Open Designed Print Case Study
Hello! I am Siah Harper and the pleasure is all my mine! I am a 21 year old, graphic designer and student living in Sacramento and I love books, fantasy, and wireless headphones. I am currently a senior at California State University of Sacramento and this assignment Case Study is a UX journey for a convention hosted by this app, Notion.
Me (left) and Sister (bad bangs)
Notion, is a hybrid database note-taking atmosphere with a hint of web developing capabilities. Attendees can make simple pages on the web for any purpose with little-to-no web experience.
AND NoteCon is a week long convention in Sacramento, CA, USA, for Notion lover’s everywhere.
Tickets were sold online both for online and in-person attendance. Attendees can go to Seminars, Webinars, and Interviews which would all be centered around the pursuit of creativity, productivity, and tool efficiency. This case study details the process of NoteCon’s System of Design and User Experience.
The Parameters of the assignment required five unique touchpoints that detailed the experience of the convention attendees’ awareness, planning, waiting, experience, and follow-up. At the time of setting out on designing a system for one of the most versatile and modern note taking applications of this decade, I had promised the following systems designed:
The introduction of color into Notion’s primary branding with an event like NoteCon was very polarizing to design. On one hand, Notion’s clean black, white, and cream lived rent-free in my head, day and night. It was something that was a core brand value. True simplicity; the absence of complexity.
Trying their beautiful color palette in abundance to a project of this magnitude resulted in the overall feeling being far too close to children’s toys than to a relaxed and mature event. Below are several examples of how an event like this could have been poorly designed if it wasn’t for collaboration, insight, reasoning, and research.
The final decision I made was to use color how Notion intended but with bigger intentions. Notion typically only uses their color as a supplementary accent. However, Notion the application, is far more functional than an event like NoteCon. The experience of NoteCon is inherently emotional; it is personal and filled with inviting people. This meant using more color than was typical but collaborating with the largely monochromatic original branding. You will see the common rule finalized as using green or blue as a central hue with two accent tints of a complementary nature. Similar to the design of this case study.
Notion has an exceptional branded presence (to the point where I fanboy when I see an in-person advertisement from them on the subway). They have a pretty limited logo (1 combination mark) and use white (or cream), and black exceptionally with splashes of 10% color. They have a romantic history of using Black & White flat-cartoon illustration which perfectly highlights their minimalist efforts to calm the madness of things that we think we can remember on a daily basis.