Week 13 Assignment- Final Project Documentation

• Title
  
  

 404: Forget Me Not 

• Link to project 

• Project summary 
  
  

 My project was to integrate the final project with my thesis project which is a curated web based archive of stories from New York City’s long serving small businesses that have either disappeared or are struggling to keep afloat due to rise in rent and gentrification.

• Inspiration •How did you become interested in this idea? 
  
  

I became in this project after interacting with generative typography tool projects such as Space Type Generator and the works of Dia.Tv. I got to thinking about how I could frame the project in terms of narrative and decided to focus the project around the signs of New York City small businesses that have disappeared or struggling to keep afloat. I wanted to document their existence and offer a new life to their visual representation. My project took a turn when I began to spend more time working on the narrative aspect of it which is when I decided to focus on the narrative as the main component and add the interactive sign as a secondary element. 

• Process • How did you make this? 
  
  

A large sum of the process was dedicated to finding materials and assets for this archive as well as tracing the signs and converting them into font files. Another large part was dedicated to designing the pages and programming them and iterating on the progress. 

The biggest challenge I faced was probably juggling various different parts of the project at all times including designing, programming, researching, learning coding methods, etc. One surprising part that I did have a lot of trouble with was integrating the p5.js canvas into my project files. I definitely went through a lot of trial and error and found a way to incorporate it into my project pages but was mostly resolved with html and styling. 

• Audience/context 
  
  

This projectis intended for anyone who is interested in the history of the city, people who were patrons or owners of such small businesses, or someone who is interested in learning more about NYC small businesses. I think that the project offers the audience aspects of learning, interacting, and sharing their experiences as well. The one thing that I hope is that the audience can walk away either learning something new or experiencing a new perspective about the subject matter. 

• Code references 
  
  

I used a lot of code references for this project including projects by the Code Grid, simpleparallax.js, some pointstoText p5 examples, etc. 

• Next steps

Before my final thesis presentation, I hope to finish implementing changes on the rest of my pages, and adding a ‘learn more about how you can help NYC small businesses page’ as well as possibly add a server to the stories pages to store the stories that users share.