W6S2: Submission - Rationale

I chose to respond to the open brief instead of the Dominian Post Redesign because I didn’t want to be limited by the site’s exisiting tone and target audience. I wanted to create a new news website that called to teenagers and young adults as I feel there is a real need to re-establish interest in news that is presented in more intellectual and truthful ways than social media platforms like Facebook, where the majority of youths recieve information. In my opinion the prominent news websites such as Stuff in New Zealand and The New York Times in the USA present information too hectically. I understand that they are trying to present a lot of information and potential user journeys as soon as the user enters their site to grab atttention and encourage the user to remain. But personally, I am overwhelmed by sites such as these and am likely to leave as soon as I enter if I feel too bombarded by an overload of information. I believe that a lot of young people feel the same way as me so I wanted to create a pared back website that is more user-friendly; light and welcoming. This is why I have chosen a simple style that relates to my ‘scoop’ theme through colour and minimalistic illustrations rather than photographs or intense graphics. I want the article headlines to speak for themselves in order to grab attention so I placed them in well padded grids to present them to the users in such a way that they aren’t overwhelmed and can easily select an article that interests them. Through my project have started thinking about how young people can re-invigorate a passion for news.