Redesign #4- Message Board interface

Before:

It is already an established part of our American culture to be obsessed with the internet. People are going as far as speaking in acronyms like "lol" and "omg." A common accelerant for this kind of communication is social networking, including message board indexes. My fourth redesign is the interface of a message board, which are now things that should be really eye pleasing because of growing traffic to online messageboards, especially sports messageboards.

The specific website I chose was Raiderpower.com. I am not  a subscriber to this site, nor a frequent visitor, but I saw potential to make it better. For starters, there is a lot of gray. Gray is not a bad color but there is too much to where it looks old, I would even say dusty for some reason. Most messageboards that I have visited in the past are of mostly white and black because when posting and reading comments it's best to stay simple, even in color scheme. So I made sure to enhance areas where I believe white would have looked better.

Another problem that I noticed was empty space. At the very top black heading bar, on the very left, "raiderpower.com" is emblazened in hot red but the rest of the black bar is not being utilized. The power zone theory will tell you that not using at least a little more of that black bar is a waste of valuable space that viewers' eyes usually gravitate towards. So to enhance it I put a few relative football pictures on the bar to accompany the logo. I made sure not to use the entire bar because I did not want to do so much as distract the viewer from the website's logo.

Also, more space isn't used right under that black heading bar. On the right of the army advertisement, the one with the guy that is screaming (I think?), is an empty lot of a space that could be valuable to advertising sales as well as balance on the page. Without filling that space there is glaring asymmetry. I simply made a homemade, rudimentary ad for that spot.

The problems I had were being able to alter enough of the interface. Using photoshop was very difficult for a novice to try and cut things and add things to the interface design. I think overall the website is no longer what I call "dusty" looking, if not bright now. On a few bars, I changed the color of gray to black because black contrasts well with white as well as matching well with the heading bar. Also, directly under the advertisement I made, I filled in the two retangles with black to match their counterparts below to enhance repetition.

Redesign #3- DVD Cover

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

This latest undertaking was definitely difficult. The original DVD cover to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind is actually pretty immaculate, which adds on to the difficulty because no one wants to redesign something  to be worse. (By the way, the photo above is actually a movie poster but the dvd looks identical, minus a few things).

What I wanted to fix was the normalcy of the DVD cover. When you see this cover you do not imagine the movie to be one with many twists, turns, and surprises. Instead, if you haven't heard of the movie, you just see a happy couple, romantically laying side-by-side, gazing at something, and Jim Carrey's eyes wandering. The real plot is really abstract, though. I thought what this cover lacked was a forecast into what their relationship is actually like in the film. Eventually, after days of searching for screenshots of the film i could use--which was a huge concern by the way, because it's hard to find a picture with adequate pixels--I feel like I have found the right ones to combine and make a cover of my own.

Contrast: The original cover had more than adequate contrast. There was the white ice at the top and a dark blue, spacey looking color at the bottom half. The title Eternal Sunshine... is yellow and black and even Jim Carrey's face color contrasted nicely with the blue it was up against. Because of the proper use of contrast in the original, I had to make sure mine contrasted well. The most noticeable contrast is Jim Carrey's face extending through two different photos. The top of his head extends into the photo of the couple and his lower half contrasts with the blue sky in the photo below. I also decided to use the original cover's idea of internal title contrast by making "Eternal Sunshine" yellow, like the original, but I used white for the rest of the title because it contrasted well with his suit. I also did not want to plaster a huge quote from a critic because I have always kind of thought those ruined movie covers, which I think are things that should be valued, but at the same time I couldn't just leave an empty blue area on the cover. So, to avoid putting some obnoxious quote, I put four stars to display the credibility of the movie while not tattooing someone else's thoughts on the cover. The black stars contrasts nicely with the blue. 


PowerZone- This redesign I prided myself for utilizing the powerzone described in the text. The powerzone extends from the top of the cover through the left side of the cover. If you notice, I put a very strong photo on the upper half of the power zone and let Jim Carrey's figure run through the left side of the powerzone. Using the powerzone helps attract the attention of passer-byes. Even the title of the film is at the very bottom of what is considered the power zone. 


Proximity- There is a lot of proximity in my new cover as well. I kept the title of the film within Jim Carrey's figure and put the names of Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey directly beside their characters in the top photo, a very common trait in some DVD covers that I looked at. Most noticeable is the overlapping images, but less noticeable is the little image of Winslet and Carrey in the same bed on the beach on the lower right hand corner. I put it directly beside Carrey because I realized I had some room there and also it kind of helps forecast the style of the film, which is to say unconventional. People will look at that little image and immediately be intrigued at how those two in a bed could have possibly ended up there.  

I had to try and make this DVD cover many different times. It put me through a real fit. But in the end I do feel proud of it and think it could serve equally as well as the original. I think it helps forecast into the story a little better than the original by displaying Winslet's discontented look, a key theme, and the beach and bed screen shot that helps the viewer wonder what is going on because the film is a labyrinth of story. I also didnt give in to something I hate, DVD cover quotes. The only quotes that belong on a DVD cover are quotes from the movie itself, an idea I almost acted on.