Emma Wilkinson - Avis0906600

FMP Formative Assessment Portfolio

FMP Proposal

For my FMP I am going to be doing a full design and development

of a building companies website.

It will be a live brief and I will speak to the client every 2 weeks to

get feedback and their opinion of the designs I am doing. I will also

speak to them about aspects of the build such as how they want

their content managed such as a Content Management System,

and whether they want functions such as a price list for prospective

clients to see or a booking form etc. I will do all of this before I start

the initial design ideas so I know what needs to be on each page.

My initial research will be into building companies websites that

are already on the internet to gain an insight into what sort of

information needs to be in it.

The company I am doing the website for is called ‘TPW Building

Contractors’ and is an Isle of Wight based company. They already

have an existing logo and colour scheme but wish to have a full re

brand of the company. They have also asked for some print based

items such as letterheads and invoice templates.

From working on this Action Research brief I have realised I am go-

ing to have to account for quite a long time of actually building

the website. The time it took to completely finish this website was 2

weeks and in comparison it is going to be a much longer project so

I am going to give myself 6 of the 12 weeks to do the actual build.

The rest of the time is for the design and research.

FMP Proposed Time line

During the first week of starting the FMP stage I created a time plan that showed what I hoped to stick to throughout the weeks. I knew this would give me a structure and a goal to work towards which I find very helpful when working so independently.

Initial Research

My initial research was to look at local tradesmen to see the competition in the area. I wanted to see what services they offered, what their logos and colour schemes were like and to see what information they provided on their websites. From collecting this research I was able to gain an insight into what the client is working against.

These pages will have more research of other competitors on.

These pages will have more research of other competitors on.

PDP  Tutorial,  Bullet  Points.  

 

• MyUCA  -­‐  Course  Hankbook.  Use  the  Assesment  Criteria  p.68  

• SWOT  Analysis  

• Is  just  a  webdesign  enough  to  meet  the  assessment  criteria?  

• How  to  develop  this?  

• Develop  a  brand  strategy  for  the  buisness.  

• Define  a  brand  strategy.  What  is  it?  

• Define  Advertising  and  this  links  into  brand  strategy.  

• Marketing  and  Communications.  

• What  does  he  want/need  in  terms  of  print,  clothing,  livery?  

• Vans,  Mobile  Advertising?  

• Research  direct  compeitiors.  

• What  makes  a  good  website?  

• Different  types  of  websites  for  different  needs.  Need  for  a  blog?  No  

• Accrediation  by  organisations.  

• What  is  his  buisness  plan?  

• Research  the  compeitiors  logos  and  websites.  

• Size  of  company  and  competitors  now  and  in  the  future.  

• Read  Dorothy  Goslet  -­‐  1981  

• What  is  the  sphere  of  opportunity  in  terms  of  the  island  and  the  mainland?  

• What  areas  of  building/  construction  do  they  work  in?  e.g  windows,  electrics,  

demolition...  

• Corporate  Social  Responsibility  

• Accrediations  

• Take  photos  around  the  buisness  now  to  show  where  its  going  to  go.  

• Understand  where  he  wants  to  take  the  buisness.  1yr,  5yrs  &  10yrs.  

• Clarify  his  plan  of  action.  

PDP Tutorial

At the beginning of the semester I had a PDP tutorial to discuss my ideas surrounding my FMP Plan. This tutorial was so helpful for me in clafiying my ideas and gave me a much larger project to work towards instead of just a web design. On the opposite page are the most important questions and points that I came away from the tutorial with including questions to myself and also to the client.

Logo Design

I initially started out by making sketches of ideas for lo-gos. The client wasn’t exactly sure what they wanted their business to be called so they gave me a few sug-gestions and asked me to play around with all of them before showing them. After doing lots of sketches I chose a few of my favourites which I put into Illustrator and cre-ated vector versions. After continuous contact with the client they then chose the one that they wanted to use. They

then asked me to so lots of different colour versions all in blue and green shades.

Final Logo

Below is the final logo that the client chose to have for his business. After lengthy conversations about the name of the business I decided it would be a good idea to check ‘Companies House’ to see if any of the names have already been taken. Unfortunately the name he wanted; ‘TPW Construction’ was already taken so we decided to go for ‘building contractors’ instead as it works well with the logo that he liked.

Print Design

Along with the logo and colour scheme, the client also wanted to have a business card, compliments slip and invoice sheet. I kept the designs as simple as possible just using the two colours from the logo. There is more to follow for the final assessment along with the developmental stage of this process.

This page will have the clothing and livery designs.

This page will have the clothing and livery designs.

Web Design

This week has been the beginning stages of the initial stages of the web design. I have started off with rough layouts of what will go on the home page and the colour schemes. The next step will be to put these designs into Adobe Fireworks such as example above and create some layouts to be able to show the client.

Evaluation

At this point of the semester I feel as though this portfolio doesn’t show a great deal of work but from working on a live brief with a client that really cares how their business is going to be projected has really taught me some important lessons in that customers can be very tricky. It has taken a long time to get to the point that I am at now, with just a logo in place.

In the next few days I am starting the web design process and I am going to be constantly showing different versions to the client until we reach a point of decision.

In the development process I am going to be learning a lot of new skills as I want to be using the latest technology and coding to have the best outcome and usability. The skills I want to improve on are CSS3 and HTML5 and I want to incorporate some of the most recent improvements.

I am also going to have a week spent going around all of the clients past projects and photographing them so as to have a gallery page on the website. This will also be good for me as I don’t usually have the chance or opportunity to have to do photography so I am not highly confident in it.

After graduation I am hoping to be able to show a portfolio of web design and development and would like to hopefully gain a job in a design and web studio environment. Before I can do this I feel I need to drastically improve my skills and teach myself the new developments in web that are constantly changing.