We took over the project of digitising a piece of work by Michael Pennie called ‘Making and Teaching or How I Became Such a Peculiar Person’. The essence of this website was in creating a sense of the original piece – a set of chapters and other objects in a beautiful box – without relying heavily on skeuomorphic concepts. We wanted the digital work to have the same sensibilities as the original rather than look like the original as such.
This meant breaking some UX rules and creating something slightly cumbersome. We leaf through the different chapters browsing for what captures our interest before opening one. We may lose chapters as we move through them as we might emptying the original box out while sat on the sofa. We also cheated needed to provide a quicker way of finding content, to reflect this site going beyond; as a reference site or as support to the original piece.