Great design is rare. Add to that the highly subjective nature of design and the prospect of achieving something great comes clear. Above is the homepage of my current effort Voyage.TV and a cover from 2002 of my former business, Oneworld magazine, designed by Shirley Petchprapa. This cover was one of our best in nine years.
Having spent well over a decade in print I revert to it as a reference though the application of design in print is very different from interactive. Magazine covers are designed to engage a casual newsstand peruser enough to get them to take a closer look while websites are inviting (or not) for a host of other reasons and generally have more lifting to do.
At VoyageTV we’re still quite young so we need to communicate what we do, what a user can do with us, and who we are built for demographically within a few seconds. While I think it’s clear that we’re in the travel business we’re beginning to undertake reworking how we present the “who we are built for” aspect which calls into play nearly everything.
At Oneworld, as the founder and publisher, design was my responsibility as was the business overall, but my aim has always been to find the right team. For the cover above the editor, photo-editor, photographer and designer had to come to a presentation that satisfied each. My role was to have input into those delicate conversations, but more so building a sustainable business meant finding the right people.
At Voyage we have the right person in our Creative Director, Battista Remati, and now for the “team” part. We’re just beginning to talk to talent who take what we need to do as a business and present it in a way where all the pieces come together; the user experience, the typography, the colors, the functionality, and creative choices in images AND in the creation and presentation of the video the content.
We’re at the lead end of a new direction in what is a never-ending conversation about how we’re presenting the business. The thing is I always like to get as much feedback as possible — when I twittered that POV, got some very informed insights from designers and thank you for that…..but more is better…very much appreciate your perspective.