Interface Design: Claire Bourque

Design Strategy:

I went into this design process with my Theta Bowl poster plan and project in front of me. I thought that design was very effective for my target audience, college fraternity men. For this reason, I used an image of a football field, found at krylon.com, as my first layer to work on. For my repeating container space I made a "coach's clipboard." To help impress that idea onto my audience, I drew a football play with symbols, using the paint tool in Illustrator, and placed it on the "clipboard." These two visuals together speak strongly to my target audience.

For my side navigation bar I used a referee signaling a touchdown, found at fotosearch.com, to draw the viewer's eye up the left side. My navigation buttons are duplicates of the football I had traced in Illustrator for my poster project. I used my poster design plan to create the page titles and organize the needed information of the event. My goal for this design was to give the allusion of a fun, rough and athletic event, but to still keep my design clean and well executed.

Typefaces:

I chose to use Princetown as the typeface for my headline, because it is quickly identified with athletics. It is easy to read, but still helps to portray my event. I first used Handwriting-Dakota for the small phrase, "are you ready?" because I thought it made the design feel more personable and "rough around the edges." I liked the typeface so much, that I decided to continue it on my navigation bar. I think it creates a strong connection for the viewer and directs them where to go next. The last typeface, which is used in all of the containers, is Adobe Caslon Pro. I previously used this typeface for my magazine project's body text and found it very easy to read and clean. I think it creates a solid contrast against the other typefaces, so that the viewer can easily identify the different sections of the design.

Color:

I used a brown (R=51 G=51 B=0 at a fill of 74%) for the "clipboard" container to help aid that allusion. My second color was the lime green (R=204 G=255 B=51) used for the navigation bar and body text. I wanted to stay in the green and brown color scheme for this design, but I liked how the lime hue really popped out yet still stayed in synch with the design. It's also a great contrast from the white for the other navigation buttons.

Images:

The images I have not mentioned, such as the ones found on the "Photos" and "Sign Up" pages, were all taken by various members of Kappa Alpha Theta and sent to me by email.