I chose to explore the vectors project entitled “Totality for Kids.” The project explores, “Pre-history of the SI, beginning in post-war Paris with the group’s predecessor the Lettrist International, and continuing through the apotheosis of political radicalism marked by the general strike of May ’68.” The project is designed like an interactive comic book however it’s narrative is somewhat confusing and hard to follow. In order to really understand the project you must read the editor’s, author’s, and designer’s statement.
The interface of the project is disorganized. Within the “comic book” design, the user can click on any speech bubble in any order they want. This again makes the story line unclear. After observing the site a little longer I realized that the speech bubbles were not the only “click-able” images on the page. Some of the information itself when clicked also expanded on the page. This would have been nice to know. An easy solution to this problem would have been to give a number order to what icons the users is supposed to click. This gives order to the project as well as indicates which items in the story further elaborate on the storyline.
Another problematic feature I found in the project is how un-kid-friendly it actually is. Because of the more advanced language used as well as the smaller fonts and disorganized design I’m going to assume that this project is more of a satire rather than an actual way of explaining nineteen fifties Paris to children, however, this leads me to discuss another reason this project bothers me; the overall design of it. I was incredibly bothered by the array of different fonts used. Each page contained at least three different fonts making the pages look messy. Some of the fonts are almost too small to read. Another design flaw is the fact that the pages will move by themselves. Once you click on a page you have an allotted amount of time on that page till it decides to move onto the next one. There is no way of stopping this that I have found.
The overall WORST aspect of this project is the music. I cannot find any reason way an academic project like this should be set to a looping French folk song. There is a mute button, however is it located in the bottom right corner. It took me almost ten minuets to find this button and by then I was so frustrated with the project that I was pretty much ready to move on to something else.
Overall I liked the IDEA of using vectors for a project like this. Organizing the components within the project and getting rid of the music would make this project very successful.