Recording Cultural Genocide

Recording Cultural Genocide: Problem Statement

“How do we digitally preserve the culture of those who were persecuted by the Nazis, in a way which allows their personal experiences to come through?”

Before the Holocaust, Jewish cemeteries were at the heart of Jewish communities. The Nazis saw them as physical and symbolic expressions of Jewish culture. Executing their ambition of complete racial annihilation did not therefore end at the literal lives of the people they persecuted, it extended to removing all traces of their existence from history.

The goal of Recording Cultural Genocide was to employ a range of technologies to uncover, preserve and share the stories of the effected victims. Lead by a team of specialists from the Centre of Archaeology housed at Staffordshire University, public engagement was a critical element of this overall goal. A website would be needed to effectively house and share both the materials collected and their contexts, which is where I came in.

• Needs:
• Unique website frontend
• Accessible content management system
• Information structure strategy
• Website management training

Final website previews

Project Strategy

The Centre had a fixed budget that needed to cover redesign, development, training and hosting. This budget was ambitious even without considerations of a custom visual design. Nevertheless, a bespoke aesthetic was deemed critical to the team’s goal of establishing a tone that was truly representative and respectful of the subject matter. I therefore broke the strategy into four key stages:

Research and planning: Putting the people first

The team and I were immediately on the same page in terms of how the content needed to be framed – around the people.

The extent of the atrocities performed by the Nazis cannot be overstated, but it’s important to remember that the associated numbers represent real individuals. Those people had lives, families and future’s irrecoverably changed, and the same can be said of their broader community. Preserving those people’s stories was a key deliverable for the entire project and because of this, it became a critical point of direction for the designs.

I tend not to worry about the software I’m using to map out content structures unless specifically dictated by the client. In this case, the Centre of Archaeology were happy for me to not share the work until the style and tone was close to the intended final product, trusting in my approach. As a result, my initial layout sketches were all done by hand, facilitating fast iteration toward something I was confident would meet all their criteria. I likewise colour coded elements that would have a ‘personal’ component (be it a quote, image, or reference to a specific individual) so I could quickly assess how much would be on a page at a given time.

My primary goals here were to determine how content would be structured across the site, and to identify key places for the personal elements to be integrated.

Design: Layering the aesthetic

With these rough frameworks in place, I began layering aesthetic elements and assessing which partnered best with the proposed layouts.

There were no pre-existing brand guidelines, so I took visual lead from the Centre of Archaeology’s logo, determining a colour palette that was warm, inviting but also consistent with their other brand elements.

The same was true of typography, wherein I pivoted toward a pair of fonts that didn’t feel out of place with the organisation’s identity, but were likewise thematically suitable for the content.

First Impressions

While the site itself isn’t especially large by any means, there is enough that it could become overwhelming or confusing without a coherent narrative structure guiding the user experience.

This is never a simple task because you can’t be sure (particularly on websites which are a completely fresh build) what the entry point for visitors will be and accommodating all options can be complex.

In this case, we knew the vast majority of visitors would be following links to the homepage or sent their directly. We therefore structured all content above the fold to be minimal on most devices, with a very simple text introduction and video in the background to help convey the scope, and type of materials visitors could expect to find.

Variety in presentation

This principle remains true across the rest of the homepage, with content of gradually increasing complexity and variety as visitors scroll down the page, being complimented by aesthetics that are very much tailored to that content.

For example, after lots of content is displayed following the initial introduction, I thought it best to pull back visually for the banners emphasising the Personal Stories and Behind The Scenes. On the one hand, they focus attention on these specific areas for visitors who might be interested in those alone. On the other, they breathe some space into the aesthetic following a section which is comparatively dense with information.

Implementation: Responsive WordPress Theme

Data from some of the organisation’s other websites suggested that a high percentage of visitors were on mobile devices. No surprise, given we’re no longer living in 2006.

As the site makes use of large open spaces and clear content blocks, adapting to the various snapping points was relatively simple. Critically, they allowed us to maintain the aforementioned ‘human element’ despite the reduction in screen real estate.

Through WordPress, I was able to provide the organisation with complete control over all text elements and imagery, empowering them to really tailor the narrative and presentation of content on each page.