Below is my ideal landing page. It is modeled off the Koya Bound website. The first thing readers will see is a giant moving image or video and I would like confetti to pop out. I kind of imagine a first “welcome” page also resembling the format this website does. (This would be the dream).
Then, readers can scroll down and go through a series of slides where essentially my researched “story” of the Valentine’s day is told (with graphics, images, and text, of course.) I would like a moving map on the right, as is in Koya Bound, but that may have to be supplanted by other images. The menu bar would be up to below the large welcoming image. I might use NeatLine here to create a timeline.
SAMPLE OTHER WEB PAGES
This is one of the website pages, where a calendar organized by year that can take readers back all the way to the legendary origins of St. Valentine’s Day (with St. Valentine apparently secretly marrying people in prisons?) through the present moment (of hyper-commercialized success of the holiday). I will only have select key years’ historical information (due to time constraints) but imagine I can add, if I continue to work on this project as my lifelong labor of love. This webpage will take readers to a scroll through “portfolio” type section that has descriptions of the key characters in the story. I know of two currently: St. Valentine (obviously) and Geoffrey Chaucer (whose supposed poem popularized the notions of love on Valentine’s Day as we think of them today). There will be text descriptions with images of the characters (who will be hyperlinked to throughout my main story told on the home page in slides). This page I imagine being dedicated to the question HOW DID WE GET HERE? (oops! Forgot to include “here” and going back to redo all my photo-cropping isn’t worth it in my cost-benefit analysis). By this, I mean how did it become such a commercial, billion-dollar industry almost? I doubt I will get to substantive research on this section, but I would nonetheless like to go ahead and build the page. The globe will have different countries marked on it to where the holiday has spread. Then, users can click on the dots to hear testimonials, interviews, etc. on how they celebrate the day there and their views on it. I will have an option where people can “submit their stories” from all over the world. Of course, this section will also have the broader history of its commercialization and subsequent commercialized globalization. I know of a couple countries where it is already existing: Pakistan, India, & Korea (thanks Sundi). I may include some quotes from people about these countries. I would like the globe to be 3D clickable.
My favorite page that I will probably never get to: THE FREE SHOP! This is kind of a “fun” place on the website where I would help someone celebrate Valentine’s Day each year. So, people could send me requests and I would select 1 (out of all the 100s I will receive ha!) to fulfill. I don’t know how this would work but ideally the project would be feasible. Say, someone sends me a request saying “I really want to surprise my grandmother with a giant cake. Can you drive it to The Pines Nursing Home for me, I have work that day.” I would agree to that (no costs other than the person must be excited and doing this out of their own joy!). I would also have a free shop where I can send people Valentine’s card I have drawn myself (for the fun of it). Things here are basically free products from my free shop.
And as a final treat, I have included just for the heck of it my first wireframe ever (of this project and in general), which I did for our class Design Thinking Workshop. As you can see, my new wireframe isn’t too far off design-wise, but it has narrowed down in content.
You can create a faster, simpler timeline with Knight Lab’s JS Timeline. Neatline, however, allows you to map time and space together, moving across a map over time.
You can create a faster, simpler timeline with Knight Lab’s JS Timeline. Neatline, however, allows you to map time and space together, moving across a map over time.