With the website currently being built, it was key that we developed some content to  upload on to the site. Some of the gang who didn’t have their profile pictures taken took this as an opportunity to pull some great poses.

After some rather glamorous shots in some great settings, the gang proceeded to record some videos for their profile pages. When not recording, they were busy writing up some more content and articles, and brainstorming some key topics that they would like to cover once the website goes live. All in all, it was a very productive workshop.

Stay tuned, more to come very soon!

Forest Flava Press Pack are all busy working hard towards their exams at the moment so this week’s session with Bold was a little on the quiet side.

In order to keep on progressing with the development of the site we met with a few of the guys and discussed and reviewed the changes of the design and what the press packers thought of these.

After reviewing the design we spent the remainder of the session focussing on content. We worked on developing the guys own written content and also on working out whereabouts in the site more content needed to be input and who could contribute this.

There should be some more guys about next week so we can keep on moving on up with the site!!

We started the session by playing an initial warm up game of Diddly Da! to get everyone energized and in the mood to do some critiquing, then the hard work began!

Kweku ran through the website design and showed the group how he had visualised their concepts and transformed them into a site design. Once he had presented to the group we gave them the opportunity to feedback their thoughts about the design so far.

We set up a wall with print-outs of each page laid out and gave the gang some post-it notes so they could leave comments on each page of the site explaining the parts of the design they felt were working and the parts they wanted to improve on.

We got lots of good feedback that will help Kweku to tweak the design to suit what these guys want for their site.

After this task the gang had a break and stuffed themselves on Subway platters then we got back to work.

Content was the focus of the second part of the session. Last week the guys in the gang worked up various items of content for the new website. So we gave them back their work and asked them to review it and see how they felt about it.

Once they had returned to the articles and videos they produced last week, we offered them our feedback and ideas on the content, suggesting where their might be room for improvement, and praising some great work the talented young press pack had produced!

The session with Forest Flava was really great this week, they are a really bright bunch, and their feedback was all really helpful, giving us a chance to work on the website and ensure it’s really impressive and engaging for the young people of Waltham Forest and beyond!

After all the feedback the gang gave us yesterday, first thing this morning we set to work reviewing the feedback and making some decisions on what to implement and how to take the design forward in response to their comments. Once the review had been done Kweku set straight to work making these changes and its all beginning to look pretty cool!!

It’s all very well making it look flash but now that the designs are developing, we decided to take some time in the first half of the session this week working on the press pack’s content for the website,

The talented young journalists have written all variety of content, from film reviews to fashion, relationship advice and more!!!

The second part of our session saw the press pack turn their hands to a bit of modelling!!

We had a lot of fun outside striking poses, and it was all for a good cause! The photos are ready for use in the profiles section of the website!

Michael Clement, a professional photographer came down for the session, taking a break from him usual jobs photographing Kate Nash, The Specials etc, and made the young people feel like stars!

Check out his website: http://www.michaelclement.co.uk

These mugshots are going to be chopped up and put together to make up the face, similar to the one  from the mock up design that the gang approved last session!

So you can see it all slowly starting to take shape!! Back next week!!

]]> http://forestflava.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/workshop-5/feed/ 0 Forest Flava WalthForestAction WalthamHeadShots http://forestflava.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/workshop-4/ http://forestflava.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/workshop-4/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:30:44 +0000 Forest Flava http://forestflava.wordpress.com/?p=158 ]]>

This week’s workshop was all about the design and branding of the Forest Flava site.

To start, Kweku’s ran a quick-fire drawing exercise. He would say a word and get the guys to draw the first thing that came into their heads. The idea was to get them thinking about associations and imagery, which led nicely onto looking thinking about logo’s.

We spent time drawing and came up with ideas for the logo,

Things we discussed that were important for the Logo to represent were:

• Balance between council and youth
• Sense of community and engagement
• Diversity
• Representative of young people in the borough
• Representative of the Press gang and their skills

We went through different inspirational websites that we thought were pretty cool, and got the gang to all vote for them to give us a picture of the things they like, get them to start thinking about design and what looks good, and to make sure we all had the same sort of ideas!

Bold had been busy working up some initial design concepts for the Forest Flava site. We presented the group with three different examples for the potential layout of the site.

They deliberated and criticized and decided this was their favourite!
We can now take this route forwards and work on making it look really wicked!

We had our third workshop with the Forest Flava Press Gang, and the website is really starting to develop a structure.

We were also joined during the session by some senior council members who came down to see what we had been up to.

This session was focussed around gathering a firm understanding of what James and the Forest Flava team wanted, for which we got the t-shirts out again and had them describe.

We worked out attributes for different parts of the site:

Health

Communications

Interaction & Engagment

Connecting People

We spent some time defining the roles and responsibilities of the young people in the press gang, deciding who would manage each section of the website.

We spent some time in the office, as shown in the last blog, working out a wire frame for the structure of the website to help us begin to realise the layout and what content will be needed.

At this session we showed the group the proposed frame, they were generally pleased with the layout, aside from some questions about set up and adding in their own information and design!

Together we are going to work hard to make sure we create a website that displays the Press Gang and their great work!

Since the last workshop with Waltham Forest, we at Bold we have been busy starting to plan the structure of the website.

We spent a few hours working through the information we had gathered from the last session about topics, and themes and grouped them together.

• Advice – Health/School/Revision etc.
• Be Heard – Have your voice complaints
• Who is Forest Flava? – Showcase + Profiles
• Check this out – Reviews of Music/Films
• Latest News – What has been happening etc

This information helped us to develop a wire frame, and begin to visualize the site’s structure.

This was Bold’s attempt, now it’s Forest Flava’s turn this week!!

After a recap of last week, where we had introduced ourselves and gained a general understanding of what it was the Forest Flava guys wanted from their website, we spent this session working hard together to develop particular details about the website, a crucial part of the development process!

The first part of the session we spent establishing who the target audience would be for the site.

To make this interesting, we wore blank t-shirts, to represent the young people and got the group to write on them characteristics of their target audience.

Listing things such as age, hobbies, interest, lifestyle, location etc.

This helps us all to understand who the website is for, and how we make it appeal to them!

Next we got the Post-its out and started to figure out what themes or topics the Forest Flava wanted on the website.

Once we had written down aspects like advice, and profile page, we stuck each Post-it on a flip chart and split off into pairs to brainstorm each theme, adding more detail, like the way the pages should look and the details of what they could contain.

We finished up the session by mapping out the user journey!

After using up a few more post-its to figure out the way we would take the information and create a user journey we got each pair to explain one journey on the i-flip video cameras.

After all that hard work, and a bit of dinner we wrapped up the session, feeling like we had made more important steps in the process of developing a website!!

Back again on Thursday!!

Bold Creative are working with the Forest Flava youth group at Waltham Forest! Through a series of workshops we are going to Re-design the Forest Flava website along with The Press Gang!

We all met up on Thursday to figure out how to do this and what we wanted to achieve from the project.

Ben introduced Bold and what we are about and introduced the project to the group. He explained how the project would, as well as producing a website for the gang, instil these young people with further technical skills, and understanding, alongside building their relationship as a team/gang!

Then the Press Gang explained to us what they were all about!

After some vital energizers to get us all pumped up and excited we got on with talking all about the project,

We reviewed the aims and what we wanted to achieve through the website!

Amongst other things, Bold promised to give:

• Creative Ideas
• Time and Commitment
• Fun
• Training
• Amazing Website
• Nice Dinner

The Forest Flava Gang promised:

• Commitment
• Energy + enthusiasm
• Inspiration + creativity
• Dedication
• Friendship
• Team work

We then discussed what we wished for the website to achieve:

Bold established that some things they wanted were:

• Publicity/Lots of people like the website
• Impact on Community
• Website – everybody likes
• Award winning website – BAFTA
• 1 million hits on the website

Forest Flava wanted:

• Learn about design processes + computer software e.g. Photoshop
• To be motivated
• Learn about website design and programming
• Improve sense of team
• To send a message out to other young people
• To be proud to be part of something that benefits the community

After we had all made sure we were on the same level, we knew what we all wanted from the website and what we all were going to put in to help us achieve this.

Later, the  group then all took some I-flips and split off to do some filming, chatting about what websites they liked, and also their own goals.

They filmed what they were hoping to contribute and gain, from the project, both individually and as a team.

Here one of the young people explains what the Forest Flava project will help her, and the team, achieve.

The whole meeting went really well and we are all really looking forward to working together to get this project off the ground!!