openpolitics.com

Design Features

I like the idea of “clean”/simple design with nice typography

I like the idea of mostly black/white, with shades of grey

I like the links to be blue (that’s the standard).

• example: links and headers start darker  and fade into lighter grey when you hover over them.

The color for the site will come from the photos and video

Responsive: I want site to look good on phone, tablet, and large desktop monitor.

Footnotes/Linking Inspiration

I want the site to feature lots of linking/footnotes, because I’m exploringing the work of Ted Nelson and his ideas about hypertext.  Ted Nelson has the idea of parallel documents with intercomparison (wait for the demo to load).

David Foster Wallace uses over 400 footnotes in his novel “Infinite Jest.”  I’m not going to do that, but I want to suggest that approach through the design of my site.

Sidebar Formatting:

I’m using two plugins to make my site more referenceable:

1. Side Matter: uses tagging to generate notes (like footnotes, but on the side)
2. Inline Comments: people can comment on a specific paragraph, rather than just dumping their comments at the end of the page.

Format:

front page/writing: content & sidebar with sidenotes, tags, featured content, etc

quotes : no sidebar

I may would like to add tags to the bottom of the “quotes” section (where it says “source” & “read more”), if it would look ok.

interviews: content & sidebar with sidenotes, tags, featured content, etc

tagging: content & sidebar with tags, etc

To Do

improve header and footer appearance

refine typography

improve comment bubble and popup (currently black box with plus sign)

create a mobile friendly navigation

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