strangerpixel

The creative team were clear about the design aesthetic they wanted: the main page was to look like the running order for a Jacobean play, with an antique-style serif typeface throughout. This presented a challenge: since the filmmakers wanted the site content to be indexable by search engines, we needed to code in HTML and CSS as opposed to Flash – but how to display the custom typeface?

I opted to use Stewart Rosenberger’s dynamic text replacement technique, which uses a combination of PHP and Javascript to dynamically create images for every targeted word. With the volume of text needing to be replaced, the result was a slow load time; in retrospect, I could have experimented with Cufon (which for some is the preferred choice although it is potentially illegal). However, the team actually liked the way the spidery text appeared to be writing itself across the page on load.

The 8 filmmakers each contributed a short piece of video, which were revealed on the site over the course of a month. I used jQuery to fade out future weeks, while highlighting the current week in a deep red.

• Read the project review on Frieze.com

Technical spec:

• HTML / CSS coding
• jQuery effects
• JW Flash Player used in conjunction with the Shadowbox Media Viewer to display video files