April 28 response
I am excited that the very topic I am working on for this class is showing up in all of the major newspapers lately! The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the memorialization of the Wall is a huge question that Berlin has been trying to tackle for years. Check out these articles if you’re interested:
There Once Was a Wall of Shame
In Berlin, Building a Future on a Troubled Past
The site is coming together slowly but surely. I am mainly working on the content right now and trying to see how to present the information to the user from an organizational standpoint. I am excited to meet Jeremy tomorrow because I hope that once I learn how and where to embed a lot of the links I have ready, I will be a big step closer to getting things done. I still have to update my pixelated logo, so I may take a break from the content shortly and work on that. I’m wafting on the flash for the homepage, as I am enjoying the seriousness of the black and white singular image on the homepage. It doesn’t hurt to try it out and garner from the class’ opinion on it on Monday.
April 20 Response
That hour last week with Jeremy really helped to tackle a lot of the stylistic changes for my site. I appreciate the different creative ways he showed me to work around certain issues, like cropping and editing header images via Paint, a program that I had never thought to use before. I am still trying to center the header for all of the secondary pages and link the image to the homepage. Fiddling with the CSS, I somehow managed to add an invisible link to the homepage just to the bottom left of the image. I have tried several different ways to center the header image and still cannot seem to figure out how to do that.
I also found a lot of informative ideas and solutions on various WordPress blogs. On one of these blogs I learned about an open source flash maker which I have been able to embed into my site. The flash gallery I came up with is experimental right now and I still need to figure out how to resize the image flow and maybe add sound, titles to the pictures, etc. Here’s one of the links for anyone interested: http://www.photo-flash-maker.com/embed-slideshow-in-wordpress.html. I also installed a plug-in called KPicasa for a photo blog which would be easier, since all of my photos are already up on Picasa. I have not, however, been able to make it work.
I still am trying to figure out how to add flash to the homepage and trying to decide which 5 or 6 images I want rotating when the visitor first sees the site.
I haven’t accomplished everything present on my design rationale, but slowly and steadily I hope to get there! Here is the link to my site/mockups: www.coldwarmemory.com.
April 13 response
Last week’s design rationale presentations were helpful. It was exciting to see what everyone else is up to and how everyone visualizes his or her own site. It’s great to get constructive criticism on our site ideas and interesting to see how everyone perceives fonts and colors differently. I am looking forward to meeting with Jeremy one-on-one so I can zero in on the areas I am most confused about. I recently met with my professor and a couple that works with Holocaust survivors and are professors at the Free University- Berlin who met our class last May. I told them about the site and they were very excited that they will be featured on it.
As far as the readings go, I found the invisible content article helpful and I’m definitely going to try to hide the “skip to content” tip for my site. I am wondering if the screen reader compatability feature would work for my site because I do have oral interview files I am thinking of uploading and transcribing. I have seen the screen reader feature on the new versions of Adobe and it’s pretty fascinating to hear someone’s voice read out the information on the screen. I found Joe Clark’s “Type and Colour” chapter to be especially intriguing with the contextualization of colourblindness and colour-vision deficiency and how to unconfuse meaningful objects for certain users. These chapters on accessibility shed light on the fact that not everyone is able to perceive images and what we can do as web designers to mitigate many of these issues. This is also my first exposure to what Java i, so I’m excited to learn more abou this script in class.
I am trying to figure out how to play with Flash to create the images on the homepage for my site. Next, I want to save my logo as an image, but I have it as a Word file, so I’ll have to figure out how to do so. I updated the rationale part of my previous post, and again any suggestions are welcome: design-rationale-04132009. (that is the Word 07) version that actually maintains my images and here is the 93-07-version-design-rationale-04132009.
April 6 response
I used the Vista version of Microsoft Word to create my colored wire frames. I find Word more manageable (albeit limited in many ways) than Photoshop. Here is the link to a draft of my homepage, secondary page, and tertiary page. I am still gathering all of the content so you will see Lorem Ipsum in some of the places. I added in some text boxes to point out why I chose certain fonts and colors. I am still trying to find a logo that I feel comfortable with. I came up with a couple, and I liked that Jeremy suggested to make a primary and secondary header, where “History, Memory & Politics” is the more focused idea and “in Berlin” is like a subtitle. I have kept the colors relatively simple (black, white, and some orange), but I am open to any suggestions! Hopefully I can create a collection of photos via Flash for the homepage header with photos from the Berlin trip this past summer, and these images should add more color and style to the page. Here is my working copy of the design rationale: design-rationale-97-03-version.
March 30 response
As someone who is very much interested in photography but has not had a lot of experience working with Photoshop, I found Katrin Eismann’s Photoshop – Restoration and Retouching very helpful for those who wish to pursue the mastery of photo editing. Because Photoshop is such a memory hog, I have until now really only used Picassa (Google’s free photo editing program), which has the bare minimum for editing. The recreation of pictures is fascinating, and it’s strange to think how much of what we think is real has been added into photos. Eismann’s book makes me weary of photo editing for historical purposes, because we as historians rely so much on physical evidence to help support our claims. With these tools anyone can manipulate an image to speak a different truth or reality, which is both intriguing and frightening at the same time. So much of the topic that I am dealing with is spatial and involves visualization with regard to understanding where the Berlin Wall used to be situated, and I have so many photographs that I want to include on the site. I especially found her portion on working with overexposed images informative because many of my pictures where taken during the daytime in the heat of the June Berlin sun and cast shadows in the “wrong” spots. Breaking down the photos into different layers is a constructive way to look at each feature and deal with the issues tactfully. Also, I am a huge fan of black and white photography, but I agree with Eismann in its discretionary use.
I found last week’s introduction to Photoshop helpful, and I am still playing around with the different fonts and colors to see exactly how I want my logo to be. Critiquing Trevor’s site was a helpful exercise and forced me to look more at the rationale behind the design of my site. I spent a lot of time this weekend trying out the different public themes on WordPress, but am still most pleased by the Ocular Professor Theme. I am still trying to find out how to tweak the layout quite a bit to suit my site’s needs, including moving the big wide calendar from the bottom portion of the page to somewhere on the righthand side, or completely erased from the page. I want to make sure my site looks more like a site than a blog, although I do want to include the blog function for visitor reflections on my site.
March 23 Response
Late last night my professor whose book I’m developing into the web site project and I met after a long time. She had been out of town and the meeting was much needed. I had the site map and the wire frames ready to go, but after fleshing out some important topics in her book, we totally restructured the layout of the site last night. I am still trying to process these changes.
I used the Vista program’s smart art function to create a simple hierarchical site map and the basic word application to create the wire frames. This process was really helpful because I realized (and continue to realize) just how much I need the visual representation before anything else. I hope that having this layout will help me with the CMS modifications that will be needed to actualize these changes.
This has been a stressful process, as my hard drive (on my new computer!) decided to crash last week. I just restored my system last night and don’t have Adobe yet to save my files as a pdf. So please bare with the Word attachment for now and I will post the pdf ASAP. As always, all suggestions/comments are welcome. Here is the sitemap and wire frames combinedsitemapframesa
16. March Response
I have spent a lot of time attempting to modify my CMS, and this has been a lot more frustrating than I had imagined. I realize how unfamiliar I still am with CSS and the coding language. One of the key areas of concern I have is knowing where to go to in order to make modifications. I seem to have to most trouble knowing how to look for what is in the source code in the content section of the FTP. I am trying to figure out when it is best to modify the CSS style sheet through the FTP, as opposed to making changes on the WordPress dashboard or WordPress’ internal text editor.
My site is coldwarmemory.com. The public theme for my WordPress installation is called Ocular Professor, and I like it because of its sleek and streamlined look. I have so far changed around the font families and colors of the posts and the headers, took out the extra “skip to content” in the header and extra information in the footer. As far as the homepage is concerned, I am still trying to find out what the difference between a post is and actually want to get rid of the blog aspect and just add in content. I managed to add in a photograph in the about section just as a test try, but I want to see if it will be possible to add a gallery of pictures for each of the linked pages. Speaking of which, for some reason when I add in child pages for the adult pages, the child pages do not show up on the site. I am not sure how to go about correcting this so that these pages are visible, so any suggestions are welcome! After looking up the FAQs and WordPress support blog, I activated the pages widget but still did not seem to have any luck. I installed and activated a plug-in for a flash player to have flash with a series of photographs from my trip to Berlin on the homepage, but am still learning how to play around with it to make it work. I have to come up with a video montage and then upload that via the flash player is my guess. I also activated the links list but don’t see them on my site even though it says they are visible! I have also been thinking about adding music to the homepage, which can either make or break the page, depending on the song and the user. I would like have an on-off switch as well, so the user can choose as to whether or not he or she wants to listen to music. I am still looking for the most appropriate/suitable music, seeing that this is a site about Berlin’s history.
On a more constructive note, I have come up with some more detailed outlines on paper, in the form of embryonic site maps and wire frames, so hopefully I will be able to translate my notes onto the computer at some point in the near future. I have all of these ideas in my head but am not entirely sure how I will be able to actualize them for my web site. My brother and mom gave me some tips on how to make the site more aesthetically pleasing, so it helps to have these different opinions. After having gone to the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall Symposium at GW last week and re-visiting these issues again, I finally figured out how I would like to divide the content of my site. While in Berlin for the 2 week graduate course, my professor and I divided the syllabus into week one: dealing with the Nazi past and week 2: dealing with the East German past. For the purposes of this project, however, I might just keep my focus to the East German past and the Berlin Wall because this topic provides so much material as it is.
Anyway, I am continuing to work on these modifications tonight and throughout the week, and I hope to get a better hold on making changes more efficiently.
Strategy and Scope
Here is the my Strategy and Scope document. I would appreciate any and all feedback! All of your suggestions thus far have been very informative, so thank you!
Strategy and Scope
What is the overall goal for the final project?
This project will be a visual supplement to Hope M. Harrison’s book project on how Germany has dealt with its Nazi and East German past since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. The web site will address issues of memory at the juncture of history and politics in the post-Cold War era.
Who is involved in the project?
Those individuals and/organizations which will play a role in this project include GWU Associate Professor Hope M. Harrison and all of the museum officials and historians interviewed in Berlin during the GW graduate history course, Uses of history in International Affairs: History, Memory and Politics held in Berlin during May/June 2008. The course was an in-depth examination of how Germany deals with difficult aspects of its 20th century past, particularly the Holocaust, World War II, the Berlin Wall, and the division of Germany.
What is the project?
The project is coldwarmemory.com, a web site which will include the following components: an introductory essay on history, memory, and politics in Berlin, photographs and audio recordings of graduate students meeting with former East and West German officials involved in memory politics, interactive maps of the Berlin Wall and sites of memory, or the memorials and monuments integrated into Berlin’s spatial landscape, links to relevant books, scholarly articles, film reviews, newspaper articles, talks and lectures, as well as teaching modules for history educators at the high school, undergraduate, and/or graduate level.
Why is this project useful or valuable? How does it contribute to historical inquiry and understanding?
This project hopes to contribute to understanding how other countries deal with the past. By expounding upon how Germany continues to deal with its tumultuous history, this project encourages high school and college level students to think about who gets to remember what parts of the past, how these decisions affect communities, cities, nations, and the rest of the world, how individuals and organizations which perpetrated past crimes should be dealt with today, and how social, economic, and political factors influence the way in which a country deals with its history.
Ultimately, this project will be a case study that serves as a launch pad for an overarching future project about the role of memory in the Cold War since 1989. Future case studies would include the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Arab-Israeli conflicts, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Korean War, and other such landmarks in Cold War history.
By addressing these issues of memory, politics, and history in a constructive manner, this project could potentially help citizens of war-torn countries feel more comfortable about discussing such sensitive issues and discover new methods of healing past wounds.
What are the specific technical requirements and scope for the project and how long will it take to complete these requirements?
Using CHNM sites, particularly the Making the History of 1989 site, as a guideline for the stylistic components, I will create coldwarmemory.com. The technical requirements include the milestones outlined in the syllabus: writing clear and concise HTML and CSS via WordPress.com and dreamhost.com, installing and modifying a CMS on WordPress, creating site maps and wireframes, understanding how to create static vs. active web sites, and designing RSS feeds, plug-ins, and all of the other components of a web site. Dreamhost’s built-in FTP and text editor will hopefully make the designing process more streamlined in that all of the changes can be made on the web itself. As this web site will be a first for me, I am unsure of the exact timeframe in order to complete all of the requirements, but intend to use the course syllabus as a rough guide for the entire process.
March 2 response
I enjoyed the readable layout of Dan M. Brown’s Communicating Design, and appreciate that he aptly practices his own design principles in the book. He noted at the beginning who is his intended audience and made his book readable with just the right amount of graphics and words. Although the information regarding the larger project ideas and persona schemes may not be totally applicable to this class, he offers some excellent presentation meeting tips that I can see myself referring to when I have to present project ideas at my work. In fact, when I’ve presented my research at different history conferences or lectures/discussions as a Teaching Assistant at GW, I realized that I asked myself these questions about who my audience was and how it would be best to communicate complicated historical issues. It’s both challenging and exciting to translate these questions to this visual context in the form of web site design, and Brown’s perspective helps me thinks about history from this non-traditional angle. Also, prior to reading Brown’s section on competitive analyses (as well as Jesse James Garrett’s The Elements of User Experience), I hadn’t thought about my site from a business-oriented standpoint and am now trying to do more research on what sites about my topic are already out there and how I can design my site in a way that attracts users to visit and take advantage of the resources I hope to make available.
“For the purpose, the best place to start is the motivation” (120), notes Brown, and I keep trying to solidify my answer to the question of motivation for this project in my strategy and scope. After working on my strategy and scope, I see that I am leaning toward keeping it more general that I thought I would. My doing so is probably due to the fact that I am still very unsure of how the site will look from a visual standpoint. I have been playing around with the different themes on WordPress and like the “ocular professor” one for now. Brown writes, “Figure out how you want to use color and start experimenting with it” (8), so I am going to make more of an effort to think about what color schemes are “appropriate” for the content of my project. I have been trying to use the built-in FTP program via Dreamhost to manipulate my site, but realize I am still unsure of the very basics of HTML and CSS. I am going to take some time to re-visit the CSS book we were assigned to a couple of weeks ago because the exercises may prove to be more useful to me now that I have a site with which I can work.
Because I have so many ideas floating around in my mind regarding this project, Brown’s section on site maps and wire frames reminded me that I can and must use such drawings as a brainstorming mechanism in order to understand which sites will link to which elements as opposed to writing about them in prose. The article, “The what, when and why of wireframes” by Kelway, also clarified a lot of basic points about wireframes for me, especially the diagram of the abstract to concrete/strategy to surface concept for web sites that Garret also hashes out in his work.
