1.Conceptually – how does it meet the theme?
The idea of a masquerade theme meets the identity concept because it can be viewed from two different perspectives. First of all, there’s the obvious one of the person’s identity disappearing behind this small mask. From this, I’d be looking at how much or how little you’d have to hide a person to lose their visual identity.
Then there’s the other side of this where the mask provides the person with a barrier that they can hide behind and become someone else. From this angle, I’d be looking at the creation of a temporary identity and how the individual comes up with this identity. This would be developed from the individual’s actual identity leading to the new identity being an extension of what the individual would normally allow people to see.
2. How did you come about your ideas for this?
For the second concept, I searched people in masquerade masks and noticed how their eyes became the focal point for the viewer. This reminded me of the saying “the eye’s are the windows to a persons soul” and I thought that I could use idea this to create my website.
3. Realisation visually – how will you express the theme visually? Give examples either from your screen sample (prototype or first concept) and/or another site?
Visually, I’m thinking of expressing my theme focusing on just the eye area of the person. I want to edit my images so it looks like the people are wearing the masks and this would be the only area with colour. For the rest of the image, I want to black it out, but with a gradient so that it fades into the colour from the bottom up and then fades back to black from the top of the eye section to the top of the screen. I would then put words or phrases relating to my concept and use these to link the pages.
I’ve started playing around with this idea in Photoshop, but because I can’t work Photoshop to save my life, it’s really, really, rough. When I have something that is a bit more presentable and less cringe-worthy, I’ll post them up.
As of yet, I haven’t found any websites that reflect what I want do for my concept, but I’m still looking. Again, I’ll post these when I find them.
4. Discuss your interface or the navigation style. Will it be mostly: a. linear? b. organic? c. a combination of these? d. some other style
Ideally, I’d prefer the navigation to be organic. This way they viewer would be able to choose how they navigate through the website and the next page would be something unexpected. I was thinking about using words relating to identity as the links. I’ve had a look at some poems about identity and some of the lines were interesting so I thought I could uses these or I could make something up myself. This idea could also tie into my concept of the mask wearer showing more of their identity with the current image being the “mask” and the next visual image being the revelation.
5. Did you chose storyboarding OR a flow chart? Why? Explain it…
Seeing as I’ve chosen an organic form for the navigation I think a flow chart would be better suited for me. I’d be able to show how one page leads to multiple pages easier and it would also provide me with a better idea of how the pages would relate, flow and intertwine.
