DI: What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
: I would like to connect geometrical shapes with emotional element. I believe every single shape could represent something which is much more than what it looks like. How to get people's reading preference with a innovative way, that is what I want to prob for this project.
DI: What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
: Typography and consistency. For 9News, a easy-to-use web app with excellent readability and high performance is what I especially want to achieve throughout the project. The black square shapes as seen in the logo is a key element for the whole app.
DI: What are your future plans for this award winning design?
: 9News is my degree project for my bachelor degree of computer graphic design at University of Waikato in 2014. As a degree project, I think it meets my expectation well, and express my idea and understanding of design in ingenious way.
DI: How long did it take you to design this particular concept?
: I spent about 3 month on this project. About 1 month on ideation, research and visual design, and the rest time for development and revise.
DI: Why did you design this particular concept? Was this design commissioned or did you decide to pursuit an inspiration?
: 9News is my degree project as I said. When I was a university student, I believe university is the most valuable place for a young designer to explore the digital world. 9News is a conceptual design, and I believe it made it.
DI: Is your design being produced or used by another company, or do you plan to sell or lease the production rights or do you intent to produce your work yourself?
: The design is being developed by myself. However, as a conceptual design, the function for this web app is quite simple and subjective, and I intent to produce it for myself.
DI: Who is the target customer for his design?
: The target audience is young people, especially for 18-26 male, because they are rational, creative and interested in trendy news. They also have more curiosity to novelty apps like 9News.
DI: How did you come up with the name for this design? What does it mean?
: The name of 9News is quite concise and easy to be understood: 1 news for 9 different categories each day.
DI: Which design tools did you use when you were working on this project?
: Adobe creative suits, including Photoshop and Illustrator. For front end development part, I used Sublime Text for the most time.
DI: What is the most unique aspect of your design?
: How to build the connection with shapes and emotion in a visual way, that is what the most unique aspect of my design.
DI: Who did you collaborate with for this design? Did you work with people with technical / specialized skills?
: I really appreciate Tomás García Ferrari, who was my supervisor throughout this degree project. He gave me some great suggestions about choosing font and improving usability.
DI: What is the role of technology in this particular design?
: As a responsive web app, HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery should be the framework of this project. I utilised SVG for the animation part.