Business of design
This week were were given a new task, to design and create a proposal for a project.
The project given to us was to design a brand and website to represent ‘Hill Street’ in Belfast.
The deliverables of this task will be a pdf of a webpage and a its respective invoice.
Firstly we looked into the proposal and what should be included in the actual document.
What’s included;
- Overview – define what needs to be done in the project
- Approach – how it will be done
- Scope of the work- what’s involved in the project development
- Assumptions – client provides what you need and expectations
- Deliverables – what’s produced + extra
- Ownerships + rights – work for hire + licensing
- Additional costs – fees and expenses
- Pricing + payment schedule – your quote
- Acknowledgement + Sign off – agreement to start (your property until they pay you).
This week’s lecture went through all of these points in detail. However I needed some extra detail describing what’s involved in the assumptions section so I used this website, for help.
Assumptions
The website gave this example “a good assumption could be that you will be limited to four weeks [for this project]. In this time you will have space for a maximum of 5 revisions over the course of 3 weeks” – It may take more than this amount of revisions but the assumption is still necessary since you’ll need to budget for time and cost and you need to set goals. This is necessary to help you track progress.
The website states ‘ it is necessary to set up accurate and slightly challenging assumptions ‘
The benefits of using a proposal.
The main benefit of using a proposal is highlighting the end goal and ensuring this is well outlined in the document.
Proposals are also really useful for tracking the success of your project and evaluating the progress over time.
The proposal also offers a great time to explain to the client the final product and if there is an original product you are updating, it allows you to highlight the changes. It helps you explain exactly what will change and the steps involved.
The proposal is a great opportunity to let everyone involved in the project know exactly what is happening and how it will be done. This allows the designer and client to cross-communicate effectively and ensure everything will be processed efficiently. Proposals also decrease the risk of mistakes.
Proposals can act of a form of legal safety for the designer if the client decides to change integral parts of the project or would like to argue the pricings- it has already been agreed and signed off on by the client themselves.
After this I began an audit on similar websites to the one I am trying to build.
Hill street is located near the Cathedral Quarter in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It hosts an array of restaurants, bars, entertainment, retail and businesses.
We have been asked to create a brand and website to represent this street with a lot to offer, similar to how Titanic Quarter and Cathedral Quarter have their own respective websites.
To begin this task I looked at both of these websites to gather an idea of what I should be doing and include in my website.
From looking through this website I’ve learned the important things to include in my own website:
- explain what it is
- what it’s used for (including statistics)
- short bio describing the area
- list of placed there such as offices, retail, media, tourism, leisure etc…
- important things happening there – news
The navigation bar in the titanic website includes;
These are verbs to describe what you can actually do at Titanic Quarter and each link takes you to a page with more details. Deciding to design the navigation bar in this way is very smart as it draws the user in and puts them first as each heading describes what they- as a person, can do there.
live
This page gives the user a list of apartments and describes them as a ‘sought after location’ adding to the importance of this area.
This page also gives users some history on the area and gives them sale lettings and prices. This enforces the idea that this is a great location and there are homes available to the user.
The live page also covers the restaurants and cafes the quarter hosts to imply that this area can give the user everything they need to live comfortably. It also includes the Belfast MET under ‘education’ to further emphasise this idea.
Work
The ‘work’ page includes the 100 national and international companies that have buildings in the Titanic Quarter.
This page also includes the list of offices, media campus, retail, industrial projects and the efficient telecom coverage the quarter hosts. Along with future offices and projects.
This is very useful to show users exactly what is happening in this up and coming area and how they could get involved and the opportunities the Titanic Quarter hosts.
Visit
This page explains the maritime mile and a short history behind the Titanic Quarter.
It also includes the places the user can visit such as the ‘Titanic Museum’ ‘Vertigo’ ‘SSE’ and the ‘marina’. Each of these places when clicked on gives the user more details and contact information.
At the bottom of each page the user can click on buttons called ‘what’s on’ ‘news’ and the ‘media room’
These are obviously important pages as they are directed to for the user at every page. They allow the user to access important information without having to go through specific pages or the nav bar at the top of the page.
Readily accessible means the user will definitely see it so if I intend on using this idea it must be for pages that are important and well developed.
