Home Page to Portfolio Piece

The viewer will arrive at the portfolio site to Paisley's Pub sandwiched between some brick buildings. Enter through the pub door to the portfolio wall, then select individual items that lead to the travel journal on a pub table.

Details of the home page that need to be worked out: illustration of the pub and buildings, a blackboard sign in front that links to the pint size blog, and links to contact and about us. Possibilities I am looking at are:

Door ~ enters to portfolio wall (Paisley's Corner)

Sign ~ enters to about us/CV

Phone Booth ~ links to contact

Cat ~ Social media

Arrows on subsequent pages ~ move you to see more of the portfolio wall as the portfolio grows and to the black board to connect with the pint size blog (see earlier sketches).

Home Page

Portfolio Page

Individual Portfolio Page

Site Navigation

Campaign

Rough ideas to engage my target audience to look at and interact with portfolio site. Mail out key pub items: coasters with images from the pub wall, square napkin with writing on it, pint size glasses. They say that if you are mailing something the odder the size, the more likely the item has to sit on the top of the recipients mail box, and thus more likely to be looked at. The coasters are interesting, because they could act a business card at functions like the BCAMA SIG's or speaker series where the advertisers and studio creatives tend to frequent.

Coasters in the hands of the target audience - who then visit the website - who then tweet and forward onto their colleagues and friends.

The Pint Size blog and Twitter - constantly update viewers on what's new. The blog would not only highlight the latest portfolio pieces, but what's new and hot in marketing and design, notable mentions.

Flickr - one possibility is to connect the pub experience with a larger audience. It's something that people all over the world enjoy. This will need to be flushed out further.

Paisley Pub or Paisley's Pub

Using "Because" as my website layout inspiration I like the idea of giving the viewer the ability to interact with the site and the movement to other pages flow horiztonally.

Possible home page where the pub image has some flash element that then shrinks the image and moves to reveal the inside of the pub, or zooms in on the pub sign, or the door opens and moves inside the pub. Bottom bar acts as a Quick view of the menu if the viewer chooses not to interact and wants to quickly find the information they are looking for.

Home page viewer can click on the phone for contact, bar tender for CV/Bio, and click right or left to move to the next screens.

Movement to the right to reveal Portfolio Pieces. As more portfolio pictures are added the wall can just keep growing to the right.

Viewer clicks on one of the wall features and it takes them to the specific portfolio piece:

Move to the left for the blog and social media "Pint Size" marketing:

Viewer clicks one of the beers or cocktails and it takes them to the blog.

Experiential Websites

I did a bit of research on experiential websites. Here's few that set good examples for what I'd like to accomplish with this project:

Because

Grolsch Beer

Eric J

Concept #1 - Additions to the Pub Concept

Over the break. I did some further exploration of the each of the concepts. I found that with the Icecream menu and patterns concepts, I was struggling to connect each concept to my portfolio. On the other hand the pub concept seems to have multiple directions and a stronger experience factor for the viewer.

The idea would be to start the home page as a typical English street. As an example, I've attached a pen and ink painting of Cirencester, England by my grandfather. The viewer would move through the street and go into pub #1, the Garnet Rose, pub #2 the Fox & Hound, or pub #3 the Yellow Bell. Each pub has it's unique features that I would relate to my portfolio.

Garnet Rose - Branding

Fox & Hound - Typography

Yellow Bell - Marketing

Here's some possible directions that I need to further explore this week to create an experience within each pub.

Concept #1 - Pub or Pub Signs

The 60's postcard/photo idea wasn't working, so as I brainstormed further I remembered that "English Pubs" have always something I've enjoyed. I remembered that pubs tend to have these really cool signs, usually hand painted. There's loads of history around those signs (talking about early branding). The pubs themselves these traditional identifiers like the dark wood beams and posts, dark wooden furniture, crazy patterned carpets, interesting embossed wall paper, funny looking locals, various of beers (stouts, porters, and lagers) on tap, local cat, distinctive wall hangings, pub food (meat pies, plowmans lunch, roast and mash, etc). I decided to explore this concept further.

First option:

Use the sign of the pub as the entrance. Access various parts of the portfolio through the various parts of the pub (man, dog, beer levers, carpet, dart board, etc.)

Second option:

Use the sign to enter the site and then use the beer levers to access the various parts of the portfolio.

A third option I explored was creating pub signs for each part of the portfolio:

Concept #2 - Ice Cream Truck/Dickie Dee Menu

I was exploring brands that I've been loyal to, since I was a kid (of the 70's). I remembered the ice cream truck, with its distinctive tune, that would bring people running out of their homes and gardens on a hot summer day just for a treat. There's always a positive memory about this experience, so I thought it might be interesting to use the menu and draw people into the various parts of my portfolio.

Concept #3 - Pattern Exploration

Here's my third concept. This one was fun, because it was an exploration of famous patterns and finding ways to merge/integrate them into one design because, marketing and design together consist of the overlapping and merging of multiple elements. I thought this could be incorporated into the home page where the viewer could run their curser over the patterns. The curser would change indicating that you can click on a particular pattern and move into the portfolio pages.

Viewers would then move into the various portfolio areas. Notional thoughts are: