Website:

The Mermaid's Tale Tavern

Client:

Thomas Treadwell

This website was created while I was a Community Leader on America Online.

The primary challenge was to create a look and feel that hearkened back to the late Renaissance, but also took best advantage of the digital medium during the exciting period of growth when 28.8 and 56 k modems were standard.

We needed a site that loaded quickly, looked phenomenal, worked with the quirks of AOL, and was compatible with many other browsers and platforms.

Period woodcuts, custom illustrations and a historical letterpress-style font were used to create the period look and feel.

Most challenging was the creation of a custom resizeable table that gave the illusion of ragged edges on all four sides.

Irregular edges are a common feature of many websites today, but it was quite a feat to make 100% cross-platform and cross-browser commutable at the time, particularly with AOL's weak default browser.

Roles and responsibilities:

• Art Direction
• Logo design
• Graphic design
• Illustration
• HTML template creation

Website text was provided by Thomas Treadwell.

Design features:

• Sophisticated HTML Tables
• Transparent GIFs
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
• Tiled background texture
• Javascript pulldown menu