theAA.com homepage and hero image case studies. Photoshop, illustration, picture selection, web design, UX design. It's all here.
The supplied image filled the width of the page but not enough room had been allowed for the page heading ...
The finished image, ready for cropping. There is still some weirdness going on with feet and wheels but this will be hidden behind the fixed panel components of the web page..
AA Breakdown Summer Saviours
Extend and adapt the supplied image to fill the letterbox format of theAA.com homepage hero.
• Add block paved drive over cracked tarmac • Remove mud from tyres of both van and car • Hide scratches and windscreen stickers of car • Add slight depth-of-field blur to background to release heading
AA Tyres relaunch
Touch up and refit the supplied image for theAA.com homepage hero.
AA Home Insurance: Why dangle?
Fix wide-angle distortion before extending house at right to width of hero format. Extend at left and add soft depth of field to background.
The AA app
Assembled from scratch, begining with a weak image of someone using an old iPhone in what looks like an open air cafe, I transplanted an unbranded phone and hand, blended in an app screenshot, extended the background adding a hint of a motoring angle.
Goodwood Festival of Speed
The AA is proud to sponsor the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Picture research, Photoshop image manipulation, additional graphics in Illustrator.
AA Breakdown Special Operations Response Team (SORT)
The original photo was snapped by an AA SORT patrol operating in the deep drifts of March 2013. I spotted it as it was uploaded to the AA SORT Twitter feed on the Sunday, tracked down approval to use the image, photoshopped it into life, extended the width and had it ready to go live on the homepage Monday afternoon.
AA Home Insurance - Thames
Not much to do here, just a very pleasing picture research find. It's a cracking shot, just needing a bit of tidying up and playing with the light.
AA Home Insurance - Sought After
I like street furniture in an image, gives a sense of realism. However, this was such a bright, clean image something had to give way. The converging verticals and lamp posts conflicted with the content panels on the homepage and, while I was at it, I whipped out the wheelie bins. Inevitably, it also needed to stretch out to make the width.
AA Home Insurance - Tunnel
Again, a bit of a street furniture tidy-up. The graffiti was proving a distraction to the message in the heading. As was the tarpaulin in the garden. I also took out the street sign and gave the pavements and bollards a bit of a clean.
AA Breakdown - Van 'ZOOM'
I know what you're thinking, so he's added a zoom radial blur. big deal! I often see this sort of thing but unless you match the zoom blur to the perspective and have it centred on the vanishing point it will look wrong. Attention to detail fuelled by old-school illustratrion techniques. No Photoshop course will ever teach this stuff.
AA Homepage redesign June 2014
New, responsive homepage. A highly collaborative team effort designed in conjunction with partner KPMG. These are the launch pages, together with the template to ensure hero images both fitted and made sense on differnt devices.
AA Homepage revisit October 2014
Five day sprint to explore new homepage. User experience design taking centre stage in precisely the manner it didn't for the recent redesign. Used up all the Post It notes in the building.
Over here we drive on the left
A small thing some might argue, but the image on the left made it onto the site and I was not best pleased. Converting to right hand drive was more than a quick 'flip image' job. The car was to stay put so that the side of the car in shadow remained at the top, so instead the steering wheel had to slide across. Attention to detail.
Something a bit different...
A one-minute time lapse movie documenting the sad demise of City Wall House, Basingstoke, cultural home of AA Publishing through 1980s and 90s.
Photographs snapped on a Nokia phone to begin with and later an HTC mobile, cropped, matched, monochromed and overlaid in Photoshop before compiling in Apple iMovie. A quick blast of Kraftwerk recorded about the time CWH was built completes the effect.