Due in no small part to my underemployment and current unhappiness with the direction my design skills are going, I have decided to attempt an entry in reboot:bbc.co.uk. To that end, I have put together a rough comp that I may or may not base later designs on. Under most normal situations, I would not publish these (in my opinion) incomplete and untested designs, but I want you, my reader, to see how at least one web designer goes from concept to design.

First off, the wonderful team at the BBC has put together a few guidelines as to what cannot be left out. These are as follows:

• BBC Logo / Branding
• Legal Blurb Links
• Search Box
• The News
• Contact the BBC Link

I will admit that when I had first put this design together, the legal blurb links didn’t make the cut. Let that be a lesson to any in a contest: read the rules first.

So without further ado, here is a thumbnail of my first stab at the design.

From here, you can see a page that is much simpler than the current site. Also, notice the wonderful (over?)use of rounded boxes. I call the overall design retro-circa-2004-blue. I think it has legs.

Anyway, the most important feature of this design is the top rounded box. I’m not thrilled with the wording, but I do like how both BBC content and user content (via blogs, podcasts, and vlogs) share relatively equal footing.

Well, that’s a decent rundown of my first comp. Barring a major distraction, there should be a number of more pieces in this series.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 1st, 2006 at 10:19 pm and is filed under Writings, web2.0, simplicity, design, reboot:bbc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.