Rationale for Project A

Project A Rationale

I chose to do an online exhibition of William Shakespeare and adaptations of his plays and other works. I enjoy William Shakespeare's work and fear that others have been restricted to his work because of the language. In my website I attempted to make Shakespeare easy for those who are studying his work or are just interested.

My website included:
*A list of Movie Adaptation for his most famous plays
*A miniature dictionary for Shakespearean language
*Video links for pointers on how to read Shakespearean language
*News Articles about Shakespeare
*The Shakespeare Globe
*The Bell Shakespeare Theater Company
*The Shakespeare Center Group which I linked an RSS feed

I also included links to Facebook groups, Flickr, YouTube and my blog.

I made the website interesting and useful by including photos, web links, videos and social network links it would engage the reader and help them find their way around the relevant sites.

My technical processes used include:

RSS Feed

Video Feeds

Div Class

Table

I found a website (Feed Informer) that allows you to upload RSS feeds and transfer them into the HTML file. I used this for The Shakespeare Research Centre which has a blog on blogspot. I thought an RSS Feed was appropriate for this website as it is constantly being updated.

I used Video feeds for my website because I thought it would make the website more engaging and entertaining for the reader. I found these two videos on YouTube and thought they were appropriate for my website. One was a short clip of a rap song about all of the Shakespearean plays. I thought this took the edge off Shakespearean plays in a humorous way. I found the embed code on Youtube and copied it into my HTML file. The sizes of the videos were appropriate and both played without any complications.

The div tags I used were helpful especially while using CSS. I found that I could adjust my information in CSS and not have to change it again in HTML. I mainly used my div tags for columns and spacing out my webpage. I thought this gave the webpage more structure to make it easier for the reader to access the information.

I wanted to put a table in to give my movie adaptation information so it would be easier to read. I looked on the internet for the right code and was pleased to learn how to do it myself and customize it to how I wanted it to be.

Cultural Context

The reason I picked to do Shakespeare was that he has had an impact on my life and I have studied many of his plays. They all interest me and I have come across so many people who will not even try and understand the basic plot because the language is so difficult. In fact, the language wasn’t even understood when Shakespeare wrote the play but was considered to be an entertaining aspect of the plays so no one in the audience (including the royals and upper class men) could understand. His plays were more of a visual and expressive piece of work and should be performed to understand the stories. The movie adaptations I suggested are just as important to understanding Shakespearean plays. Although not all of the movies follow the language or the exact storyline, it helps the audience understand the basic plot and makes it more enjoyable for people living in the 21^st century. Because people have adapted Shakespeare’s plays, it makes them last longer and become relevant to modern society.

Design Patterns

My design patterns were very simple for the website. I am not a design student and preferred to focus on the content rather than using a lot of colours and textures. I used a website called Colour Scheme which helped me identify what colours contrasted and coordinated. All the codes for the colours were available on the website which was helpful. My font was a reference to the “Medieval” time Shakespeare which I thought was appropriate with the theme.

Overall, I learnt how to source sites, videos and blogs to my website to make it more useful and accessible to the reader. My website has multiple links with reference to different Shakespearean ideas and facts. I enjoyed making this webpage and hope that whoever reads it will find it useful and entertaining.