First design

DVD menus are created in different ways. After viewing and studying different menus, I now have to make my own. 

The idea I have for my production of a DVD menu comes from me operating a camera for a production. It will show me operating the camera in a short video before hand and then pan into the small monitor on the side of the camera. Here you will see the DVD menu of my product. 

My initial idea was to feature my name, different colours for the different backgrounds and also text combined with a button which relates to a camera menu.

The image above is one of the first designs that I played about with. This was more focused on the layout of the actual text rather than the designing of the background, outside area and what features it actually contained. Without a good text layout I would have no idea what to base the background or the outer edges.

But I did not really like the way the text was going, and had a different idea.

So I decided against this design as I thought using words filled the screen a bit too much and didn't look as good. 

The screenshot above shows how I want my DVD menu to look. The finished design (at the moment) I would like to look like this, showing the side monitor of a camera. I would like it to look similar to this as a final as it is quite an interesting idea but reflects me personally of what I have spent my time doing over the past couple of years, main motivation in college and something I am passionate about.

My second idea which is a development of this was to replace the words with single images which relate to what a word would be saying. So instead of using video, I would use the image of a camcorder, instead of graphics I would use a stick person with a paint brush which shows creativity and also for photography use an image of a camera. 

This fulfils the menu better, gives it more of an entertainment and creative edge which will look better for the user rather than it just being text heavy and basic.  

Next I am going to develop my idea further by planning the sub menus for the product. By planning the sub menus I can then plan the designs for these but keeping synergy throughout with the same mood and theme. At the current moment my plan of action is to pan right from the camera monitor on the side to the actual physical camera buttons but them being replaced by sections of my work and a back button which will go back to the main DVD screen which I have already started to plan.