Author's website
Jessica Napper
Columba College
Year 13 Digital Technology
Jessica's client for her Year 13 Digital Technology project was Tania Roxborogh, a beloved New Zealand author of young adult fiction, nonfiction and educational books. Tania wanted a website that would give her a web presence that did justice to her well-established reputation, serving as a place to promote her existing catalogue and keep her fans updated on news and developments in the author's professional and personal life.
Jessica investigated Tania's issue and found that she was using a family site that she couldn't easily update herself and wasn't devoted entirely to the author.
"I noticed that the information was out-of-date and there was little information about her books, so I could see this was unsatisfactory for her needs," Jessica says.
Jessica began close consultation with Tania to create her brief, determining that she needed a website that suited the author's specific needs and reflected her personal aesthetic. The site should be easily updatable by Tania without coding knowledge and include: pages devoted to her published works with descriptions, reviews and purchasing information; a biography with personal and professional information on the author; writing advice, news and FAQ pages. Tania also specified that the website had to be up and running to be ready for the launch of her latest novel Banquo's Son. The added pressure of this deadline added an extra element of reality to the project for Jessica.
"Tania's publisher and literary agent in New York saw a lot of potential for her new book to sell well, so the site needed to be of a professional standard," Jessica explains.
This changed Jessica's school project to a website with a very public, international audience, so she immediately researched other author sites to show Tania some possibilities. Tania liked many "unique graphical elements" that required the use of Flash, so Jessica decided to teach herself this program to a workable level for the project. Jessica also found research on the internet that identified factors that readers wanted from author websites such as exclusive content, good photos, social networking information and recommended books, all of which she included in her plan for the site.
To make the site more than just a source of information, but to also be eye-catching enough to draw people into Tania's world, Jessica created a dynamic home page which proved her ability as a creative and professional photographer and challenged her existing software skills.
"Tania really liked the idea of having an edited photo of a desk where an object on it would act as a link. She described her own desk as being 'cluttered and a bit messy' so this meant that the depiction of it could be visually interesting."
Jessica booked a camera, lights and studio time from the school and setup a photo-shoot to create a scene with a school desk and personal items of Tania's. Jessica took a large number of shots to make sure she had plenty to work with when it came to manipulating the images with Photoshop. This also helped with the constant consultations with her client as different layouts, angles and compositions were emailed to Tania for her opinion.
"This level of communication meant that I could be sure Tania was getting what she wanted and that the site was reflecting her – which is what a website is supposed to do."
Despite meticulous planning, Jessica found that she hadn't allotted enough time for learning new skills, particularly those required to animate the homepage in Flash. After considering the options with her client, it was decided that, while the 'quirky' effects of the animated Flash links would have appealed to younger users, they would use image-mapping (invisible links overlaid on relevant areas of the image) instead. This would still create a professional site that could also be viewed by computers without Flash installed and avoid the higher loading times animations required.
"Learning to image-map each photographic element on the desk was very straightforward and the amount of time saved by not using an unfamiliar program left me more time for the overall look and feel of the website," Jessica explains.
Title tags were also added to each link so a description title was displayed when the mouse hovered over the image, which Jessica explains helps in search functions.
The clever correlation between images – such as a stack of books, a photo frame and balls of paper – and their corresponding web pages was a cooperative effort between Jessica and her client and makes for an attractive, inviting and interesting homepage that has a real point of difference from purely functional sites while remaining user friendly and intuitive.
Jessica was careful to ensure elements such as screen resolution, font and typeface would be compatible with the majority of browsers and computers. To encourage visitors to stay on the site, browsing was kept as fast and easy as possible with a maximum of 3-4 clicks to get to any part of the site and all pages kept within a ten second loading time. All images were sized at the web standard of 72dpi and kept together in a separate folder to keep the site well organised.
As the site became more developed Jessica sought feedback from Tania, her publisher and her New York based literary agent who suggested that some pages within the site were too dull and that the purchasing ability – a key function of the site – was less than clear. Jessica responded by adding some hand drawn doodles for a personal touch and included links to a site that already sold Tania's work to each title's individual page. Tania also included unobtrusive links to Tania's existing blog, Facebook and Twitter pages throughout the site, increasing the level of interaction between Tania and her fan base.
Jessica's client is extremely pleased with her new site – www.tkroxborogh.com – and her dedication to producing a website at a professional level has been recognised with a New Zealand Scholarship in Technology in 2009.
Client comment
The site has already been visited by people from around the world and I think it is world-class in its standard. Jessica was able to use her skill and talent as a designer and artist to bring to life the vague ideas I had about what I wanted. She explained possibilities I had never thought of, creating a site that contains all the information I wanted without being cluttered or visually unappealing. The site is attractive and unique in that it reflects my personal space as a writer and I could not have asked for a better product.
Jessica's Scholarship Report on this project is featured in the Scholarship Exemplars area.
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