HIST 697: Designing History
After reading my classmates’ blogs, I noticed that many of them posted about their own designs as well as critiquing each other’s, so I thought I’d briefly blog about mine as well. Like Megan, I chose to go in and make some changes to my site after receiving Sheri’s very helpful comments. This is the site as edited after reading Sheri’s comments. This is the original version of the site, though the CSS here does include the skip nav that I had originally omitted.
Like many of my classmates, this website will serve, at the very least, as a rough template for my final project. As you may gather from the body content of the site, I plan to pair civil defense films with historical commentary on the films themselves. I plan to upload the films I’ve found for free on the Internet Archive to my own YouTube channel (yet to be created) which I will then embed in the site. Users can then play the videos and will have a chance to read my deconstruction of what they’ve seen. I will pair the commentary itself with screen shots from the films and other supplementary materials so that the text will also be image rich. My challenge will to be to keep my narrative both accessible and informative. For the moment I plan to let the YouTube channel stand as a place for users to add their own comments, taking advantage of that existing infrastructure for interactivity. Perhaps I will also create some sort of page or form soliciting film submissions as well.
I also hope to create a page listing other resources visitors can use to learn more about the history of civil defense. There is where I plan to list and acknowledge the many monographs I’ve used over the course of my own research. It may even serve as a nice annotated bibliography. I’m also considering contacting other enthusiast civil defense sites on the web to create a mutual support network. Enthusiasts seem to have done a lot of important work in civil defense history, especially when it comes to collecting primary source material.
As I think about my final project I’m concerned not only about the text I plan to write for the site, but also how to display the videos in a visually pleasing way in terms of the site’s design itself. I think I’ve done all right when it comes to creating a certain period atmosphere for the site, but now I have to see how functional that design can be. Other nitpicks : I’m still not happy with the font. It’s so interesting Sheri picked up on it, because I tried for several days and just sort of gave up. She hit on what was wrong with the Trebuchet: it was too round. So I’ve switched to the straighter Verdana for now. Also, that Geiger counter guy at the bottom needs some sort of caption or text floating next to him. He’s there to fill what was too much white space. I got him from a civil defense pamphlet. I am going to continue pondering how to fix that blip at the bottom of the page. It’s actually been giving me trouble for several days as well.
