Graphics and design elements

Again, I'd have to say that the graphics of the site would be very simple and almost entirely limited to the navigational links. I'd like, perhaps, to have a very very faint background image on the individual category pages (stories, essays, etc) in the same color range as the main text. Not opaque enough to distract from the links themselves, just to give it some more visual interest. And I have to admit I'd like, not require, there to be a tiny bit of animation when one mouses over a link in the individual category pages--just as simple and self-contained as the dock in OSX expanding when you mouse over a particular icon, only rather than expanding that selected area, it would fade in a background graphic and then fade it out again as soon as the mouse was moved.

If I had ImageReady I could so make a gif of this. That really takes me back, I haven't made animated icons since about 2006.

The graphic itself would be something like the bubble-chamber shot I used in my mockup. Something beautiful and not immediately representative of anything specific: people who know what it is would go "oh, that's a bubble-chamber shot" and people who didn't would go "oh, that's a cool bunch of scribbles and spiral lines." Obviously I would need to make sure that I secured the appropriate rights to use whatever image ends up being on the page, and for that reason it's unlikely to actually be the bubble-chamber shot, but I'll keep looking. I can of course create an abstracted version of the image--fanart, if you will--which would be my intellectual property to mess with as I chose.

The site I'm envisioning has very few graphics that are not text-based, which is a new direction for me. As you can see in the background of this blog I tend to go in for dense multilayered collage-type images, text and picture and layer effects all mishmashed together to provide an overall effect or experience. With Unfound Island I'd really like to let the text stand on its own. I'm rather happy with the way the mockups came out, even if I had no access to Overused Font #1 (Zapfino). Probably turned out better that I had to use High Tower Text instead of Trajan-and-Zapfino, my general go-to font pairing.

(I cannot wait for Typography.)

Also--the poem from which I snagged the blog title is worth a look in and of itself. I copypasta it here for the sake of general edification. Think of the site's subtitle as "lost in time, and lost in space."

I

But most beautiful of all is the Un-found Island:
The one that the King of Spain got from his cousin
the King of Portugal with the royal seal
And the papal edict written in Gothic Latin.

The Young Prince set sail for the fabulous kingdom,
He saw the Fortunate Isles: Iunonia, Gorgo, Hera
And the Sea of Sargasso and the Sea of Darkness
While looking for that island...but the island wasn't there.

In vain the big-bellied galleons with swollen sails,
The caravels in vain put up their rigging:
Despite the papal guarantee, the island disappeared
And Portugal and Spain are looking for her still.

II

The island exists. Appearing now and then in the distance
Between Tenerife and Palma, veiled in mystery:
"....the Un-found Island!" the wise Canarymen
from Picco high above the Teyde point it out to the foreigner.

The pirates' ancient maps make mention of her:
"How to Find It Island," "Wandering Island"--
It is the charmed island that slips through the seas;
Sometimes the navigators see her nearby...

They graze with their prows that happy shore:
Amid flowers no one has ever seen the highest palm trees sway,
The heavenly forest, thick and alive, sends forth its fragrant odors,
The cardamom tree is crying, the rubber trees are oozing...

She is noticed first by her perfume, as a courtesan is,
The Un-found Island...but, if the pilot goes toward her,
Quickly she disappears, like a mirage,
Tinting herself with blue, the colour of faraway.

--Guido Gozzano