Lucy, sitting in her psychiatric help booth.
Design Analysis
The general demographic that this site is aimed towards is the teenage demographic. The teenage demographic takes up the majority of internet users, therefore, it is more likely that they will stumble across this website. The teenage demographic will also likely react the most positively towards the design that I have chosen, because blogging is a very common practice in today’s society.There are many websites that are dedicated strictly to blogging, such as www.bloggingcanadians.ca, www.daypop.com, and www.weblogs.com. Because of the large amounts of blogging that happens on a daily basis, blogging has a huge impact on internet culture, and with the average internet user visiting upwards of 100 websites per month, blogs reach many different people every day. Now, with the ability to tag interesting websites, that number is increasing substantially.
The design of the site is fairly simple, with only a few different graphics. The background is not so complicated as to take away from the main focus, which is the text. The text is written in bright colours, so that it will catch the eye of the reader, but it is not bright enough to hurt the reader’s eyes if reading is prolonged.
The first graphic that was chosen is a picture of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone. The main reason why this picture was chosen is that it directly relates to the poem “More About People”. In the poem, Nash mentions Ford, Edison, and Firestone. This is most likely due to the successful nature of their respective careers, and not necessarily because they were oppressive employers. However, this picture still relates to the poem because it gives the reader a strong representation of successful people at the time.
The second graphic that was chosen, that goes along with the analysis of “More About People”, is a picture of the author, Ogden Nash. I found this image to be appropriate because the analysis is about him and his style of writing in relation to his poem. Nash’s style of writing is uniquely his, so I figured that it would be appropriate to include a picture of him with the analysis.
The third graphic that was chosen is a picture of the cast of the movie series “High School Musical”. Unfortunately, many people in the general population have been entertaining the notion that they too can be famous. By "hitching their wagons to a star", these people have an unreal expectation of themselves, which can cause their lives to feel unfulfilled. The High School Musical movies seem to have a large impact on the average high school demographic, which explains why the series has such a large effect on teenagers.
The final graphic that I chose is a picture of Lucy, from the Peanuts comic strip, in her psychiatric booth. This picture represents the critical nature of Nash’s poetry, which is merely just trying to point out the flaws in human nature, an activity that Lucy also loves to partake in. The comic strip aspect of Peanuts also represents how even though Nash is deep in analysing human nature, he believes that he can take a satirical view on the flaws as well. Peanuts is very well known for its satirical view of humanity, fitting in nicely with Nash’s philosophies.
The layout of the website is rather simple, with the links to other pages over at the side of each page, in plain sight. The text for each page is placed right in the middle, at the top of each page, where the reader can notice it easily. It is also possible to open more than one page at a time, which can be more convenient for the reader.
Links to other sites of interest are also located on a separate page, in case the reader would like to read more about Nash and his work.
