sarah teng ✶
︎  ︎

SUPERNOVA: AN AMBIENT WEBZINE ✶ SUPERNOVA: AN AMBIENT WEBZINE ✶ SUPERNOVA: AN AMBIENT WEBZINE ✶ SUPERNOVA: AN AMBIENT WEBZINE ✶ SUPERNOVA: AN AMBIENT WEBZINE ✶  


 Role
Independent project for Art 395 Software For People

Skills
UIUX, Web design

Timeline
2 weeks, Feb 2023


                                      

PROCESS


The Brief: Unite three texts around a common theme into a cohesive web experience, using only HTML/CSS (no js allowed!)




Working with three texts on the theme of the universe and self-reflection: the minecraft end poem (by Julian Gogh), an article about stardust from EarthHow, and a poem I’d written in my notes app.



Some guiding questions:

  • How do I balance intuitive navigation with an open-ended experience?

  • How can I take these texts outside of familiar mediums and inspire curiosity in users?




Working within the constraints of the assignment, I was inspired by my longstanding love for ASCII art and nostalgia for the open-ended exploration of personal websites on the 2000s early internet. 



After some playing around with ASCII art drawing tools, I loved how you could recreate a galaxy with just little dots and dashes and symbols. The universe is on your keyboard!


I wanted my webzine to draw attention to the magic of the handbuilt web and HTML/CSS as a medium 





With this theme in mind, I migrated an ASCII galaxy I had drawn into HTML, and then experimented within my code editor until until I had a homescreen, navigation system, and text pages I liked:




>> Homescreen: open-ended navigation, with written cues to help direct the user’s exploration across the ‘map’


   

 >> For the scientific article, I rearranged the text in chunks with vertical scrolling to make it feel like prose written on an old scroll, in order to reframe scientific language as poetic




>> I used hover interactions and easter eggs to encourage user exploration through the webzine





Key Takeaways & Things I would do differently:


  • Add instructions as a pop up, rather than have the user have to find them. Don’t assume that you have the user’s extended attention!
  • Thinking through making when learning a new medium
  • I ︎ the handmade web



An ambient webzine about seeing the cosmos within yourself. How is creating a website an act of world-making?

Explore the space, or let it sit quietly on your desktop, up to you. Made all the ASCII art myself :]

︎︎︎ click the window to view!