profile intermedia 5 website

Hochschule / Fachbereich

Hochschule für Künste Bremen
Digitale Medien

URL der Hochschule

» http://dm.hfk-bremen.de [link 02]

Betreuer des Projekts

Prof. Peter Rea

Kommentar des Betreuers

1 BACKGROUND
Background to Profile Intermedia 5:
This is the title of the annual international Intermedia Conference and Workshops held at the Messe Centrum Bremen for 3 days and evenings each December. Intermedia is that area of design and media where creative people see no boundaries and can crossover or combine 2D and 3D art and design and all other aspects of media including music, sonic arts, film, video, special effects and moving-image design.
Background: to the Profile Intermedia www-WebTeam 2002.
Profile Intermedia 5 required an interactive, dynamic, Website as a major plank in its publicity campaign. This project solution is by a team of students who have been studying for a Degree in Digital Media Studies which is taught by 4 Hochschule in Bremen at the same time and awarded as a joint degree. A feature of this Degree is that each of the 4 Hochschule has its' own strengths and the Profile Intermedia www-Team includes students with great strengths in Information Technology and programming as well as others from the Hochschule für Künste whose special quality is their interest in Art and Design combined with digital media technology.
Background: to the Profile Intermedia project brief.
The Intermedia Studies teaching philosophy is based upon "learning by doing". It is this aspect of 'design applied' that attracts students each year to take on formidable assignments by carrying out real-life projects that have to work while still achieving ingenuity, innovation and a high aesthetic.
2 CRITERIA
The specifics that had to be solved, criteria:
2.1 - Aesthetics was considered to be an automatic criteria, therefore, top of the list was not an aesthetic achievement but the very practical criteria of keeping the website design evolving and alive for more than 8 months, from April to December 2002. New information and changes being made almost daily from the Profile Intermedia organisational office eventually, after the preliminary weeks, without reference to the WebTeam.
2.2 - The corporate identity, aesthetic design, the layout and typography, of all the Printed Design are developed by the Profile Intermedia Graphics Team over the same period of 8 months and consequently the WebSite which had to go live in May 2002 had also to change and re-model itself repeatedly; form and function. This criteria set the WebTeam with an exceptionally difficult task which they solved with a new LAYOUT MANAGEMENT TOOL designed and programmed by them as a new, original, tool. 3 the site had to be language sensitive in German and English as well as be produced in several compatible versions that could be received and downloaded worldwide on the most primitive systems up to the state of the art systems. 4 the WebTeam had to complete their other studies at the same time and could not be expected to devote endless time to re-making the architecture of the site or to scanning images, keyboarding and translating. 5 the Profile Intermedia Office team needed to be able to enter the site and change it at will without encurring the wrath of the WebTeam. 6 various important subsidiary features had to be included, such as: links to other sites; a direct way to order and purchase 'tickets' for the conference, to reserve and pay for accommodation, to add their details to the Profile Intermedia DataBank.
3 PROCESS
The WebTeam took design briefings alongside the Graphics team and weekly development meetings in their own workshops and at the HfK Intermedia Centre gave their www. graphics its own unique feeling, as well as fitting alongside the overall identity.
The level of interaction, verbally and in personality terms was very interesting to watch and respond to. Essentially the WebTeam were driven by the aim of functionality + design, whereas the Graphics team were driven by the aesthetics and its connection with the Printed Advertisments.
Patiently and occasionally under great pressure to do it 'now', the WebTeam built us our first truly useable website that fulfilled all the criteria above. Former Profile web designers in earlier years had produced us equally interesting sites but they were always required to be on call to make changes and additions for us. The Profile Intermedia 5 WebTeam truly managed us a genuine interactive, dynamic, site that could be modified very quickly and from any computer in our coded network.
4 RESULTS
Result 1/aesthetics and user friendly
KONTRAST, CLUSTERS AND CONNECTIONS
It was necessary that the site illustrated the concept of the Conference and Workshop theme: "Kontrast". This was achieved by connecting titles and subjects together with a constantly changing group of connecting lines. The original concept was that the titles and subjects were visualised as 'islands of text information' that were linked by typographic-lines such as latitudes and longitudes on a map. This developed to lines such as the 'flight paths' or shipping lines around the globe that demonstrate the connections between cities and countries.
This then became defined as connecting leader lines that linked the 'contrast' of a large typographic title to infinite, minute, text that was hidden in the background and jumped to the foreground and back when its hotspot was rolled over or clicked. This layered development of CLUSTERS enabled the WebTeam to hide considerable amounts of information in the backgrounds and on various layers indicated by the gradual fading of colours on the typography, (this was a unique extension for the WebTeam who got away from the flatlands of the early graphic ideas).
Our market research from 4 former years showed that our audience cannot be quantified as solely comprised of 'designers' or digital personnel but included many people who enjoy seductive graphics, are attracted by it, but wish to read simple text and to short-cut the game-like-qualities of hidden roll-overs. This major audience required an alternative menu system that followed a more typical layout. Our WebTeam provided a menu strip as well as their interactive connecting lines.
Result 2/technical and author friendly
Creation of a unique LAYOUT MANAGEMENT TOOL by the WebTeam
As a consequence of the problems set under criteria 2 (above) the WebTeam wrote and delivered a tool to update the content AND the layout for our authors who do not have expert web-tool knowledge, but who do have the acuteness of a designers eye and wished to tinker with the fine detail of the layouts without being forced to go back to the WebTeam!
The WebTeam created this tool from scratch and delivered the tool to keep the design itself up-to-date and not simply to up-date the content.
Usually, web-tools offer the possibility to edit the content (the texts etc,....), but the arrangement of the content is generally fixed in advance. (Generally as Profile Intermedia had experienced during the previous 4 years it is a big disadvantage for a site to be 'fixed' and primarily in the hands of the Techies when the Client Authors have planned to have dynamic, constantly changing, content).
In this case, (the Profile Intermedia 5 website), the tool provided by our WebTeam also offered the possibility to our Profile Authors to adjust the VISUAL LAYOUT AND THE CONTENT depending on changes such as the following:
a) the current presenters-line-up
NEW PRESENTERS AND THEMES creating changes to the layout had to be adjusted quickly and with graphic style. At times spread over the 8 month period, this was changed nearly every day as presenters confirmed their agreements and as the Profile Authors re-focussed the information to highlight new features;
b) the current visual identity (e.g. the BLOCKS of content and the 'chaotic' CLUSTERS) was regularly changed by the Profile Authors to stop the site becoming repetitive and to change the visual emphasis;
c) the IMPORTANCE of menu items was regularly changed according to our marketing plan... for example as we approached the cut off date for early bird tickets or when we needed to address ourselves to our Professional ticket purchasers then the graphic-stress and emphasis could be changed at the will of the Profile Authors without referring to technical support.
Example 1: (Ron Arad -> BIG, Tickets -> BIG, Team -> small)
Example 2: A customer visiting the website can be lead to particular items by making them more eye-catching !!!!
These adjustments in layout, could be done solely by the designers and editors in the Profile Authors' team. This feature we consider to be INNOVATIVE, NEW and COOL!
5 OUTCOMES
Independent Market Research showed 69.6% of our audience had used the website. This website sold nearly 25% of our tickets, our highest proportion yet. Our Market Research showed that many others in our audience found their information on our WebSite and then made their purchases by telephone and other means. The WebTeam learned the satisfaction of carrying out a project that took their theoretical knowledge into an applied environment, where it worked as a fine example of 'form follows function' and of 'form and function creates harmony and communication'. The WebTeam, the Graphics Team and the Profile Management Team (the Authors whose words and images became the 'content') learned the value of interacting with each other while also respecting the specialist skills that each had developed. Resulting in our most strongly developed communication design campaign and identity in 4 years; crossing print and digital media, and running through all the other aspects of the Profile Intermedia Conference and Workshops. The WebTeam crossed barriers between the group of Schools that comprise the Bremen Degree in Digital Media and consequently have stretched themselves far into areas beyond their initial expectations. The Bremen Hochschule involved have demonstrated that it is very possible to combine teaching skills and produce truly interactive 'teams' of students as well as interactive design solutions to an extremely complex set of criteria.
The WebTeam receive my fullest support for their work and I recommend it from my position as the client and user, as well as being one of the professors engaged in supervising the development of this very successful 'learning by doing' project.

Seminar / Kurzbeschreibung

Zuordnung Forschungsbereich

Peter Rea
Hon. Professor Intermedia Studies
HfK Bremen