You will see here that we pretty much had different ideas every single day for first half of the week.
Friday 20th April
Back from Morocco. Slept a bit and went to school. Welcomed by this lovely website. This is where it all began... at least for me. Thanks to Duarte for setting this up while I was away.
Saturday 21st April
A little break from web design. Cura group (ie Duarte, Franek, and JT) worked for poster design of Rathna's Wednesday lecture. We used her first slide as an inspiration and made our version of it.
The outcome poster looked like this:
Photo of us with the poster even made it to her lecture slide :)
Sunday 22nd April
Incorporating CCC signature color we proposed, when we have done branding for them, on to the website. As well as use of the font we made for them.
Monday 23rd April
Because the direction of the website has changed from the initial idea and we are now only having only a limited number of articles, we thought perhaps one page website is a good way forward. Readers may read things from top to bottom, if the site only has few articles. One page site is also quite close from the publication.
This is a design that has an accordion for each article. Reader can open and close articles, and can read the ones he wants to read.
Tuesday 24th April
The problem about one page site is that it is quite easy to get lost of where you are, which article you are reading. So, we figured some kind of subtle navigation that indicates which article you are at now would be helpful. Hence we ditched the lovely accordion we had the day before and went for this:
Wednesday 25th April
We had a turning point with a meeting with Rebecca. She is full of ideas and meetings with her always turn up in unexpected ideas and directions, which we always enjoy. With her advice, we realize that our web design was lacking concept. There were rationale behind our choices, but the we can't deny that the design lacked strong concept. We were somewhat treating the brief as 'let's make those articles look nice and make them work' exercise. Striping down the brief to its core, going back to where we initially started the project at, really helped. And Rebecca successfully made us realize within such a short amount of time. Design of the site did not have the feel of progressiveness, when Cura was about progressive and expanding notion of curation.
Then started the idea of the world of Internet flowing behind the articles. Each articles to be hyperlinked excessively, and those linked sites act as backgrounds of the article, when hovered.
Thursday 26th / Friday 27th April
Then came the defining details of the site. Including typography, linking sites, layouts, music playlist. Adding and fixing things.
And finalizing everything. Making the look work with the print too.
紙とオンラインの連動、書籍のプロジェクト。デザイナーもエディターもみんな紙の方に気を取られ、ウェブはなんだか「おまけ」的な空気が漂っていたプロジェクト内の雰囲気。私と一緒にウェブデザインを担当していたDuarteとふたりで「このプロジェクトはあんまりコンセプチャルなことが出来なかったねー」なんて言っていた中、最後の２日で急展開を迎え、結局予定の日程を長引かせ完成したこのサイト。むしろ紙の存在感よりも勝っているとも勝手に自負してる、自慢の出来。
気になるデザインの方は、各記事に、無数のハイパーリンクが張ってあり、リンクにホバーすると、記事のバックグラウンドがリンク先のサイトに変わる、というもの。画像とかではなく、本当にそのリンク先のページがバックグラウンドになる。リンク＝ネットの文法として捉え、ネットの得意とするハイパーリンクを全面にデザインの強みとして出し、紙の記事には出来ない、ネットならではの記事のデザイン。
つまり、「記事の後ろに流れるインターネットという世界」をそのまま見た目で表現した。
この書籍のテーマが、「キュレーションを大きな文脈で捉え、先進的なキュレーションを開拓していく」というものにふさわしい、前衛的なデザインになったと思う。
お金が絡んだり、全く違う職種の人たちとのコラボレーションだったり、締め切りを相手が全然守ってくれなかったり、印刷所とのやりとりだったり、スポンサーのいざこざだったり、デザイナー同士で全然違う価値観だったり、ありきたりながら、実際のプロジェクトって大変なんだなーと思った。でも、そんな中、一瞬は「ただの見栄えのいいサイト」になりそうだったものが、ちゃんとコンセプトがあって、面白いことが出来たサイトになったことは本当に良かった。毎日、まったく違うコンセプトを彷徨ったかいがある。
今日、関係者でのレビューがあるので、その後、プリントは印刷所に送られ、ウェブはオンラインに行く予定。早く、ちゃんと皆様にお届け出来ますように！