Hi All,
I have been studying the BBC News layout and design the past few day's
and have come up with a few ideas to consider to meet everyone's tastes
and specifications. I have also thought deeply about the merits of why
users go to this landing page.
The idea I have on the header is as ever, novel and unique. But in view
of the subject matter latitude is reduced in design based upon the fact
we are deal with serious matters.
I think there is some synergy in making the headers 84 pixels high, this
is pleasing to the eye. Mount logo flag top left as normal. In the
header set up 4 small pictures (60 x 60 pixels) that can be updated as
and when, Position these to the right of the header.
Picture 1 = Breaking News
Picture 2 = International News
Picture 3 = National News
Picture 4 = Local News
As a story breaks if it is a leading story you can change the related
thumbnail in the header.
Next is to theme the headers so you have 16 headers to 16 leading news
pages. Based on time differences you can have two international pages in
a classic theme (800 x 600) and modern in theme (1024 x 800).
National pages you can take the above a step further, have the headers
change throughout the day, so for example you have
BBC24 Breakfast
BBC24 Evening News
BBC24 Night Time
The idea I have of the back ground header theme is to take a scene if
the photographer is on the South Bank around the old City of London
Headquarters and shoot across the Thames diagonally to encapsulate
traffic on the bridge, the Square at Westminster, Big Ben and the Houses
of Parliament.
A morning shot, evening shot and night time shot. I think the 4 header
thumbnail images can always be in gif to ease speed of download and the
header backgrounds in PNG.
The idea of setting up 16 pages is to cater for everyone's needs in
Breaking News, International, National and Local News.
This then gives you the opportunity to go even further by offering the
user a choice of display and theme. These being Classic and Modern.
So why do we use the BBC as a user?
1/. Accuracy
2/. Trust
3/. Safer and More Secure
4/. No Pop Up Ads or other Naff forms of marketing gimmicks
5/. Part of all our lives, something we have grown up with.
6/. We want breaking good quality news and journalism
7/. We want local News and Weather
8/. The presenters are top draw
9/. Follow a story through
10 Does not sensationalise
So with the following reasons, in truth the search facility so prominent
as forming the main part of the design is a non starter. I do not know
anyone that uses the search facility on the BBC News section. This can
be positioned down the right hand side for example with other level 3
content.
Divide the page in theory to four sections
Header and top Centre = Lead Content level One
Rest of Centre = level Two
Left Navigation of channels = level Three
Right Navigation = level Four
In classic 800 x 600 size drop level 4 to the bottom.
I hope some of these ideas help. Just on a final note, I am disappointed
with some in this community that bark through their comments. It is a
form of bullying and normally carried out by people that either young
and inexperienced or have an agenda of their own for some form of
commercial gain and exploiting this development community. The original
idea of back stage was to enhance and create an environment for the
collection of minds in a pro-active way.
Bullying of this nature, causes such great loss to the BBC and this
community, as the highly intelligent are normally very kind and gentile
people, that will just not contribute.
Cheers All,
Alastair
,
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