Nissa Eames Web Designer & Developer

Mapping Colonial America


Open gallery

This is an aged project, but I still really love it. It’s an award-winning online exhibit, built in Flash, that provides a showcase for Colonial Williamsburg’s collection of antique maps. An interactive timeline and zoom feature allow for in-depth learning. CDs were also produced for retail sale with an additional “Compare to Modern Map” feature.

Awards: 2006 Official Honoree of Annual Webby Awards, International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences; 2006 Gold Award, W³ Awards; 2005 Outstanding Website WebAward, Web Marketing Association

    Roles
  • Art direction
  • Design
  • Structure coding (Flash)
  • Scripting functionality (ActionScript2)
    Technologies
  • Flash

Highlights

  • Rich design

    It may be a bit crowded compared to today's standards, but back then it was fairly standard. The deep red contributes to a sense of history while the pop-out map highlights the current feature.

  • Integrated navigation and timeline

    Using lots of fun, custom ActionScript, I created a drag-and-drop timeline. Once dragged-and-dropped, the historical text timeline and the active map animate to the same date, and vice versa. All of the animation in the exhibit was done using ActionScript.

  • Preset zoom inset into text

    Using Zoomify, I was able to provide inline links to view parts of the map referenced in the text.

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