Personal site

My New Sneakers' Store :)

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:15:53 GMT

Success by Richard St. John (TED)

admin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:33:17 GMT

Great video about success by Richard St. John (from TED)

Content Inventory and Dream Team

admin — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:31:15 GMT

Context
Website which would make publishing simpler and which would connect writers and authors.

Information
Information will be mainly created by users. I will provide only tools which would help to create infomation.

Participation
Participation is very important in my project, as it is built on user participation and generating content.

Experience
For the users, experience is not necessary. Everyone will be able to create and publish their work on the website.

Data and software needed for the website:
- text
- images
- video/animation (Flash or anything else)
- design (Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash)

Examples of existing content:
www.lulu.com
outskirtspress.com
www.createspace.com
www.selfpublishing.com

Dream Team:
1. Experienced designer (web-designer) who is familiar with Flash and building commercial websites (as my website will require build-in payment features)
2. Marketing analyst, who would help to do marketing and advertising to attract users.
3. I would like to work with The Hyperfactory who would do marketing through mobile media (some examples of their work: Nike campaign, 42 Below Vodka campaign, United Nations "Voices" campaign)
4. I would like to work with Bone Oakley company
5. Creative team of designers who would create creative and viral ads for the website.

SOME EXAMPLES OF CREATIVE PRINT ADS:

WWF

Kaizen Creative Media Solutions

The History Channel

SOME EXAMPLES OF VIRAL VIDEO ADS:

Dove

Zazoo condoms

Akbank

Research Outline

admin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:23:00 GMT

My preliminary research will be based on survey. I created it and sent it to prospective future users of my service. The original survey is on Russian, but I copied it and translated into English for you to have a look http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=VqMl1IUXrzMgxbbg_2fgDXHQ_3d_3d

I made it short (9 questions only), first, because surveymonkey allows you to only have 10 questions with basic account, and second, because, I don't think a lot of people would respond to longer survey...

This is preliminary research to get to know the audience, their tastes and demands which will allow me to continue with the research and building the service.

I have already got 7 responses, I will close the survey on Friday.
We'll see what the results will be :)

My tentative research plan

admin — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:32:25 GMT

What: I will study the publishing market in the Ukraine as long as the quantity of books published per year along with the quantity of new authors. I will also do marketing research to study the demands of potential consumers.

Why: I think the project is important, as it will give opportunity to people easily and inexpensively publish and distribute their work

How: Taking into consideration the challenges (the distance and shortage of time), I will mainly use surveys and interviews which I will conduct using Internet

Sample survey questions:
1. Do you write feature stories, novels, poetry etc.? (if yes, what exactly)
2. Would you use the self-publishing website? (if no, why)
3. Would you use it as a reader? A writer? Both?
4. If you would use it as a reader, what type of books would you buy?
5. What price of book would you consider acceptable for you to buy? (price for a book, for a brochure, for a book on good paper with color illustrations…)
6. If you would use the website as a writer, what price would you give to your book?
7. What functions would you like to see on such a website? (e.g. publication, selling, blogs, feedbacks, contact the author etc.)

Scope and Timeline: Data collection and managing through surveys and interviews along with designing the mockup site will take approximately 6 weeks.

Design topic, description and goals

admin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:04:05 GMT

Design concept
My concept is to develop a self-publishing website where users will be able to create, design, publish and distribute printed content created by themselves (books, photo-albums etc.).

Communication goal
The goal is to provide a website where people will be able to publish their work and to distribute it. The website will be interactive so that authors could get feedback on their books.

Choice of media
The media I will use are Internet (on the first stage) and books/printed materials (on the second stage). Initially I will design the website only, but eventually I will have to design some possible layouts for books, book covers, so that users could use them when creating their publishing material.

Ideas of exploration
Mainly I will explore by interviewing and making surveys with target audience.

My audience
My first target audience are mainly young people (17-35) living in the Ukraine. Though later on I will try to widen my project to older audience, I will start with yonger audience, as they are more active on the web and research with them will be more demonstrative.

My clients
My clients are potential users of my service - people who like writing and do it for pleasure.

Goals of me, my client and audience
The short term goal is to make a design that would attract young people to the service and make it popular. The long term goal is to incorporate some changes, or find some marketing solutions to attract older audience as well.

Why people will want to watch/visit/interact with my media design
With the self-publishing service I am going to offer (design), people will be able to publish their written work and even distribute it making some money. This will be the one of a kind such service in the Ukraine.

What's Out There - Self-Publishing

admin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:18:03 GMT

When I first got to know what self-publishing is and how it works, I decided to incorporate that idea in my home country. That would not only help some people to publish their works and ideas, but I believe it would help publishing of academic and educational literature (it's a problem to publish something for professors there because of bureaucracy).

I would start my project as a self-publishing website (which will publish and distribute), but later on (depending on its popularity and demand) I would add social networking feature there (so that writers could communicate with the readers etc.)

Actually, there won't be any straight competitors as there is no self-publishing websites in the Ukraine.

As for similar projects, one of my favorites is www.lulu.com (it's also the most user-friendly to my mind). Some other projects:
http://outskirtspress.com
https://www.createspace.com
http://www.selfpublishing.com

Though at first (while first promoting the website) I will aim at audience 17-30 (this age range uses Internet most in the Ukraine), later on I'll start attract older audience. In the Ukraine most people of 50 and older don't use Internet at all, or their use is very limited (e-mail, checking news, that's it). That's why my design should be maximum user-friendly, it should have place for video or flash-animation about how to use the self-publishing service and what it gives. I will not use any "wild", "trendy" stuff trying to make everything as clear and simple as possible.

About Me in the Design Process

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:27:37 GMT

Things that inspire me:
- Color

- Simpicity/Minimalism

- Black&White

- Modern architecure

- Nature
- Art-house and independent movies
- Beautiful pictures (http://www.chromasia.com - website of one of my favorites photographers)
- Beautiful shots in the movies
- Different cultures
- Philosophical parables and interesting stories (for example, this one A Blind Man)

My design process:
- I like original findings and ideas in the design
- While designing I tend to play out with the staff and eventually "that very" design appears.
- I like searching for resources, no matter if it's a picture I need, some information or specific Illustrator brush
- I cannot picture the whole final design in my head before I start working on it, usually I have only main idea (or ideas) and work with them

My main goal is to develop my own media-related business. I suppose the business will be related to new media and the Internet, so the knowledge of design, web design and other interactive means of communication is very important to me.

Currently I am more experienced in video/TV production than in other media, I try to make this gap smaller by taking different classes in design and media management.

More about me and my experience - on the home page. To view some of my projects, look in the appropriate link of the website. More projects (in Ukrainian) here: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.channel&ChannelID=193680936

Some more projects in English or with English subtitles:
A Token (Video Project for one of my classes. The text is based on the novel "The Diary of Dirty Eve" by Elena Morozova)
The program devoted to prominent Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov
Ball 2 (The program about the history of different balls, the first part is in the Video and Audio Projects link of my website)

It's so weird...

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:21:22 GMT

It's so weird that all text messages has the same price - 6 cents... Those which tell "I love you", "I don't want to see you any more", "I don't care", "she died", "please, buy yogurt and bananas"... and all the others... All have the same price... It's so weird...

My new shop :)

admin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:26:18 GMT