd year and potentially then onto masters. We wanted to celebrate the journey that is being taken and the development of work.

creative journey:

brainstorming

When starting to design the website, I was struggling to visualise how I wanted the outcome to look. I initially tried to bring all of the pathways as well as the years onto the website and immediately decided against this due to the accessibility nightmare and the complexity of the design.

However, after seeing my team mate Rob's poster designs, I had an idea to translate this into a website. I decided to utilise these designs and bring them to life. The poster was clearly recognisable as part of National Rail thanks to its typography, clean design and bold colour scheme.

Once I had these concept designs produced, I then was able to visualise how the website should look. In order to bring these designs to life, I decided to use figma, a software that I had had limited experience with and had never used for prototyping. After a couple of hours of playing around with the software, it was then really simple to create the designs and prototype these in a wireframe format. Choosing to use figma meant that when we were presenting to the client, I could offer for them to try out the designs, something which had a massively positive outcome. Below you can find my finished prototype.

creative journey

Journeys.

We all take them. Whether it be your commute to work, your midnight stumbles to the fridge, or your muscle memory journey to the shops. Creative journeys: "a story of its inception as an idea".

One of the most important journeys we can take is our creative journey. This journey is reflected in the development of work over days, weeks, months or even years. The Digital Media team at the University of Winchester runs an annual "transmedia event" for students of all year groups to display and present their work at the end of each year. Each transmedia event takes a different theme which is up to the second-year students of that year to decide. The brief is to come up with the branding, design idea, materials and all of the materials ready for the planning team to come in and execute.

For the 2024 transmedia event, I wanted to play on the idea of journeys. The creative design process is one of the most beautiful journeys to watch. The transition from the first of your designs in the first year, right up until your final major project of 3rd year or your master's, is one which holds so much power. Looking back at how far you have come, how much you have grown and celebrating with all of your supporters, is a vital part of any degree.

Creative degrees give you the unquie opportunity to reflect on this progress in physical forms. Unlike in academia, you get a chance to visualise your journey over your time at university.

This is why, when I received the transmedia brief, the first thing I thought about was these journeys. A term used in the design space is user journeys, but why should the creative journey stop at users? Why not reflect on the designer's journey?

Above you can see our initial brainstorming session. We explored tube maps designs as they best reflected our vision and researched into the artist Henry Beck who created them in 1931. Following this research, we also explored other countries version of this including the Spanish Metro. Once we had an understanding of the history and context behind these iconic maps, we started generating ideas of how we can make transmedia more immersive.

We all commented on the fact that although last years transmedia was good, there wasn't any interactivity. There was no map given out to visitors, no signage, very little promotion and nothing to do as you went around. I started researching on how we could improve this whilst still staying within the theme and found that previously artists have put down electrical tape for signage of their events. We decided that this would work perfectly as we can draw people in right from reception, all the way through our exhibition and then towards popular stops such as the cafe. This worked perfectly in terms of physical interaction, however we decided that we still needed more interaction. This is where the website and social media come in to play. With early, hard to miss and vibrant signage and promotion we will ensure that we increase visitors as well as visibility.