Xbox One controller special edition design competition

I found this design competition online whilst researching jobs for the job wall. I think that it was a good submission as the time that it was live and do-able was during the time when the console was released and was a very current event in the media. I think that it was a good choice as it gives a wide availability for possible themes and ideas.

0. To be eligible for judging, an Entry must meet all of the following content / technical requirements:
   
   •   The design must be submitted in .jpg or .pmp format
     
   •   Image should be 1024 x 1024 resolution
     
   •   The design must be at least 300 dpi
     
   •   The design file size must not exceed 10 MB
     
   •   All Entry materials must be submitted in English for English speaking judges
     
   •   The Entry is your own independent, original work;
     
   •   The Entry cannot have been submitted in any other contest;
     
   •   You must have obtained any and all consents, approvals or licenses required for you to submit your Entry (if any); and
      Your Entry may not include any third party trademarks (logos, names) or copyrighted materials (including music, images, works of art, video, or recognizable people). 

I began my research by looking at past controller designs for special edition Xbox's. This resulted in a collection of images that allowed me to gage what was successful and what was not over past designs.

Some designs (e.g- Above) are based on particular xbox games and are therefore not really applicable in terms of theme for my research. It is however, useful to loo at colour schemes and design layouts used.

Some of these designs have used repeating patterns as their design, such as the cammo design.

Things I will have to consider, from looking at thee designs are things like where the design might clash with the placement of the buttons, as the design could infringe on the layout of the buttons and cause confusion to the user.

Other points to consider is the idea of an age rating being taken into account, the bloody controller design (Below) would not be suitable for a much younger audience, meaning that when i create my design, I will have to bear this in mind and be aware of the range of ages the audience is.

I think that colour scheme is important in this process as it will be the first noticeable thing in this deign. I will have to carefully consider that age range and demographics of the audience I want my design to aim at, whether it's boys or girls, and what age they are.

In my opinion, the more interesting controllers with lots to look at appear the most successful. Unlike the pattern ones with repeated designs around them.

For this competition, I felt it was important to come up with a theme. As my research led me to think that the better designs are busy and have interesting bits to look at, which also appeals to my creative side more, that I want my theme to be based on characters that WOULD be in games. Characters that look like they would be considered for a game, thus creating a sense of nostalgia.

My next step was to find characters that I am thinking I would like my designs to be similar to. I searched for Nintendo characters, as they are usually very stylised and recognisable.

I think that these designs are so successful as they all have different expressions and draw the audience in, wanting to learn more about that particular character. This is something I wanted to replicate when designing my own images.

I want my designed characters to look like they were doodled in a classroom in a workbook. This makes the overall design look fun and rebellious.

I want my characters to appear familiar but not too similar to currently existing characters. I think I have achieved this nostalgia well in some of the designs.

My main goal was to try and create a variety of styles and designs to make the controller design look busy and as if there is lots going on. I feel this variety of designs shows that I have achieved that.

My next step is to select the best of these designs and slide them onto the template of the controller. I want to position them so the designs interweave (but not overlap) so that all possible pace it filled. This may mean drawing new designs once these are all placed on the template.

I placed the template onto Adobe illustrator and found that it was not as crisp and easy to use as I had imagined. I then took some time to clean up the image and expand the individual buttons and parts of the controller template. This made it easier and look better later on.

I then played about by changing different background colours to see which backgrounds I could use for my final. I like these simple and more natural colours as they seem to appeal to me, however I don't think they would appeal to everyone else in the target audience.

I then positioned the designs onto the template and had to consider the placement of the buttons and not to overlap any of the areas that would be unseen later on. I think that the design is coming along well and that I will need to further experiment with the design.

When I placed the images on the template with the default colours that I randomly chose to draw in, I thought that the combination of red and tan made the design look like a sleeve tattoo. This is sort of a success as it means that it looks busy and varied.

I then played around with the colours and thickness of the lines on the designs. This new design appears to look more like a tattoo and is considerable for the submission. 

When I presented my work to a group of students on my course, we discussed possible options for what other ways the design could be seen. There was a new idea for the design to look as if it were a doodle on some lined paper. I then tried out this possibility and found that it was the most successful. I think that this design would apply to the audience I am trying to aim my design at more than my other designs as it suggests play time and fun, which is what the controller is for, rather than a boring and rigid design.

This is my final design for the xbox one controller. I think that it was a good submission and was an original idea. I wanted the design to appeal to the target audience so thought about what possible ways a design could relate to their life. I thought that as the audience is mainly school  children and teenagers, that a doodle design is often what is used to appeal to that group. I wanted the doodle design to have more relevance to the fact it is for gaming, so I looked at possibilities of the doodles being based on game characters. I wanted to keep the drawings and designs to still be my own, so decided to create a collection of my own characters. An issue that arose whilst I was working on this project was that the template provided did not work very well in the illustrator programme I used. I solved this issue by live tracing all the small components involved and editing it to work better for myself. Another issue i tackled was trying to create a wide variety of characters rather than lots of similar ones. I believe I overcame this well by creating characters over a long period of time allowing me to have different inspiration and ideas so there is a lot of variety.