Firestarter Labs Web Design
a small website (uncoded) project by firestarter

Brief updates

18-Nov-09 7:44 p.m. GMT

By request, I've changed the Word file to a pdf file. One wireframe has also been changed (save buttons)

21-Nov-09 7:48 p.m. GMT

I've added a new file "more site likes and dislikes.pdf". Hopefully this will provide some more clarity or at least some ideas. I'm hoping to see more novel layouts and ideas for getting out idea across quickly. Cheers!

26-Nov-09 4:22 p.m. GMT

After critiquing all the designs submitted so far, it seemed like it was time for an update.

While we've seen some designs that have some merits, we are still hoping for some less conventional designs. This recent blog post fits with my current thinking: http://boagworld.com/design/no-more-websites

We're open to many ideas, but please avoid playing up the "fire" aspect of our name - I have yet to see that succeed.

Instead we need to emphasize the core element of our concept - making it easy for people to apply proven principles of rhetoric, information design, and instructional design to create great presentations. Basically we've distilled down the best advice (spread across 100's of sources including books like Presentation Zen, Made to Stick, Slideology) into a simple step-by-step process.

It is possible that a focus on the "lab" element of the company name might work. This refers to the fact that we are identifying / testing different presentation strategies. The most obvious lab motifs are test tubes / flasks ( http://www.mutantlabs.co.uk/ , http://www.googlelabs.com ). I've seen the flask in this contest and in our previous biz card design contest and not liked it, but I think it has potential as long as it gets our core concept across somehow.

thanks for all the effort!

30-Nov-09 3:02 p.m. GMT

I have been trying to find an image that could convey the core concept - distilling down the best advice into a simple process for creating presentations. Here are the best two ideas I've come up with:

1) A simple comparison between a book stack and a screen shot of our product. The scale of this image is wrong (because I want to be able to show details in the screen shot and not just a thumbnail), but it gets the idea across. You might also just use the stack - there is the possibility that the book stack could make up the right or left edge of the page and be carried the length of the page, drawing the visitor's eyes down. NOTE: you can use stock images here, but your design should allow us to replace it with a photo of the actual books we've drawn advice from (spine side showing).

2) The other possibility would be some slightly humorous machine that maybe is fed a bunch of books and outputs a presentation or a simple process or our screen shots. See http://sleevage.com/beastie-boys-the-mix-up/

30-Nov-09 6:14 p.m. GMT

Here is a link to a book stack picture of ours. http://firestarterlabs.com/book-stack/

We'll do a better one eventually. Note that this one shows the spines straight on, if having the books at an angle works better in your design then feel free to change it up (just use a stock image to get the idea across for now)

1-Dec-09 7:48 p.m. GMT

I've added a new project file - a mockup that shows an alternative to the "ask the community" area. Basically, instead of having the "hide" button/link the user will be able to switch between the Q&A view and a sidebar view. The sidebar is something akin to a sidebar in a magazine - offering some potentially entertaining or contrasting content. Our current notion is to display the sidebar by default, so its possible that it will be the means to create that interest or fun factor we are hoping for.