Grace Kitney, Be Loud
Transcript
Grace’s webpage answers a brief by ‘up and coming’ design studio and branding company, ‘be loud’. The brief demanded a website with a unique and clear design that will communicate the values of the design studio with clarity. The target audience, as detailed in Grace’s accompanying presentation, consists of people aged 18-30, working in the sports industry who are seeking a new style for their brand. Given this, the design and style of the website itself is as important as its informational content. After experimenting with various design styles (including Memphis and Japanese Kawaii) Grace responded to feedback and her own gut and settled on the Swiss International Design style. This emerged in the 1950s and is characterised by cleanliness, clarity, and objectivity in design. It focuses on minimalist designs that are digestible and aesthetic for viewers. The feelings that are associated with Swiss International Design are professionalism and clarity, evoked by the simplistic nature of the design technique.
The result starts with a landing page with a deep red background and a series of instructions (be silent, be discreet, be invisible, be loud, be quiet, be hidden, be timid) written in list form in various fonts. All but one of these instructions (be loud) have been struck through with a bold animated line (a shape consistent with Swiss International Design). The font of ‘be loud’ utilises the bold overlapping block letters also present in Swiss International Design. A navigation bar running across the top of the homepage offers routes to ‘home’ (in black font), ‘about’ (in white font), ‘projects’ (in black font) and ‘clients) in white font – the first two tabs to the far left of the navigation bar, the final two tabs to the far right of the navigation bar.
The site’s welcome page is of the same deep red, and bundles the tabs to the far right of the navigation bar. On the top left of the navigation bar is the company name: be loud (all in lowercase black letters on a white block background). The body text uses a header of 3-D effect bold lettering in white (“WELCOME TO be loud – where sports marketing meets boldness”). Text below in black reads “Our mission is simple: we help brands STAND OUT” - those last two words are in all-capital letters and in a thicker bolder font than the text that precedes it. The copy continues “Specialising in Instagram branding, website design, and game day content, we’re here to make your mark unforgettable. We have the power to set you – apart – [that last word, apart, is separated on either side by a hyphen). The text continues: It’s all about being bold, being different, and making a statement that sticks. Join us. Let’s make some noise in the world of sports marketing.”
The Contact page continues the red, white and black colourway, offering a contact form, and details of an email address, an Instagram handle, a street address and a phone number. The Projects page features two rows of three snapshots of different brands: four designs feature digital manipulation of a photo (such as adding a red and black speech bubble to a player, repeating the word ‘victory’ in a tennis player’s shadow and triplicating in different shades a player holding up a 2-finger victory salute).
The site was created on Abode Photoshop and Illustrator, animation sequences created on Adobe Animate and the site has been built using Adobe Dreamweaver.