"Beyond being a valuable online resource, the AIGA archive displays a clean and clear approach to interaction and usability that never distracts from the work it was designed to feature." —juror Jonathan Hills
"It’s a complete joy to have an archive of this size (365 juried competitions!) and detail online. It’s also fitting that the design is so well executed. It’s clean and consistent and gives both detailed written information as well as the ability to really investigate each project via the zooming functionality." —juror Melissa Haworth
Overview: Developed to accommodate years of ongoing additions, the AIGA Design Archives are a record of the association's annual juried selections of design excellence. As a result, the site provides broad accessibility to an extensive collection of contemporary design for research and reference.
• 2,816 images as of May 2005
• Image magnification delivered by Zoomify
• Lightbox feature allows for collection and organization of images
Comments by Jeremy Clark:
"We set out to create a site that’s intuitive and approachable for its target audience, yet feature-rich and highly usable at the same time. One thing that we're particularly proud of is the way that the site scales gracefully depending on the size of the user's browser—designers with dual 30" Apple displays will be loving life!
"One challenging aspect of this site was getting Google to index all of our non-Flash proxy pages in such a way that all of the details of each record are exposed and searchable, without resorting to any stunts that would get us booted.
"As we were essentially tasked with devising a digital replacement for a printed design annual, we wanted to maintain a visual navigation for visitors to view and browse winning records. We achieved this with crops and persistent navigation that encourages exploration.
"One of our favorite features is one that may not be overly obvious: While viewing the credits for any given record, if the person is connected with any other winning entry, their name will cross-link to show the other records. It's fun to observe the connections between works that span several years in the archive."
