Yahoo's Competitors // Article

http://www.fastcompany.com/1720991/yahoos-missing-data-shows-its-competitors-dominating-search-market-share

For most search and social media companies--from Google to Facebook to Microsoft--mobile is the future. Yahoo believes the same, with CEO Carol Bartz arguing recently that the field is "extremely important" to the Internet giant.

Yet during an earnings call Tuesday, when it came to showing progress on Yahoo's transition from the desktop to mobile, in terms of search, company heads struggled to answer analyst questions.

"On mobile, honestly, I don't have any data," CFO Tim Morse told investors, after being prodded on the subject by an analyst. "Mobile is obviously an extremely big focus area for us--it's a big growth area for us--but I haven't seen any breakdown of share on that. It's unquestionably early going."

The breakdown is not only available, it shows Yahoo's competitors having already gained seemingly insurmountable advantages. Though Morse specified that Yahoo creates products, including search, with "mobile in mind first," the once-dominant search engine lags far behind Google. A recent report pegged Google's mobile search market share at a whopping 98.29%. And Yahoo and Bing are nowhere near a close second and third, with their mobile shares at 0.81% and 0.46%, respectively.

Google is the default search engine on iPhone and Android devices--that's the central reason for Google's monopoly in mobile search, and Carol Bartz quickly interrupted Morse to parrot this sentiment.

"Obviously we have a bit of a disadvantage since Android is loaded with Google search," said Bartz. "However, there are a lot of folks in the mobile business, whether it's operators or third parties, who are very interested in our applications and our search--for obvious reasons."

But with a minuscule market share and outsourced search technology, perhaps the reasons for using Yahoo's mobile search are not actually so "obvious."

Yahoo Website

http://uk.yahoo.com/

These are screenshots of the currents design, layout, functions and features of Yahoo. I will also do the same for its competitors and then work out which elements of the site are overcrowding it and which elements are necessary to keep the interest of the target audience.

Overall I think the main reason why Yahoo isn't as popular as Google and Facebook is becuase it is far too cluttered, there is no general style to the website and it is too complicated to navigate around. It doesn't look very smart, clean (like Google) and it doesn't have a USP. When using the interenet, no matter what age you are, you want it to be simple and quick. The average time it takes people to have an opinion on a website is 2-3 seconds, if something doesn't load that fast or they cant find a way to navigate around it, they will give up and look for another better designed and easier to use website. In this case, less is more.

This what Yahoo currently feels is the best icons / popular pages to advertise. 

The icons don't have much of a general style, I feel they all need to be the same colour and be better design

Graphic Patterns

Here are a few samples of graphic patterns that I have found google and on shutterstock, a basis for me to to develop graphic patterns for each of the front covers of the publications.

Graphic Patterns

Cover Art - From Buamai Website

I have found a range of designs that have really helped inspire me for the cover art, and have taken the ideas for the design of these publications in a new direction. All of the below images I found on the the previously mentioned website. I also hope to develop my photoshop skills in this part of the brief and create an image, edit a series of images or create a graphic pattern than I can apply to the brand and give it more of a style.

I want to ensure that I have a similar theme accross all 3 covers so they are easily recognised as Alternative Music Room Publications.

This reminded me of the style of fine art that I used to produce at my AS and A Level, very colourful, modern and abstract. It would definately make an interesting cover for one of the publications. 

This made me think about having a quote about house music on the front of it, or a quote from on of the  selected producers the publication focuses on. 

Simple typography. 

Using a simple graphic patterns as a compound mask over a disguised image. 

Using a coloured stock - this would be better for screen printing rather then digital printing. 

Having a quote that takes up the majority of the cover, this I could also experiment with using a different colour / type stock. 

There were a range of 3 designs like this, all of which used bright colours. I could try and find a tutorial online for photoshop and see if I can create something with the theme of distorted bright colours, similar to the lighting at house music events. 

A simple graphic pattern. I could use this over the range of 3 pubcliations. 

Simple graphic design / pattern placed on a gradient background. A clean design but visually intersting, I am not sure how I can visually represent house music in this manner though. 

Graphic artwork in the background of the cover with the logo centralised and the main focus of the cover. 

Stationary range, I need to start developing the range so the logo applies across it all. 

Simple black logo with colourful graphic shapes / patterns applied across a range of designs each using a different colour scheme. 

A typographic design

These two images above are the type of designs I want to find out and learn to make on photoshop. 

Simple, colourful pattern turned into shapes. I want to keep the front of the covers simple but colourful, to make them look smart but still stand out. 

This was the first image I found off google which led me to the website, I could have a simple black edit of the logo in the centre of the cover and have the rest of the page filled with colourful patterns all of which are in the colourscheme. I need to do a bit of reserach into graphic patterns.