Editorial tone & voice, business strategy and design

In the case of #Bluesponge28, and regarding the vision, purpose and identity, the declaration of intent posted on Day 2 (The next 10 years) is the starting point of our branding process. We stated where we are heading, what we stand for (and what we don’t) and why we want to work on an open platform to end up with a clear proposition 27 days later.

The ultimate communication platform we’re building will have to  clearly state our business, creative and technology directions and values. We’ve accepted these to come later in the process with the risk of giving the impression of ’undercooking’ certain things. And it is true that we might have broken a few communication rules and skipped a few steps. As creatives always dream of the perfect brief where the intent, the USP and messaging are so clear that the focus on the creative expression becomes total.

By being 98% open about what we’re doing (we’re only keeping a few things for ourselves), we’ve allowed you to witness the business process and take position. So yes, some things are not stated clearly as in a case study written in retrospect. We did specify the audience though, in the beginning of the post on Design brief II (http://bluesponge.com/2011/02/design-brief-ii-wireframes/#comments) and the intended message we wish to send them.

With regards to research, the point mentioned by @Briac in one of the online comment is very relevant. We did jump into business strategy and design process immediately on Feb 1st but we had done a lot of research on similar companies – in Montréal and abroad – in the previous months. Here they are (download pdfs here, here and here). We didn’t check our website’s analytics (great idea indeed) much as a reference point; the reason being that the site was so old it did not reflect our current state of mind nor most of our recent projects. So instead, we’re taking all our bagage from the past 10 years and reading it backwards. Before laying it forward.

With regards to the mental model and the user-centered design, I find this to be a tricky question. In the sense that everything must be user-centered. I cannot think of an application nor platform that is designed irrespective of its users (except maybe an interactive  art installation, and then again…). In our case, the intent for bluesponge.com is to become a platform that projects certain ideas of ours with regards to the state of digital media as well as to talk about our projects for potential collaborators and clients.

The model is to generate content in function of its architecture. For instance, by writing each field (text and image) in function of its precise role and where it would appear on the interface. A project title represents the big picture and basic concept of the project. It would appear everywhere a project is presented, supported by other text/visual elements in different contexts: from the client section, you’d see the title + one-liner clearly describing the mandate; from the home page, you’d get the title, the category of the work, the main image, as well as the client name and the one-liner; etc.

trueroots

wireframe - home page

I guess what we should do at this point is what Jonathan is referring to as the mental model, and what Kevin sees as the absence of creative direction. How will the discourse be structured to make sense to the user, facilitating the Bluesponge storyline and avoiding redundancies.

In the meantime,  today we opened two new sections relating to services: Technology and Managed services, with related contents appearing on each service. Of course these will increase as we move forward. By the end of the week, when most of the sections are up, we’ll focus almost solely on the design and content for the following and remaining 2 weeks.

Enjoy.