Please read this disclaimer before reading this report. It is regarding @the.axv.files instagram.
MEDIA 1007 Digital Platforms Final Project Report
CONCEPT AND AUDIENCE:
The-AXV-Files is a blog written by AXV. Through blogs and articles, The-AXV-Files looks at the fashion and creative world through a different lens than a typical amateur fashion blog would, who likely would help readers achieve trends etc. Contrastingly, The-AXV-Files commonly analyses the reasonings behind fashion trends, rather than help readers achieve them. Such as AXV’s Ikea article, similar to this article on ManRepeller. Uniquely, The-AXV-Files’ combines an amateur feel (achieved through AXV’s personal writing tone and the website’s arty and creative design) with content common to professional magazines or media brands like I-D or BoF. Thus, The-AXV-Files is a unique amateur blog, which acts as a creative and expressive platform for the author who discusses fashion through an intellectual, creative and different lens.
The target audience is female 18-30-year-olds interested in fashion and from Australia. My wider audience is English speaking individuals part of the ‘fashion/creative community’. My audience is interested in aesthetics and agrees that fashion is intellectual and more than ‘outfits-of-the-day’. Gathered from my statistics on Instagram, my followers are from around the globe, mostly females and are mostly 24-34-year-olds.
VISUAL COMMUNICATION AND DESIGN:
Photography and Design
The-AXV-Files connects with its audience by creating an authentic, amateur, raw and creative feel. This is achieved in the site’s background when using the visual design and communication approach of repetition which Tuffe explains and Gesalt’s principle of proximity. Photographs (GiFs) which are grainy and animated are repeated to create an instant impact on viewers, informing them that The-AXV-Files is unique and creative. By using my own footage, I immediately establish a creative, real and genuine feel. Audience members feel that The-AXV-Files is an expressive site, familiarise themselves with AXV’s individuality and understand that The-AXV-Files is an honest reflection of AXV. Combined with AXV’s personal writing style, readers connect with AXV.
Prior to the final visual design, the home page looked like this:
The visual design of this version communicates a less creative, individual and honest feel. This design feels more professional or like a façade, rather than an honest reflection of the author. Additionally, it is noted that in the header I used another grainy sky picture, however, unlike the final design, this sky picture has less impact. This is because the final version repeats the Gif in the background, compared to a single still image used as a header. Evidently, the final design approach is the best for The-AXV-Files because it works towards its values: unique, creative expressive, honest, and raw.
Font and Colour
Font and colour inspired by the background image work together to communicate a strong, clean, hopeful and uplifting feel to readers. The background image – taken in a plane and depicting sun sky and clouds – communicates an uplifting and airy feel. The green colour scheme, and the sharp and modern fonts used in the text and logo, balance the striking background, carry the sense of clarity and create a coherent website.
USER INTERFACE DESIGN:
Layout
To serve the needs of my audience I have made the layout simple, unambiguous, and relatively consistent (Johnson, 2014). The homepage is an ‘about‘ page, which briefly outlines the concept of the website and has links to social-medias. This helps viewers understand The-AXV-Files and allows them to decide if they would be interested in surfing the site or the social-medias.
Posts are organised into two categories: blogs and articles to allow readers to decide whether they wish to read short easy posts or longer ones. The about page explains this and links to the blog and article pages.
Prior to this choice, I organised posts under themes, such as ‘fashion’, so readers can be directed to content they are interested in. However, the website’s menu became overwhelmingly cluttered because posts were repeated under the numerous categories. Creating a drop-down menu would be ideal however the free design; Singl restricted this option, and this categorising option is not necessary as The-AXV-Files only has 9 posts.
The-AXV-Files’ menu, separating blogs and articles
explaining and linking to the blog and article pages in the about page
At the beginning of articles ‘contents’ are provided to inform readers what they will be reading, how long the read may be and help readers understand how far they have read the article.
Interface
The blogs and articles categories are also functioning pages with links to each post in reverse chronological order to ensure readers can access posts in the menu and the pages.
The-AXV-Files utilises links. In posts links are provided, allowing readers to look at additional information which is referenced or related. Instagram and Twitter posts are also embedded to provide an interactive way of accessing additional information, and to provide my target audience – who as mentioned before are aesthetic driven and Instagram users – with a visual break from writing. Lastly links all open into new tabs to serve the readers experience: ensuring readers do not lose their progress or risk the tab their using to read being stuck in lagging internet. This makes the action of opening tabs easily reversible by closing the tab (Johnson, 2014).
Structure
The slim design of the website affords modularity of my website – meaning it can go from desktop to tablet to phone quite easily. This keeps the trend that my traffic comes mostly from Instagram into consideration and assists viewers who have accessed my site through my link in my Instagram bio.
Most of the traffic from phone application Instagram
Thus this particular user interface design is tailor-made for my target audience, who are visual people and active members of the creative/fashion community on Instagram.
USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN ACROSS DIGITAL PLATFORMS:
The-AXV-Files creates a coherent user experience design through social media platforms Instagram and Twitter through various strategies. To create coherency and repetition of my brand and aesthetic, I use my simple, recognisable and striking logo as my profile image on Twitter and use the green colour scheme used on the website. Thus audience members feel that the author is genuine and the same. My twitter header is also relevant to a recent post and suits the green colour scheme.
I ensured I kept Instagram posts regular to satisfy the “aesthetic consumerism” (Sontag, 1977, pg.24), of my audience. Instagram was used as a creative off-spin to The-AXV-Files where I connect with my audience with an artist’s profile with the three registers: professional, personal and intimate. I achieve this artist profile through the following strategies:
1: Posting personal-produced content
https://instagram.com/p/BjoJiQJlXrd/
2: Sharing intimate thoughts
https://instagram.com/p/BiEn39blJve/
3: Professionally promoting website posts, but with content that might not be used in the website posts but is still relevant
https://instagram.com/p/BibzdQ2h8Ug/
Statistics of each post dedicated to the three register’s of an artist’s profile:
By the strategy of reposting someone else’s post, I can get more attention to my Instagram and hopefully more traffic to the website. For example, when following sites I would receive more followers. Another example is when I tagged @chris_bakay when promoting this article and @alma.harel when promoting this article, I received likes and a follow and message. I also engaged with my Instagram using audience by being an active member of the creative/fashion community by liking, commenting and following others and replying to direct messages and comments on my own profile.
Unlike Instagram, I use Twitter as an extension of the website: promoting posts with the same content.
To engage with my 18-30-year-old and aesthetic audience, I embed GiFs into twitter posts – this also maintains the creative feel created by the regular use of GiFs on The-AXV-Files. (example below gained 50 impressions)
I also utilised twitters journalistic affordances to share news relevant to the fashion and creative world.
AUDIENCE METRICS:
Instagram Audience Profile
My Instagram successfully captures the audience I intended; those part of the fashion and creative community. This is evident through my followers who consist of fashion brands, retailers, designers and illustrators, artists, art curators, film curators, bloggers, architectural studios, TV/film festivals, magazine contributors/producers/editors, photographers, journalists, brand consultants, models, magazines, makeup artists, music producers, DJ, nonprofit organisations.
Instagram Audience Age
Always predominantly 25-34, then 18-24
Instagram Audience Gender
My followers are always predominantly female. Although this could be a reflection of Instagram’s statistics with 39% female, and 30% men. (Pew, 2017)
Instagram followers, the percentage of females and males between April 27 – May 27
WordPress Audience Locations
Evidently and as I intended, my site and its content welcomes a global audience and does not discriminate audience on location-specific topics. However, despite that the largest quantitative measure for views came from Australia, by almost 200 more views.
Instagram Audience Locations
Unlike my WordPress views, Instagram cultivated a more diverse audience, and the quantitative measures of the number of followers from location fluctuated quite regularly, evident in the two slideshows below. However, despite this, I had a regular following from America, Europe, Australia and Brazil. It is noted that Americans – 20% of Instagram users – are a consistently above 20% of my followers.
Countries
Cities
The fluctuations are due to the type of content I was posting because the types of followers are dependant on the type of content you post. I noticed after hashtagging and posting content about Ikea, the French street brand Vetements designed by Georgian designer Demna Gvasalia, I gained followers from specific locations like Russia who are interested in street fashion and brands like Vetements. However, despite the belief that tagging reaps post impressions, after A/B testing I discovered that my Instagram post with the most likes had no hashtags and was posted on the day I made the account. When I conducted my experiment I posted an image from the same series months later and with hashtags, however, received 152 fewer likes than the first post.
https://instagram.com/p/Bf4qKE0ldK-/
https://instagram.com/p/BjoJHcIFneX/
FUTURE DIRECTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT:
3 ideas for future direction and development:
Idea 1, Design: Purchase the premium version of WordPress
To solve the ‘drop-down menu’ issue and possibly create themed categories such as ‘fashion’ or ‘art’, in addition to ‘articles’ and ‘blogs’. I will then have the creative freedom to make The-AXV-Files a more honest expression of myself.
Idea 2, Concept: Open the website to more themes like a magazine and collaborate with others
Cultivate The-AXV-Files and introduce more themes such as ‘film’ or ‘beauty’ to have alternatives to ‘fashion’ and ‘art’. Possibly collaborate with other writers and creatives to create a robust site.
Idea 2, Intended Audience: Consider the global audience and tailor content to them
Since I have already captured some views from Asia, America and Europe, I could write content that is better suited to specific global groups. This would require more research and understanding into my global audience and might be useful to consider collaborating with others who understand specific groups.
WORD COUNT: 1,563
REFERENCES:
Hampton-Smith, S 2017, ‘The designer’s guide to Gestalt Theory’, Creative Bloq, viewed 05/06/18, <https://www.creativebloq.com/graphic-design/gestalt-theory-10134960>
Instagram, 2016, ‘Instagram Today: 500 Million Windows to the World’, Instagram Blog, viewed: 5/06/18, <http://instagram.tumblr.com/post/146255204757/160621-news>
Johnson, J 2014, Designing with the Mind in Mind Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Design Guidelines, 2nd edition, Boston: Elsevier, pp. 219-222
Kissmetrics Blog, 2018, ‘iOS: A/B Testing, Dealing with the App Store, and Moving Fast’, viewed: 08/06/18, <https://blog.kissmetrics.com/ios-ab-testing/>
Pew Research Centre, 2017, ‘Who uses Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter’, Pew Internet & Technology, viewed: 5/06/18, <http://www.pewinternet.org/chart/who-uses-facebook-instagram-linkedin-and-twitter/>
Sontag, S 1977, On Photography, Picador, New York, pp. 1-160
Schrag, A, 2015, ‘‘Pics, or it didn’t happen’: On Visual Evidence in the Age of Ubiquitous Photography’, Pacific Journal, Vol.10 No.1, pp.1-16
Tuffe, E 1997, ‘Visual Explanations’, pp.79-103
Van Der Nagel, E 2017, ‘From usernames to profiles: the development of pseudonymity in Internet communication, Internet Histories, Vol. 1, No.4, pp.312-331
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