When creating this website and seeking advice from Dr. Vander Zee, he constantly used the word “idiosyncratic” to describe my website. I believe this to be very fitting not only to my website but also to my brain. This website is, in all honesty, my brainchild. It was made from scratch and pushed me to balance the chaos with the organization required for a website. In designing this, I wanted my cat and stark contrasts to be a motif throughout. It reflects not only what I like to wear (bright pink! and black!) but also the things I enjoy (baby cats!). Furthermore, I wanted the buttons and links to be overly on-the-nose as a sort of fourth-wall break as the website designer. My website should read like I, Peyton, am talking to you, the website viewer, about my interests face-to-face. I tonally shifted when displaying my artifacts, however, to show that this is not just a silly website, but a display of the academic research/work I have engaged in during my undergraduate career.
In choosing artifacts, I balanced my two majors: English and International Studies. I adapted research used from both of these subjects and made it more palatable for a general audience as opposed to a professor who is highly interested in the subject as well. For my English research, this meant making the pages visually stimulating and adapting the format of the pieces to either read like an article or as a visualization of the main points of my arguments. I, too, had to consider that not everyone has read every Jane Austen novel or deleved deeply in Victorian lit. For International Studies research, this meant making my work into a New York Times-esque piece with LOTS of links to entrench the reader not only in my point but lots of information regarding the current state of the issues I discuss. When working with the International Studies pieces, I wanted the backgrounds to be less visually stimulating and perhaps more serious, due to their sensitive subjects. Talking about Jane Austen’s heroines allows for bright colors, but Vietnamese refugee studies certainly do not.
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