I’m not entirely sure if this is public knowledge yet, but we’re close enough to the actual launch that I think I can make the announcement here (so my small readership might get a sneak peek). This week we’ve finally pushed one of my major MIT projects live: the new (and greatly improved) website for the Literature Section at MIT, lit.mit.edu.
I first started working on this project when I arrived at MIT last year, and while it was only supposed to be a part-time one-year RAship here (along with my work for C3), it wound up going through numerous revisions, reinventions and other snags along the way. Working with academics can often be like herding cats – getting the entire faculty of the literature section to agree on anything proved to be impossible, but at the end of the day I think we managed to create something that’s both very beautiful and extremely useful, as well as a platform upon which my successor, Belinda Yung, can build out a really amazing experience over the next couple of years.
I’d like to thank my close co-workers on the project here at MIT: Professor Shankar Raman was my closest conspirator, along with the head of the section Professor James Buzard and Professors Mary Fuller and Ruth Perry. Professsor Diana Henderson was a joy to work with, as always, as were Professor Wyn Kelley, Professor John Hildebidle, Professor Stephen Tapscott and Professor Sarah Brouillette. I had a great time working with almost the entire section, to be honest. Great folks with a passion for their work – usually a recipe for a fun project.
When this eventually makes its way into my portfolio, it’ll fall into both the ‘interactive’ and the pending ‘identity’ sections. The new LIT@MIT logo I designed, above, made its debut last year and has been trickling its way out across all of the section’s announcements and materials. It’s designed to feature multiple colors (as evidenced by the website) and be easily recognizable at a distance, with the ‘L’ shape of the pages echoing the L in ‘literature’, of course.
This evening I’ll be attending a LIT@MIT event as a photographer, as the section hosts Jamaica Kincaid for a guest lecture and reading. I’m looking forward to this – I greatly enjoyed Kincaid’s A Small Place as an undergrad and I seem to recall my Mom enjoying her copy of My Garden (Book). I’d like to think that the event was being held to celebrate the release of the website, but I know better. 🙂
After that, I’m rushing off to teach my second class this week, the Toy Design Workshop of my friend Barry Kudrowitz, where I’m co-lecturing with another of my friends (and old C3 colleague) Ilya Vedrashko. I’ll be speaking on transmedia storytelling (natch), and Ilya will be speaking on product design and branding (also natch) – the curious can get a sense of my talk by reading an essay I posted to this blog nearly three years ago, “On Toys and Transmedia Storytelling.” Rereading it now, it’s funny to see how my ideas both have and have not changed during my time here – if anything, my graduate school experience has honed and expanded my thoughts at the same time. Which, I suppose, is exactly what grad school is supposed to do.
Anyway, gotta run – still a ton left to do in the next couple of hours before the evening’s events. Enjoy the site!