This project is all about Vogue and how it did over the years and what has changed about it. Some questions they were answering in this project was how the words they used in Vogue changed to talk about beauty, how the hue, saturation, or lightness changed in the magazine, how the color patterns changed, and how they changed certain words when discussing fashion. They used the Vogue covers that were relevant to the time periods. They used covers every 10 years from the year 1900 to the year 2000. This project used a tool called ImagePlot, that was produced by Lev Manovich and his Software Studies Initiative. This software tool helps visualize large collections of images. By using this tool and relating it to Vogue, it allows us to quantitatively visualize how colorful Vogue covers were over time — from the 1890s to the 2010s. The memo generator that they used was quite amazing. They used something called Markov Chain model to generate how one of Vreeland’s, who was the editor-in-chief, would send out her memos based on original texts from her. The information is presented in an organized, categorized way. You have to click into the topic you want to read about. For example, if you want to see cover averages, student work, or take a memo, you need to have to click on that topic and read about it that way. There’s no welcome page or anything like that, it’s very minimalistic.
I liked how they used different graphs to help visualize the data they were giving us. This project was big on showing how Vogue changed over time. They really wanted us to see the design and the behind the scenes into what makes Vogue so good. They turned what they put into Vogue into quantitative data for us to see and I found that to be intriguing. The site has some good colors and the layout of the site is okay, but there’s a few things missing. Yes, the layout is organized, but there’s no wow factor there that makes me want to stay on the site and the font of the whole page is the same. They could’ve made the font different for all the headings, or changed the font color for some of them instead of having it black for the whole site. They could’ve done better with the “intro” paragraph they have at the top of the site because it’s in a very small font, and I didn’t even read it until about the third time I went back to that part of the site because I didn’t know what it was. It is an organized site, but there could’ve just been a better welcome to the page or had a separate page for that, and then with all the other topics relating to Vogue, could’ve been on a different page. They did do better when I clicked into the topic themselves. Visually, they did great by using cluster dendrograms, tables, and video clips. That helps a lot of viewers when looking at large quantities of data, and seeing how Vogue did over the years.
The text on the site could use some work. It is clear, but not very informative until you click on the topic itself. When you get onto the site, there’s a paragraph in tiny font that tells you that there’s experiments for you to read below. The text below the topics themselves and the pictures are very vague, and don’t give you much information. For example, one of them just says, “Hue, Saturation, and Lightness.” That’s very vague, what are we talking about? Hue, saturation, and lightness of what? It could make you want to click on it to find out, or it’s too vague to where you won’t click on it at all. For me, I had to look around for a little while to see what this site was about, and what I was supposed to be learning. I like when there’s big font at the front of website and a welcome page.
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