Evaluation of my project

Final design-

My final design became an interactive event. As well as the packaging I initially set out to do, I created a Flash website that would become the packaged content, and also a poster which would advertise/give directions for the event.

My final design for the packaging is a code-wheel cipher, which, when deciphered would give out the password used for accessing a page on my Flash website. The website gives information about my whole project, and includes imagery and descriptions of how I progressed to my final design. The password protected page for the website holds information about a secret, code related, 'thing'. -I will not reveal what is on that page here, as this blog also forms part of my website.


Materials-

For my final design, I settled on using a combination of sticky-back plastic on paper, and acetate sheets. Overall I think this worked out really well. The sticky-back plastic worked well to reinforce the paper, making it somewhat water-resistant. I used the acetate sheets to add the code to my packaging; I printed a Q-R code onto the sheets would give the overall package some depth, and then added the lettering to the design using Adobe Illustrator. This lettering would form the code.


Website design-

Designing my website was quite tricky for me, as it was the first time I had ever made a website in Adobe Flash, and the second time I had ever used the program to create something. I feel I picked the program out quite quickly though, as well as learning a fair amount of Actionscript, which I used for coding things like my password protected page, and the buttons.

The password protected page, or rather the informaion it holds, forms the contents of my packaging. I feel this worked rather well, as I was packaging the concept of code.

I intergrated the concept of code throughout my website as well. For example, I chose to make the buttons  unreadable untill you hovered the mouse over them. This comes from looking at how code isn't easily read, and can infact be impossible in cases, unless done by a computer. Here you are using the computer to read the buttons.


Rejected ideas/website-

I went through many ideas for my website, very few of them actually made it to my final design. This was due to some ideas just not working well enough visually - in my opinion, and some were scrapped due to problems with Actionscript.

I initially wanted to have a pre-loader on my website. This would have been a screen where code 'rained' from the mouse cursor, and filled the page up to reveal the website. I scrapped this because I had confiction problems with the Actionscript used to code this.

Another idea was to have the website initially load in a kind of mosaic transition. The mosaic would load to look like a Q-R code instead of just randomly placed mosaic tiles like the mosaic transitions do. This idea was scrapped due to the transition looking somewhat 'tacky'. I think mosaic, and many other transitions take away from the appearance of websites, and this did the same.


Overall project-

I feel the overall project went really well. I'm happy with the materials used for the packaging, as they hold the form well, are robust enough to withstand use, and looks good visually. And the website turned out to be -almost- exactly as I wanted it. It wasn't perfect as I didn't know a lot about Actionscript, and didn't have enough time in my project to study it.