Well here’s what I’ve come up with after tinkering with it all day. I’m not sure I’m sold on it yet, but it seemed to make the bossman pretty excited about the possibilities, and that is always a plus.
Now to let it sit on a shelf for a bit and mull it over. If it still looks good in a couple days I’ll tear it up and make it into an actual xhtml/css design.
There is an argument made against privacy that says someone who isn’t engaged in criminal behavior has nothing to hide. This method of thinking allowed the US government to slowly sap away our civil liberties in the wake of the 9/11 attacks–many have just accepted that trading privacy for security is acceptable and used the “nothing to hide” argument to rationalize what was, essentially, a decision based on fear. However, limiting the government’s ability to intrude in our private lives is easy compared with attempting to control how personal information spreads on the internet via gossip. Rather than spies or wiretaps, gossip is often gathered by those we trust and spread online by people who don’t understand or appreciate the potential for the damage it can do. In reality, privacy is about much more than concealing wrongdoing.
Internet-based abuse (‘cyberbullying’) and privacy / relationship issues are still massively misunderstood. The complexities of online sociality are probably the biggest ‘generational divide’ between modern teens and adults. To help put it in perspective a bit, here are some numbers…
August 11th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
And no I certainly don’t think this verges on the “edge of artsy.” It’s fairly plain. The icons need work bad, and the bevelling could be more consistant. The typography has interest but could certainly use work. There are some serious usability issues going on with links and link color. On the whole, I think it looks like a rougher Northland but with WWC’s strong photography.
Most of all, I’m not convinced that this style of design (the smooth, gradient-laden, beveled look) accurately represents the Warren Wilson brand.
August 19th, 2006 at 1:11 am
What do you do to update it? Is it a homebrewed database-driven situation? Is it all done by hand, pushed server-side with that php? I’m stuck in this “dynamic, dynamic!!” mindset since that’s a necessary component of the web design that I’m doing this summer for my internship. Joomla is fun. I don’t mean to pry into state secrets, just curious.