Anime Central (ACen) is an annual three-day anime convention held during May at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare & Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois. It boasts being the largest anime, manga, and Japanese popular culture convention in the Midwest.
ACen's website at the time had the appearance of a simple blog website. It felt very boring for an event that boasts being the largest in the Midwest compared to others across the US. There was also site architecture that could be confusing at times and graphics that needed improvement.
Create mockups of Anime Central website with improved visuals to better attract users. Additionally, reorganize some of site architecture to be a bit more intuitive based on experiences.
I began by identifying few of the pages I would consider pain points that were also very important ones. My focus became their home page, registration portal, and events page. My decisions were informed based on feedback from a small group anime fans and diving into the websites of other anime conventions across the US. Some were very informative, while others were probably even less developed than ACen's website.
After analyzing elements from the various convention websites, I sought to infuse more vitality and organization into the imagery and text on ACen's website. This included removing the blocky look and introducing more breathing room, different colors, attempting to simplify their logo, and more. My mockups pushed toward the appearance of a bigger event website instead of a personal blog.
Since this was a passion project and not official work done for Anime Central it was mostly a learning experience. By going through the design process for the mockups I brushed up on current visual design trends for the web. I was able to practice using various design tools and look more into the branding, visual design, and more for various conventions in the process as well. I have revisited this project each year to brainstorm updates that can be made to improve my designs with changes in design ideology, technology, or ACen's branding.
