Website Process

These screenshots show drafts of the template I chose to edit and modify for our website.

Squarespace offers easy accessibility for beginners in coding and website designing as well as advanced options for the more experienced, making it a perfect platform for a wide variety of web designers. While Squarespace is generally known for its minimalistic yet effective templates which are very often used by celebrities such as John Malkovich and numerous fashion designers, I chose this particular template, named "Adversary".

Adversary was firstly targeted towards band website designers, offering unique "bookings" and "tour dates" layouts/pages for this very purpose. It is important when browsing templates to choose one that closely matches your purpose (i.e. to entertain in this case.) I complemented the sharp yet smooth edges of the font with round-edged boxes for links and social media buttons - I chose to invert the layout of the social media buttons so it can contrast with the dark black background of the website. I chose a dark black background to give the website an even sleeker, more professional vibe while adding depth.

 Black represents fatality and mortality, which is what our documentary is all about. This is a subtle manner of branding for this reason, as well as the fact that the Fuzion Films logo (our production company) has a black and white scheme which we invert whenever needed. For example in the opening credits of the movie we used a white background and a black font, however in the facebook page and other social media we also frequently used a black background with white font. This entire website has a black-background-white-font theme which is why I uploaded the logo as a favicon and a header to this minimalistic theme. This sense of branding is followed through in the navigation too, with capital white letters gently contrasting against a dark background.

We employed many website conventions for short films, such as an about page (as shown above) and a contact page (as pictured below.) The about page serves to inform the viewers of our production company and give a little insight into how we were formed and what brought the group together in terms of ideas and brainstorming. Kept short and simple to further enhance the branding of the website. We also have a 'cast' page for the viewers to get to know the crew on a more personal and relatable level. 

The 'contact us' page aims to provide a more interactive 'Web 2.0' experience to any visitors, allowing an opportunity to send fanmail or ask questions rather than simply read about the cast, watch a film or absorb information passively. Like many short film websites we have a screenings page to emulate the traditional 'film festival' route many independent films opt to take. This adds a sense of authenticity and even humility to the website.

I even experimented on Wix.com using standard pre-existing templates as well as the more advanced 'Artificial Design Intelligence' feature which allowed more control over the overall design and style of the website as well as more display options and experimenting with the navigation. While it allowed a great deal of experimentation which helped me with further visualising the desired look for our website due to the far superior regulation, eventually I went with Squarespace.com's more simplistic and contemporary designs.

Squarespace also provides the ability to measure statistic data as visitor counters can be used to view website traffic and log information. This is a degree of control that was missing in Wix.com. Stylistically modern and appropriate, our squarespace website can be visited at www.lastride.squarespace.com