Rationale - http://demetrimartin-sortof.blogspot.com/
For my assignment I created an online exhibition for the comedian Demetri Martin. I created it in the style of a blog, as this was the most suitable solution. It was most suitable solution because the information content came in a variety of mediums, including video, text, audio and imagery and blogs are capable of supporting all of these content types. It was also the most appropriate solution as it gave the ability to ‘tag’ the information. Tagging allowed the content, which covered many categories, to be structured in a way whereby it could overlap and not be confined to a single ‘category’. My aim in producing this exhibition, was to provide a single, accurate source of information about the comedian, as well as providing some light entertainment for those who might ‘stumble’ upon the site. I wanted to create a network of information, in order to provide the reader with as much information about Demetri as possible.
In terms of content, the site needed to include his past work, some examples of his comedy, a description of his comedic style and a description about Demetri himself. With such a variety of content, the layout of the site was very important. In regard to aesthetics, the blog was designed in order to maintain legibility and promote readability, therefore was kept clean and simple. I used a pre-existing blog layout, which I then edited using html and css to create a design most appropriate for the information. The overall layout became a page with a horizontal navigation for main topics of information and a two column structure that provided detailed information on the left, and a brief overview of information on the right.
In regard to content structure, each section of information was split into blog posts. These posts were ‘posted’ at the date relevant to the information. This was done to create a reverse chronologic timeline of the comedians work, thereby presenting the viewer with the latest information first. This not only provides the reader with the most relevant information, but also gives frequent viewers an easy update. The information was structured under the six main headings in the horizontal navigation (each of which links to a specific blog post), and was also tagged according to content. A list of tags was then added to the right hand side of the page to provide easy access for viewers to specific information.
The final structure of the website was based on that of other Demetri Martin websites. By researching these, I could see what the most popular elements of his work were and could alos learn from what did not work on these sites. The main elements I incorporated into my blog were: the use of a timeline for clarity, links to videos of his work, an easy flow of information with links to external details. After viewing these sites, I aimed to make my blog more factual than opinionated as I found that this was a major issue in any previous Demetri Martin information sources. The main issue in creating this site was the copyright laws on his work. This issue was overcome by finding a website that had ownership of the copyright to his work, and had allowed th ‘embed’ option on his work. The main site I used for media was ComedyCentral.com as I know that they have the copyright ownership and have not stolen it from elsewhere. Another source, mainly for images, was flickr. Each photo posted on the site has a creative commons copyright and needed only attribution for legal use.
