project three: typography interface, take two...

So, after many more type experiments and much thought, here is my revised typography interface. I completely redid the interface in Flash, and wanted the piece to feel ambiguous and softly gritty (if that makes any sense).

Ambiguous Propensity: Take Two from Liese Zahabi on Vimeo.

The user comes to the site, and sees the grainy landscape of letters. A few of the letters beckon to the user by softly glowing with a color. As the user rolls over the letters, they shift slightly, almost as if you were running your hands through a pile of letters on a table. The colored letters are active, and to select one of the active letters, the user draws a circle around it.

Then the selected letter grows large (and beautifully pixelated and fuzzy), and one of the stanzas of the poem is released onto the landscape of that letter. I chose to use handwritten type to contrast with the universality (alleged) of the plastic helvetica letterforms. Once the stanza is released, the words pulse, letting the user know that they too are active. As the user rolls over these words, they fly away off the screen—the words that haven't been rolled over remain, and the user can then reposition these words to create new thoughts and sentences.