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it is all as i suspected.
SEPTEMBER 1st, 2002
sadly the reason i’ve not written since i created this is not because i’ve been too busy, but rather, because i haven’t done anything worth writing about, or even had any sort of spectacular thoughts. perhaps i need to force myself to write nightly.
i started work on the new tense forms site today. it’s high time it had a face lift—we’ve been cramming far too much stuff into the simple design i started with. so i did a lot of thinking.
i like a web site that lets you explore. heck, i like anything that lets you explore. it’s why i like video games so much. jumping on mushrooms and throwing fireballs does not excite me—but man, welcome to warp zone?? how cool is that. there’s a problem, though, with most web sites that really give you something to explore… there tends to be a lack of content. yeah, i want pictures, yeah, i want nice design, but i want at least a little more than that. maybe it’s there and i’m just not seeing it, but i feel like they’re not giving out enough to really draw me in.
i also like stories. this is the other reason i like video games, not to mention movies and books, and even a lot of songs. the way to really pull me in is to piece together a story that forces me to fill in the blanks. this is why i really like video games stories, as it’s pretty much a given you’ll have to put some things together for yourself. i think the best books and movies do this also. memento is a prime fucking example.
a few months back, when i was living at my grandfather’s house, i found all these old photographs of my grandparents. from as far back as when they were in grade school. now, i don’t really know a lot about my grandparents. my parents aren’t the sort to tell a lot of stories, and i’ve never been the sort to ask a lot of questions. so it was like discovering something completely new, but it was something i had an inherent interest in. all i had to go on were these boxes and albums of mostly unlabeled photographs, and a few love letters. but i got so drawn in—trying to figure out, well, their lives basically.
when i started working on the new tense site—after i figured out how i wanted to structure the content—i started thinking about some way to add another level of interest. i wanted to make it sort of game-like, though on a really abstract level. my first thoughts were to use a sort of floorplan metaphor, making every page a room… but visually it just wasn’t giving me a lot of ideas, aside from the overly obvious. then eventually i remembered the photographs of my grandparents. i’d scanned some of them, and brought a lot more with me to north carolina.
these photographs feel really personal to me… i feel a little odd using them for a web site. but for tense forms i think that fits. tense forms is really personal. and it’s hard to get the same sense of story from just a few photographs, but i’d like to think it still hints at something fascinating.
i’ve tried to come up with a layout that’s a bit more interesting than usual also. nothing too unusual—i don’t want it to be confusing. but i think i’ve managed to design it so that things unfold in a way that’s just a little bit unexpected.
hopefully.
http://tenseforms.com/
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