When Polonsky Design was asked to create this interactive demo, the words "Make it cool" kept coming up over and over...so that was our goal! We went through a variety of ideas, and created a variety of designs and mock-ups to meet that goal.

Keeping the "cool" mandate in mind, along with the target audience, I designed a series of full color Photoshop mock-ups based on my initial sketches.

The project consisted of 5 main sections, each with their own sub-sections. Based on some research, we came up with the idea of having the main navigation scroll around in a circle, with the selected page image becoming bigger as it comes to the front. During the design process this "nav" was dubbed "The wheel-O-Fun". I designed it to appear at the lower left portion of the space, leaving room at the top left for the as-yet-designed Impact logo.

To view jpgs of the 5 sections, click...one, two, three, four, five.

Functional Wireframes

Based on the buy-off of the initial design mock-ups, we created working wire frame layouts in Flash. The idea was to show how the navigation would work, and how the branding and content would be displayed. We were also asked to show a few differnt potential layouts...three layouts to be more specific.

These wire frames were shown at a meeting where I walked through each one of them, describing the differences...up sides, and design considerations along the way. To view the working wire frames, click... One, two, three.

To view a full-color working version of the approved layout (highlighting the wheel-o-fun), jump here!

So why does the finished design look so different?
And what happened to the Wheel-O-fun?

Well, sometimes even the coolest ideas are just too cool. The wheel-o-fun, although well recieved, was just a bit too much for the higher-ups. So, we kept some of the "cool", and I redesigned the layouts without the wheel-o-fun resulting in the final design.

To view the final mock-ups as jpgs, click... One, two, three, four, five, and a new page, six.

To view a working version of the finished project jump here! Remeber though, that due to the private nature of the content, not all links within the demo are active.

The fantastic Flash work created for this project was done by Brent at RainTree Design. And the actual Impact logo was created by another design firm.