The NYU Future Labs Protoshop is a makerspace located in Industry City, a former industrial complex-turned-office space in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. In the summer of 2019, I was tasked with pitching, developing, and creating multimedia elements for the Protoshop. My duties included designing an updated website for the shop (currently in progress; the interactive prototype can be viewed and tested below), creating logos, promotional banners and images, and event websites for the shop.
In order to determine what information the website and associated visual and multimedia elements would need to convey, I toured the shop and consulted its director, Uriel, and the Future Labs marketing lead, Diah. Together, we looked at other makerspace venues, brainstorming what information would be needed for visitors, and what format that information would be most helpful in (i.e., written, interactive, static visuals, etc.)
Key in our brainstorming was determine what tools users were most likely to be interested in, and how to show that the Protoshop had those specific tools available. We decided that splitting the shop into four distinct categories, with visuals to convey the purpose of those tools. The categories were:
1.Digital
2.Woodworking
3.Metal Fabrication
5. Machinine
4.Softgoods
For each of these categories, I created an icon for each category, to be featured on the Protoshop webpage.
Later, the color scheme for the site was changed to match similar branding across the larger futurelabs.nyc site, to the scheme shown below.
I created the machining logo, which was eventually phased out,being a bit confusing, image-wise. The machining tools were eventually put under the "metal fabrication" umbrella.
At the same time as the iconography and much of the necessary copy for the site were being developed, I used Sketch to create a prototype of a webpage for the Protoshop. I then uploaded the prototype of the site onto Invision, where it can still be tested.
The site is now in the NYU web development teams' hands, and should be live in early 2020. My work on the protoshop.nyc page informed my work on multimedia projects for the ProtoShop, including branding and events efforts, like the shop's launch in September 2019.
Protoshop launch September 2019 event page