Changing the Look of We Are Awesome

In the rush to meet the pre-proposal deadline in October, the look of the website was not given a due diligence that it deserved. The wire frame produced, showcased the initial idea of what I was aspiring to achieve and what it would look like once I had fulfilled my aspiration, but looking back at it recently, I felt that this is not how the website should look like - at least, not anymore.

For one, the layout of content on the wire frame is too cluttered. There is too much going on and too much space is taken up by extraneous content. For example, there is a search bar and social media icons, which would not add anything ground-breaking to the website and in fact, wastes a lot space that would be better served visually if it were to remain blank.  

Also, the content section of the wire frame displays way too much content and as such, a process meant to add, takes away, with simply, too much of a lot. The footer as well, contains inapplicable design  principles: again, way too much content originally propositioned to give the impression that the website contained something for everyone. But this is only the opposite. And this honesty in critique, allows me the opportunity to see what needs to rectified before it can no longer be rectified.

                                    

 Which means the look of the website needs to reflect a design and structure principle, that would suit a modern-day media audience. This is best demonstrated by websites that are popular and gain a huge number of traffic as a result of their popularity.

Here are a few good examples of websites that not only could I find, but also liked as well.

BBC NEWS

WIRED

BUZZFEED

Looking at these examples, it is clear that my wire frame misses the idea behind modern-day web design: less, is definitely more. The less that there is, the more that will be seen. At this point, my idea is to produce written content in the form of articles for the website and thus, the web page design will be in a format that serves this premise well. And that is through a news/blog web page, similar to that of BBC News as mentioned previously. But it must be different of course, for We Are Awesome to generate its own personal identity and uniqueness. With these two design principles in mind, I was compelled to alter the original plan for the look and structure of the website, to represent my findings and critique of the aforementioned wire frame. Below is my new wire frame.

It more or less, looks the same but for one fundamental difference: it is streamlined with less extraneous clutter, which in my eyes, is what a modern web page should look like, and will be the vision for We Are Awesome going forward.