Week 4 - Pop-it.com

After speaking with Gabriel on Friday, he mirrored the concerns I had regarding my 3 major project ideas. We both agreed that when building the websites, I may find it difficult to find enough content to add to them.
Therefore, Gabriel advised me to start back at square one and concentrate on the things that interest me most as I would be spending a lot of time researching and developing ideas based on my chosen topic. 

I developed a mind map from thinking about my hobbies and interests. I found this really helped generate more solid ideas for my major project.

Major Project Mind Map

From looking at these ideas and my research from last week, I've decided to base my major project on a Pop Art appreciation site. I would have lots to talk about and research on this topic and as I find it really interesting and inspiring, I will enjoy spending time on it.

A bit of Pop Art History:

Pop Art is a 20th century art movement that utilized the imagery and techniques of consumerism and popular culture. Pop art developed in the late1950's as a reaction against Abstract Expressionism and flourished in the sixties and early seventies. Pop Art favored figural imagery and the reproduction of everyday objects, such as Campbell Soup cans, comic strips and advertisements. The movement eliminated distinctions between "good" and "bad" taste and between fine art and commercial art techniques. Sourced from http://www.biddingtons.com/content/pedigreepop.html

Pop-it.com

Concept: A pop art appreciation site for people who want to purchase pop art, find out about it, admire the gallery or learn how to do it. 

Problem: As a lover of pop art, when searching the topic on the web I noticed I was jumping from site to site when researching different aspects of it. I viewed it on several sites, found background info on it on another site, and to buy posters etc I was re-directed to another site.

Solution: To combine all the things people want to see/know/buy/do regarding pop art into the one site.

I've decided to call the site pop-it.com. I think it's quirky and fresh, as is the subject of Pop Art. I found mind maps really helpful to gather my thoughts and being able to physically see them on paper helped me generate ideas from ideas. I decided to make a site map for pop-it.com to help keep the content relevant and compact. 

Pop-it.com Site Map

You can see from the site map that I've decided to create a 5 page site. Each page is titled example-it. I decided to do this so that they tie-in with the name of the site and to make it different from the basic 'Home', 'History', 'Blog' type tabs. I think this would be a fresh, creative and catchy branding.

The main areas I plan to research in relation to Pop Art over the coming weeks are:

• Music videos
• Pop Art and cinematic imagery
• Fashion
• Iconic artists
• Comic strips
• Font
• My favourite pieces of Pop Art

I also plan to start developing my technical skills and try experimenting with HTML 5, Flash, creating a blog/gallery and online shop.