One Hundred Years of Solitude

Design Process

The first step for constructing the website was to search for information on both the book and the author. This first step is essential to obtain inspiration and create a link between the book and the web page. The second step was to create a page without using images, which means that the colour and the type were the main elements to build the website.

Choosing colour

The narrative of these stories is set in a small town in Colombia. These towns have a particular style influenced by the Spanish conquest at that time; They are colonial houses surrounded by lots of nature. The green colour is the representative colour of nature, which is why this web page's chromatic range is of various shades of green and yellow. One of the positive characteristics of choosing these colours is that they are analogous; they are next to each other on the colour wheel.

This novel's central theme is loneliness and how its characters evade their reality. A bullet point that I want to highlight during this project is the feeling of loneliness, so the leading tone is a cold shade of green. On the website, you can see small touches of colour; these touches of colour refer to the magical realism genre of this novel. The colours change on the web page to mark a difference between the main page where the text is found and the sub-pages where other information is found. However, they do not keep consistent because the purpose is for the reader to notice the difference between the novel's text writing and the website's informative text.

Choosing typefaces

Typography is essential for a web page, not only as a decorative method but it is also vital as a user experience. When creating a web page with a large body of text, it is essential that the reading be harmonious and satisfactory for the reader. The body text of this web page is selected with a Serif font because it helps with readability and is therefore preferable in the body of a book. The spaces between the lines and the size of the letter are also important. We cannot forget the paragraphs' length in words and lines. If the sections are very long, it is tedious for the reader to continue reading.

One of the most significant difficulties during this project is that designing for a publisher is not the same as creating a web page. Titles such as h1, h2 and h3 are designed with specific typography, which helps us set in the novel environment. This font was selected for its details and because it inspires me of the letters written in the past with pen and ink. Those letters were usually written in italics. Still, this typographical style is more difficult to read. The use of italics is only added to small paragraphs that are important to highlight, for example, quotes.

One of the corrections I have made for the project is the hierarchy of the titles and the contrast between the typography and the colour for a better user experience. Finally, we must talk about the most critical thing, backup fonts. Backup fonts are essential for not breaking the web page's layout. Our web page must also adapt correctly to small screens since many users use intelligent phones daily to browse the web; this is a challenge that I still need to improve.