Miri Jones Design

Introduction

With no set brief for this project, the core focus was to create a website using either a Content Management System or a database, and culminating everything that had been learnt over the past year on the course. I opted to use WordPress as the CMS.

The site serves as an introductory guide and information hub for new and current cat owners living in the city centre. It is there to help maintain the quality of life for cats who may have limited space in their apartments, whilst also helping to inspire owners with affordable DIY activities.

Research

I began by researching cognate websites, both for the style and similar subject matters. I found that I was most inspired by the use of bold block colours, and interactive features of the websites.

Following this, I spent a lot of time researching cats! This included things like visiting cat cafes for interaction, visiting my friend's and families cats, as well as doing some photoshoots that I could not only use as the inspiration for my SVG illustrations. I also used the photos and videos for the social media marketing of the website.

Another aspect of the research was a lot of reading books and articles about cats behaviour, how humans should interact with them to help problem kitties, and what certain things mean (for example, when a cat slow blinks at you or can fall asleep in your presence, this shows they trust you enough to let their guard down and they feel safe).

Design

The colour scheme was inspired by a 'library' cat who I had the pleasure of occasionally working with during my student job. However, as ever to fit the contrast specifications the original shades had to be tweaked slightly.

I planned for the website UI to be as simple as possible so that it would be easy for working professionals to find and skim read the information that they need. The simplistic design also meant it would be easier for potential users to navigate who were outside of my initial user range of ages 20-40.

An initial version of the logo was very similar to the illustration used on the 'Feline Good' card in the Purrrfect Health section. I tried a few different ideas to further develop it, but couldn't get it to look right at all. The finalised logo is something that my tutor (Thank you Prisca!) came up with from a pre-existing design already made. She was happy to pass this on to me for me to tweak.