Create a fantasy Parisian street scene to showcase French miniature buildings

RuedeSuze.com

Rue De Suze is a site showcasing miniature artist Suze Perry-Hinkle. She builds "French Architectural Miniatures" and creates Eiffel tower art. Our customers love everything French, love the Eiffel tower, and love Suze's attention to detail as she builds her miniature buildings. She doesn't build traditional "dollhouses", rather her buildings often are based in historical people or places, and she loves making things look old and distressed. We want the site to be a creative, fun place where people can see her art, and decide they want to own a piece of it for themselves. This new page will showcase her miniature buildings in a creative way.

We have recently redesigned the site, and now we want to create a landing page where people can "Stroll down the Rue de Suze". We got the design for the home page through a 99 designs contest, so we thought we would try again for this page. The graphics should promise the visitor a creative and fun adventure, sophisticated enough for adults but appealing to the child in all of us.

The "Rue de Suze" is an imaginary French street in Suze's fantasy Paris where all of her miniature buildings are located. The viewer can "walk along" the street, stopping to look at the different buildings. They can click each building if they want to see a detail page of that building, then they can go back to the Rue (means "street" in French) and continue their journey. The detail pages are already on the site, so we're not asking you to design those. We would like the page designed where people can walk along the "street" and see the buildings.

http://www.ruedesuze.com

Fun, imaginative, artsy, tasteful, stylish. I want people to be inspired to explore this new world. The viewer should move through the page on a journey of imagination. Suze does not like things that look bright and new; looking like it has been weathered with the "patina of age" is important. "Hammered" is a good look (as long as it's slightly soft and artistic rather than industrial), as are other looks that are weathered or old. We don't want "grunge"; neither should it look too dainty or feminine; it should be somewhere in between. Attractive, yet not too clean.

We love the look of the visual environment of the movie "Chocolat" (2000, with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp). When Suze saw that movie she said, "I want to live there!", and the Rue de Suze ("Suze Street") is her way of living in her fantasy village. I have included links to some clips from that movie to give you an idea of the visual style. Obviously our village will be more strung out horizontally, so that's your challenge, to create an environment that feels like that town.

The link below to the "future of car sharing" webpage is a demonstration of how the page will function, not a demonstration of the quality of design and aesthetic that we are looking for. The design and aesthetic should be as described elsewhere in this brief.

See the car sharing link below to get an idea of how the webpage will function.

We want you to design a visual environment for Suze's miniature buildings, in a style that fits Suze's aesthetic, that will work with the concept of the viewer (bicyclist icon) moving along the street and looking at the buildings. We also want you to design small graphics for popups and animations, and the icon for the viewer. We have found a site where we can download an animated gif of the french flag, so don't worry about animation. We'll figure it out of you can come up with a great design.

I have uploaded psds of all the buildings. These will need to be included on the page, and incorporated into the environment of the street scene. (They will probably need to be smaller than the images I have uploaded, to fit the scene.) Each building will link to a detail page where the visitor can see more details about the building. The "Toulouse" building is one where we do not have a full front shot yet, so I have uploaded a placeholder image which we will later replace with a full shot of the building.

The most important buildings to feature are the Bidaine and the Vendome, followed by the Chocolate Shop and Wine Shop. The rest can fit in wherever looks best. The name of each building is part of the filename, and some buildings have 2-3 choices of angles (choose one that best fits your design). The whole effect should be as elegant, yet old-looking, as possible.

The more Parisian architectural landmarks you can include in the background and scenery, the better. (This does not have to be geographically accurate as far as where they are located in relation to each other!).

Possible visual elements:
Olive trees
Hills
Street signs
Background buildings
Air France airplane
Orly airport
Hot air balloon
Vineyards
Lavender fields
Hunchback of Notre Dame
Seine river with barge
Pont Alexandre III bridge (shown in YouTube video)
Side streets and alleys are great. It would be nice if not all the buildings were strung out in a straight line, but a few of them were visible on side streets or alleys.

The Eiffel tower, French flag and cobblestone streets are essential. We need an icon for the webpage visitor, probably a French man on a bicycle with a beret, red and white striped shirt, bread and wine in a basket on the back of the bicycle.

The town/buildings/street should be old and weathered, not clean and cartoon-y like the car sharing page.

The logo should link to the home page, and probably be located in the top left corner to be consistent with the rest of the site. The logo will need some sort of "Back to the main site" titling so people will know how to get out once they're done.

Please note attached scenic images of Paris are for reference only, I do not have permission to use them.

You can see some of the building detail pages here:
http://ruedesuze.com/bldgs/chocolate/
http://ruedesuze.com/bldgs/villedusoleil/
http://ruedesuze.com/bldgs/bidaine/