Hello bytemaster,
This is our first homepage design proposal
http://i.imgur.com/F0BkXY5.jpgWe are
bitsapphire.com, a group of web developers and designer specializing in potentially highly disruptive and high-value startups who want to change the world. I think Invictus would be the perfect fit for us if we win this bounty.
Below are our comments and questions based on your forum posts in this and other threads:
All logos are only placeholders!
Our proposal lacks 1 crucial component (as do the competing designs so far). You haven’t made clear what the CONVERSION GOAL of the site is. Do you want people to sign up to download an application, sign up to a mailing-list, or is this just an information portal? WIthout a conversion goal the site cannot be complete.
We believe that at this point in time INFORMING as many people as possible should be the main goal. To achieve this and have an even bigger kickstart of all DACs you need a mailing list. In this design we’ve put the signup at the bottom because it is only a general information portal. However, if long-term email signup is the main goal then we need to do slight modifications.
Identified user groups are:
1) General public
2) Crypto and tech enthusiast looking for the next “app”
3) Finance person (investor, supporter, or decision maker)
4) Media (they generally make up their mind in 10 seconds or less and they can be important for growth)
- We used very light pastel colors, clean spacing, calming photos (IP is OK), and an overall feel which should make people feel “at home” and secure.
- We are shooting for this warm but nonetheless professional and technical feeling because the crypto sphere is overloaded with scams, the “I have an app too! here look at me!”-startup ADHD-like design disorder, and because we think Invictus should become the Apple of crypto and finance.
- Our goal is a clean Apple-like design with a community twist, essentially making crypto and Open Source sexy for the user, engaging for the community, and highly interesting to a potential investor/supporter. We believe that this design entails all of these components.
- JS is kept to a minimum and is only used for functionally important tasks.
- The navigation bar is fixed. We believe this is the best solution to include as many communities within the brand as possible. Newbies will scroll down and look see what BitShares etc are all about, and then decide to read more about other things on the site. Returning visitors know what they are looking for and click through. People interested in the graph (like the coinbase enthusiasts) will directly interact with the price on the graph (clicking on it reveals the price graph very similar to bitcoins.com). The fixed bar also makes it possible for us to make the site longer once enough DACs are online.
- The price ticker can be dynamic client-side.
- Clicking on the price gets you the graph sliding in from above similar to bitcoins.com. We believe that this is the only way to integrate hard economic data into the homepage without breaking the user experience for the other non-finance user groups.
- The flag icons for the language switch are also flat. No Skeuomorphism will be used for Invictus, only icons and flat illustrations.
- Initial Language should be determined by IP. Only alternative language flags should be shown. We need to see how we can do this without a real CMS as you asked.
- Hovering over “Research Driven”, “Transparent”, and “Venture Backed” toggles the fade-in 1 sentence description. Clicking on any of the buttons gets you to a subtitle on 1 page entailing the philosophy, mission, and vision of Invictus. These are the 3 key points also outlined on protoshares.net
- All text and Icons/logos below the 1st fold fade in while scrolling down. This supports the calming effect. The fade-in will be relatively fast though.
We have not done any logos except one for Invictus Innovations, however, we liked one proposal here a lot and would like to work with other designers on the logos. We will post sub-bounties which are competitive with our competition’s sub-bounties. The final short-form logo will be used on the left side of the navigation menu.
We are no content writers, nor do we intend to be. We will do sub-bounties for the content too.
We are open to working with any of the designers or content writers from the other teams. Your work will be rewarded proportionally if our team succeeds.
Considering that you plan on doing marketing, conferences, etc, you will absolutely need a coherent brand. Doing that exclusively through bounties will be very difficult if not impossible. To make the site design more coherent with any other branding material in the future, we propose to make a brandbook for Invictus Innovations. This would include very specific pixel-perfect web and offline design choices as well has a highly color coded sub brands. Essentially every DAC is a sub-brand and can very beautifully be color coded, in which case we can do some color coding tricks on the homepage too.
We would be interested to work on your brandbook and general branding after, and if we win this bounty.
We are all looking forward to your feedback so that we can move on with your design feedback and do the slicing of the website to give everyone a better idea of our vision.
Best,
Itnom/Taulant