Social networking site - recycling is good

My last post about Flash banners for Get In: Get Gaming was unfortunate in that I went to the effort of making a banner which I then didn't think was good enough for the site and so didn't use it! 

However, as I'm increasingly finding with design, every idea has a worth and is useful. 

Back when I was making Villains I did an initial batch of logos, naturally, only one being chosen to use. When needing a specialised header for the pages, I combed through my original designs and successfully implemented/incorporated them together, thereby fuelling a recycling scenario.

I have been fortunate enough to do this again for the social networking site. 

The light blue tone was the main problem the first time around - it stuck out too much and downgraded the overall feel. 

The image above I darkened by adding a darker filter along with a black border. Alas, it was to no avail. I still wasn't pleased with it.

Cut to a few days before hand in and me turning my attention to filling the pages with content and I had an idea. Utilising the gradient background that already proved successful I decided to do a typographic sort motion piece just reinforcing the title of the website. Naturally, the choice of neon light blue was instantaneous. This time however I went for a techy, digital feel using LCDDOT custom font from dafont.com.

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Initially I expected this to go onto the main page, but it ended up placed to appear once the user has logged in. In terms of literary meaning, I know this is a little off: "get in: get gaming" probably should be before they login, but it was the second banner, courtesy of recycling, a gaming legends banner that felt more apt on the homepage. It served a better purpose: attracting the attention of potential visitors.

Whereas previously the gaming icons floated, spun, faded on and off the horizontal banner, this time I just decided to go with a scrolling from right to left effect. 

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I dropped images that weren't square i.e. having whitespace etc so to conform to the square rigidity of the piece. I think this is an effective Flash banner as it should draw in the eye to the gamer on first loading the index page, particularly as the colourful images make for a strong contrast against the black backing. Furthermore, the scrolling effect makes for a nice piece of motionary graphics.

In terms of Flash complexity, I wanted to loop it so the first one would join with the last one, making it cyclic. Unfortunately with limited time and PHP being the key priority I merely inserted a second string of images after the first load. Should the user hang around long enough on the first page they will see it scroll through but hopefully not long enough for it to get to the actual end where a black void will appear momentarily!

In all, this was an exercise that showed and proved that ideas are not dead and gone the first time they don't fit. It is reassuring and feels good to know the effort you put in is worth it. Furthermore, being a fan of motion graphics, I'm pleased with these pieces as they play nicely on the eye.

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