‘Expression’ Issue, Soul of Athens – by Ohio University

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‘Expression’ Issue, Soul of Athens – by Ohio University

Last week, Ohio University’s school of Visual Communication and its students launched their annual spring project, Soul of Athens. The project is a collaborative effort, from all four sequences of study within the school, to tell the stories of the Athens community. This year’s themes are Thrive, Passage, Shelter, and Expression.

The Soul of Athens team did a few things different this year. The first difference being that all the site’s content was not published on the project’s launch date, instead the content was divided into five editions that will be published throughout the summer. The second noticeable difference is that the site has a less “flashy” design in comparison to past years. We asked a few questions to senior producers of the Expression issue, Jenny Cecil and Josh Birnbaum, and one senior producer of web design, Tony Guglielmi. Here is what they had to say.

Photo Brigade: What was the aim for the ‘Experssion’ edition, and how well do you think you all executed that aim?

Jenny Cecil:

The goal for our launch, the Expression issue, was to show people what Athens feels like. It’s hard to tell stories that are intended to give the reader a feeling, but I think we pulled it off pretty well. Several of the stories have non-literal images and audio like Ink and The Road to Athens. They’re interpretive pieces, they show you what we have, and how we live. The aim is to lead you down a path in your mind and heart that will end with your own interpretation of why Athens is beautiful. Other pieces like Wee Wrestling and Banks of the Ohio show the spirit of the people here. The goal was to show the expression of Athens and, in my opinion, we executed it very well.

Josh Birnbaum:

Our job as the lead issue for Soul of Athens was to be the best we could be so as to make people want to come back to the site. We hope that the content on there now entices the viewer to come back for the next four editions.

Photo Brigade: It seems that this year’s site is a bit less “flashy” than those of previous years. Is this an attempt to develop a site with more of a mainstream style?

Tony Guglielmi:

This site is actually developed in html5. This is a relatively new technology that allows us to play video without a flash player plugin. We wanted to make an experience for users that would allow them to navigate through the content easily and not get lost in useless animation that can confuse and put off a user from exploring deeper into the site. We also are integrating social media into the mix allowing people who see the stories to share their thoughts on them, and the twitter feed which allows people to get a feel for what is happening in Athens now. Although this site might be less “flashy”, the only keyword to that phrase is that this site has less Flash (the actual development tool). This is a cutting edge site that melds form with function, while keeping function at the forefront of what is important (because if people can’t see our content, then this site is worthless).

On a last note, we are experimenting with multiple launch dates to see if we can keep people coming back to the site past the day it is launched. We wanted each of our users to be able to digest the content in each edition before giving them new content to look at.