Idea Chalkboard

design concept: the street, man on the steet

Ecuador = equator = dividing line = class division
Can (should) we access this concept string through graphic design?

Song to use: justice land liberty (what's the actual song name in Spanish?)

Along with the idea of a dividing line, I thought of the two halfs some more and was reminded of those photos where the colors are split halfway through the face. I will give an example using an image from flickr. (CC of course)I definitely liked what you showed us last meeting. I think we have to be very careful how we tread with representations of native culture however. It comes down to voice, as in discourse: who we are, what we are saying, and how we are representing the subject. The fact that none of us are Ecuadoran, let alone native Ecuadoran means that we could be inadvertently making a statement by how we locate/use these images. We have to avoid any sort of colonialist overtones. Is there a faculty specialist on campus that can inform our choices in this regard?

Some ideas to consider

As we talked in the last meeting I think the idea of 'The voices of the Universe' in front of 'The voices of Ecuador' might work out. I would try to put it somewhere in the opening of the page, some flash animation would be probably nice, although, I know how annoying 'intro animations' can be. We could make it really short though, so any viewer wouldn't leave the page instantly annoyed by the intro. Flash is good so long as it serves a purpose, and if you don't have to wait for it to finish. Let's never make a page that needs a skip intro link

As for the design, I think it would be nice to have actually two different themes for the two sides of the social spectrum. Probably this would involve two completely contrasting colors, such as black & red or more relating to the Ecuadorian national flag, that would, at the same time, go with the design and, so to speak, 'happiness' or 'sadness'of these two social groups. I was thinking about some sort of verticalish border going through the middle of the page dividing the whole page into two separate parts. Maybe we could think of some small elements that would connect the two sides at the top, maybe not at all. Depends how much we would like to emphasize the distinctiveness of the groups. On the two sides we would have contrasting images from each group most reasonable seems housing photos, maybe faces of the people from the movies mixed with pictures of houses and streets into one theme. Or, as I mentioned before, have two different themes, richness expressed with expensive cars, items, buildings, dead elements' and poverty expressed poor people, sad faces, hungry children, etc. 'alive elements.' Underneath one we could have the movies one under another. Each movie would be played in a separate page, designed strictly in this social group theme. I think you're on to something. We might have the perfect image waiting for us in Barbara's reservoir. The right image can really bring the concept home without being terribly overwrought, particularly since it's real and not photoshopped. The whole worth a thousand words thing...

These are some of my ideas. Maybe they will be helpful for people in their brainstorming process.