Project 4
For Project 4 we were prompted to “Observe and Quantify” a collection or experience. I struggled from the very beginning as to what I wanted to focus on for this project. I do not know if the prompt was too vague for me to hone in on an idea or if because of the pandemic and quarantine I just did not have anything to create a data collection. Of the options given to us though I felt that documenting an experience or event was the one I was most drawn to.
Document an Experience or Event
The experience I ended up deciding upon was one that I have thought about often over the last year or so. This event was a specific hike that I had done when I went on a trip abroad to Greece with my minor program in undergrad. This trip took place in March 2019, one year before the world shut down and locked us in our houses. Perhaps this is why I have often thought about it, because it was the last big trip I took before the pandemic and the hike was a spontaneous part of the trip that was unplanned but also the highlight.
The trip itself was focused on traveling around Greece to various historical sites and touring and learning about them. It was a typical tourist trip however it directly related to our minors so we were getting more out of the trip itself. The day we were scheduled to go to Delphi and tour the ruins where the Oracle was, we arrived late and missed the tour time. It was too late to reschedule one for that day so it was scheduled for the next morning and we were given the rest of the day to do whatever we wanted in Delphi. My group of friends and I decided to walk to the edge of town and up a hill into a meadow to overlook the valley. While we were hanging out up there myself and another decided to continue following an hiking path up the mountainside. It was one of those things that we were in the right place at the right time and just decided to do it rather than regret it later. We left with literally the clothes on our back and with no preparation or anything. We would then spend the next 3.5 hours hiking up the mountain to the summit and climbing back down the cliffside all while experiencing the beauty of the Greek countryside.
Curation
I had my experience/event but I still had no clue how I was to curate it. I began by just making mood boards of various pictures and items that we saw and used on the hike. From there I added content to it in the form of text descriptions. I wanted to have date or something tangible to work with aside from just pictures so I went into looking at time stamps or elevation date or something similar to the like. This helped me paint a better picture of what I was trying to convey. Analyzing the content I had also allowed me to better paint a picture of the story and the different nuances found within it. At this point and after some conversation with classmates I had determined that the best way to tell this story was through some sort of interactive web design. not only did I think this was the best way but I also thought this was really the only way to curate it that it would make any sense. I was also given a link to Snowfall from the New York Times which helped drive the point home that this is the curation that I needed to create.
Honing the Vision
My next iteration after my initial mood boards was to create text content that helped flesh out the images. I wanted to focus on a narrative experience through my web design. I still was unsure how my final curation would turn out but I was able to at least fill out the details of the images and items that I had collected. From here I took my 25 sketches and I began narrowing down what I needed to focus on so that my curation was not all over the place.
I decided to sort everything into six pages where I would focus on certain points or aspects depending on what was the subject of the page. I struggled with how I was going to convey this information without making it boring or unenjoyable for the viewer. I had a good amount of images but I also had a lot of body copy that was there to help explain the images. My main idea was to try to create graphs or icons that would make the pages interesting, interactive, and fun while viewing them.
Final Iteration
I ended up creating a scrolling editorial website through Adobe XD for my final curation. I focused on a forest green and yellow color scheme with typography that is reminiscent of trail signs found in National Parks. The curation has six pages that as one continues through the site, the narration of the story continues to grow and fill in gaps and provide a better picture of what the experience was like. I included images, icons, text, as well as graphics to create my final curation. I am content with how it turned out however, as mentioned previously I struggled with finding my way during this project and I feel another revision would do this project justice.
