Philosophistry Reloaded

by phil on Tuesday May 6, 2003 9:29 PM
web design

So I've re-designed the site as you can see. Here's my thinking behind all of it:

General Desires
- I wanted to emerge from the stodgy look and feel of the old Philosophistry to better reflect the state of minds that I'm going through now. In the past, I've been ubar-serious about serious questions. Now, that mold has grown old, and so the next stage is a more playful, comedic Phil.
- I wanted to do something different and memorable. I once saw a site that had a really huge image on the front followed by the rest of the blog. I thought that was awesome because it caught my attention and the image was nice.
- I wanted to experiment with some design elements, such as excessive white space and a 1400 pixel delay before getting to the content.

On the Sounds
There's a reason that amateur web designers put annoying MIDI files and other sounds into their website. As their fresh mind tells them correctly, sound adds another dimension to their site. However, the audio is usually not done correctly so, as a result, professional web designers mute everything. I want to bring sound back to the web, but in a more interesting fashion. The sounds I chose are meant to tell a narrative. They're all some of my favorite parts from some of my favorite songs, and are chosen to convey the crux of a particular mood. I've ordered them in such a way that if you heard them in sequence, you could sample the emotional cycles I go through sometimes.

You know how when you smell certain fragrances, you're immediately brought back to that moment? The same thing happens to me with music. So by putting these clips into my site, I'm hopefully going to make a stronger emotional connection with my audience.

Another side benefit to the sound is that in my future posts, I'm going to sometimes make a reference to a certain sound that I have on the "aquaslide" (the name of the sound-holding stem). I'll ask people to play that particular clip so as to enhance the tone or point-of-view that I'm stressing in a particular post.

Dissecting the Elements
- the "aquaslide" is that 1000pixel tall crooked, bluish, flame-like thing. I got the image for that from Caedes in the Abstract folder. The image represents how your life may have an abrupt change that takes you from direction into another.
- the "cherries" are the little sound clip activators. The little icons suggest, in an abstract way, the mood I'm trying to convey
- "sland" is short for slander.
- the voice in "sland" is Trent Reznor saying, "God is dead"--Go Nietzsche!
- "lorn" comes from forlorn.
- "beam" is the feeling you get if you were a tall beam walking through a sea of smaller beings--the feeling I get listening to that song.
- "lov" is just love shortened.
- The guy at the top is the Japanese cartoon version of Strongbad.
- the logo is split to separate "philo", which is Greek for love, and "sophistry", which, to me, is the field of wise-sayings.
- the upside-down cross in two places is my way of symbolizing my tendency to turn religion on its head
- the slashes through the o's in the logo is the Singularity symbol that I came up with in the Tautrix. More religion, once again.

As for which songs I chose, well, you can figure that out on your own or e-mail me to find out.