Interactive Banner: Testing

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Interactive Banner: Actionscript

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Interactive Banner: Multiples

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Interactive Banner: Style & Colour Choices

Part II: Scotland banner.

This banner will be made up of layers of colour, texture, historical artefacts and imagery that are able to clearly define its subject. I draw inspiration from the countries own flag (Scotland's cross of St. Andrew or 'Saltire'), its heather lined hills, water filled lochs, snowy mountain peaks, bustling cities and isolated, sheep filled islands. Tarton, wool, rock, mud, ice and snow could all be represenative of the banner's textural features.

I want to include as much historical reference as possible without over-crowding or over-complicating the design. Architectural, cultural, social and industrial history will be united with its very own natural history. Famous Scottish men and women will be displayed alongside lochs and mountains.

Interactive Banner: Style & Colour Choices

Part I: Product banner.

Due to the nature of the chosen item, the colours implemented will reflect its intended environment. Woodland, hillsides, moorland, dirt trails, caves, lakes and toepaths have inspired the colour choices for this banner ad. You can see this represented by the swatch below. Each of these colours was sampled directly from photographs of each element and can be seen as a true representation of natural colouring.

I may included some of the textural features that go with these environments. Muddy footprints, leaves and twigs will be used to create borders and text areas rather than rigid boxes and pixel borders. Obviously the amount of frame decoration depends entirely on the size of the banner. The larger 'skyscraper' ads leave more room for stylization. The dimentions of the horizontal, standard banners leave it difficult to add anything other that content without disfiguring the legibility. Care and dilligence must be maintained.

Interactive Banner: Web Ads

As you will see from the prototype examples in the previous post, the banners remain fixed upon opening or refreshing of the browser. The interaction only begins when the user initiates its functions. I would like to now explain this desision.
As a frequent internet visitor I believe it is important not to upstage the content of a site with crude advertisements. Although some flash pieces are worthy of recognition and prominent display, many make painfully hard work out of simple transitions between sites and pages. You are bombarded with colours, shapes, sounds, text and speech which is usually completely unrelated to the site you are visiting. Many take different lengths of time to load and preload and without Macromedia plugins, Flash banners are rendered completely useless. That's without even beginning to mention the products themselves. The latest socio-technologially 'trendy' artefacts such as Apple's 'i' devices or the latest 'intelligent' beard trimmer seem to be haphazardly slapped anywhere that will take the commission. Where in television you can escape the ads by changing a channel or waiting for the break to end, nowhere seems to be safe ground within the net. With ever greater price-tags for this virtual real estate, soon we'll have no space for content and without control, browsing will become a fully interactive Yellow Pages rather than a tool for communication, publishing and information retrieval.

There are several kinds of web ads. Variations on these continue to appear:

Banner ads: standard horizontal 468x65 pixels.

Sidebar ads (aka skyscraper ads): vertical and scrollable, two to three times higher click-through rate than banners.

Pop-up and pop-under ads: annoying to close, but far higher click-through; higher cost for advertiser.

Floating ads: even more intrusive than pop-ups—they have sound and motion, and produce still-higher click-through numbers.

Unicast ads: a television-like 'commercial' with the advantage of clickability to the sponsor’s site.

Interactive Banner: Prototypes

Having developed the concept for the banners, it is now time to get a little feedback on the ideas. I have created a few prototype banners which test the user's interactivity. Download the .zip file through the link below, have a look and please leave some appropriate feedback.

Download: prototype.zip

Interactive Banner: User Initiation

Keeping the basic function of the banners simple is the key to this exercise. Although I want the banners to stand out, I don't want to detract attention from the sites that they are destined for. I want the initial keyframe to be static or involve minimal animation. Only when the user initiates the banner will it spring into life displaying the complexity of the flash piece. The user need not be bombarded by the banner but given the choice to initiate and control its actions. I want these banners to be viewed as an extention to the site they appear on rather than an overide of the content they surround. It is all about context and what I have done is try to develop a way in which they can compliment the context in which they sit. Defining the context they will suit is all down to what product(s) the ad chooses to display. Because of the nature of my chosen product, the banners created to serve them will sit well among websites like Black's, Millet's, Decathlon and other outdoor activity specialists. This postioning is integral to the effectiveness of the banner.

Interactive Banner: Merging Ideas.

Having now chosen the products for each of the brief options I would like to take some time to reflect on this decision. I wanted my banners to link to each other in an abstract sense. No obvious links will be made but the product depicted in one will reflect the climate of the country selected for the other be that socially or geologically. In plain terms, I want to think of it as a useful object to possess when travelling the chosen country.



The Selected Country:
Scotland.

This country was selected because of the huge visual library that Scotland has to offer. If I was to approach this from a 'tourist attracton' perspective, I would have a vast array of imagery, backdrops and history to refer to (INSERT EXAMPLES). Instead I want to concentrate on the isolation of some of Scotland's terrain in order to try and link it to the product mentioned in the next section. The terrain depicted in the ad will appeal more to outdoor enthusiasts like off road cyclists, climbers, hill walkers, orienteers. This ad will not depict Scotland as a cosy, culture rich metropolis but as a place to go to get away from urban chaos and get a bit muddy.

The Selected Product:
Portable Lighting (UltraPower LED Torch).

Out of all my product ideas, this one is the best suited to the country I am using. I am still undecided as to use an existing product within this brief. I have played with the idea of using an exagerated product with extra functions that I can market and better relate to the country. Ideas such as GPS, DAB radio, naked flame, knife, ultra bright, long lasting LED torch, whiskey and cigarettes could all be implemented turning it into more of a survival device. This device will develop further as I decide of which areas of the country to market.

Interactive Banner: Concepts

What I want to begin with is a look into what products are likely to turn up on a web advertisement. From the result of this process, I can begin to develop and build the banner concept itself.
It is predominantly the youth of today who frequent the internet and due to this, product placement is ususally centred around the 18-35 year old demographic. Products and services such as mobile phones, cheap airlines, clothing retailers, gadgets and personal computers are commonplace among web adverts but items like hearing aids, drain rod companies, private healthcare, golf clubs and windscreen wipers are scarce. Because of this it is important that I choose a product/service that translates well into these terms. In the real world a double glazing company wouldn't ask a designer to create a banner for use on Myspace or Facebook. They would simply spend time advertising where they are more likely to reach their target audience, i.e. a newspaper or direct mailing/leaflet distribution.
Once I have decided on an product that fits the criteria necessary for warranting a web banner, I will begin the ideas process.