Evaluation

For my project I had to re-design an existing company's website, i chose to design the Subway website and logo. After researching around twenty companies' logos I chose Subway because I was inspired by subway trains and their stations. This depth of research I did allowed my to gain a good grasp of corporate colour schemes and logo identification, and is something I shall certainly do again in future. The idea was to make trains from pictures of Subway's sandwiches, using photography I took myself at the local train station for the backgrounds and the wheels on the trains.

The programmes I have used are Photoshop for cutting out the images I chose, Flash to animate my banner, and Dreamweaver to create my site. I used Photoshop as it the best program for this kind of activity. Flash is easy and effective to create animations, and Dreamweaver is a standard program for websites, and all three programs are compatible with each other.

I feel that I succeeded in cutting out all of my images very cleanly, and I'm pleased with the way the components have gone together so effectively. The animation is smooth and professional looking; I'm especially pleased with how the last carriage is my own logo for the company. I based the logo on the research I have done on graffiti and created it using a combination of different styles and fonts. I am also pleased with the page I designed for the food menu, I think the yellow and green scheme echoes  the company's present colour scheme, but I have given it my own twist by using a fade and adding yellow boxes to contain the sandwich images. I have again used a graffiti style font to continue the theme. This has all worked together to give a strong visual impact that people can immediately relate to. The research I did into fonts showed me that there are a lot of graffiti based ones to choose from, and I also used photoshopped images of real graffiti to form a test logo, though I chose not to use this as it lacked visual cohesion.

I will use the programs again for future projects, but I will also take my own photographs again as I got the images I wanted, and it made the project more personal to me. I found the mind-maps to be useful in generating my themes and ideas, and also for clarifying what it was I wanted to achieve. The site plan I developed was useful as well, and gave me a framework to follow.

I used a graffiti theme as it is often seen in underground stations, on the trains themselves, and around towns and cities in general. It is a relatively new form of art, created by young people who feel they have no other way of expressing themselves. It started in America, as did Subway, a fact they show in their present advertising by the use of American voice actors, so this forms a link in the minds of customers.

I would have liked to have bought and taken photographs of the sandwiches myself as that would have given me full control over the lighting and positioning of them. It would have been good if I could have reached a subway station to take photographs.

My final evaluation of this project is that I am generally pleased with the work I have done as it is cohesive and works well, both artistically and as a website.