Responses by Overpx.

Background: Born in Gorizia, Italy, in 1942, and died in Obernai, France, 1997, Darko Bratina was a very important political figure on the Italian-Slovenian border. He fought for Slovenian minority rights in Italy for practically his entire life. He was also very passionate about cinema and taught sociology at different northern Italy universities. Darko’s life was very intense, and he left behind a lot of writings, newspaper articles and interviews.

The aim of the website is to represent all of this, creating a unique blend of the three most important parts of his heritage: Politics (Actions), Sociology (Visions) and Cinema (Passions). The website is for everyone who wants to study Darko Bratina’s thinking and activities, as well as for the curious who want to explore and learn something new about the history and culture of the Friuli region of Italy that borders Slovenia.

Design core: The unique navigation represents the whole concept of “Bratina’s world.” The floating dots are meant to be his thoughts and float around Darko’s signature. Linking to the content, these dots takes you to the three main categories: Actions, Passions and Visions. When you enter the category pages, you find the “floating” navigation dots again for the creative content view. This way, the core concept is maintained across the main pages and sections of the experience. When entering the category pages, you can also navigate the content in a standard list view; if the user is looking for something specific, the site presents an easy way to access it.

Favorite details: The general layout of the experience, which changes in every section of the website without losing coherence. The pencil effect visible when the pictures are loading. And the smoke effect visible on both the typography and the article picture when loading. Another nice touch we added almost at the end of the project is the blur effect on the content when visitors scroll through the category articles in the list view.

Challenges: Because all of Bratina’s life was dedicated to the preservation of the Slovenian minority living in Italy—along with its culture and traditions—the website had to maintain a bilingual feel throughout. We decided to keep Slovenian as the ever-present language: this decision meant having all the labeling and call to actions show two languages at the same time without losing a smooth and pleasant experience.

Technology: We built the website using Wordpress for the CMS. For the front-end part, we used PixiJS, barba.js and anime.js.