Finding Your Way Around
The site’s been redesigned... getting the hang of the lay of the land now is to imagine six satellites orbiting a hub... the satellites being described are the WebOutpost, EdgeCity, Portfolio, Sound/Vision, theDrawingBoard and theScroll... what you’ll find within each of these is elaborated on below.
The idea behind breaking the site up this way, more modular with independent portals, was that we didn’t want to be constrained to the same design and interface across the entire site as we always have in the past, which also ends up cumbersome to maintain. This time around we have theHub... plus overview pages for each of the six satellites. These overview pages can be considered gateways to the remote outposts of the site... which leads us to the theory and function of the Concierge.
The Concierge Concept
We don’t want you frustrated by the sites design changing as you jump from Satellite to Satellite amongst the many different ‘neighborhoods’... we felt the need for a consistent presence, a Guide so to speak, and from that notion, the Concierge was born...
The Concierge at optiflux.com goes by the name Elroy Fulton... The incorrigible and puckish ringmaster to query for the who, what, where, when and how around here... He’s your tour guide, your deus ex machina if the situation arises... at very least, some company when you’re feeling dazed or confused here on the Hub as well as out on the Satellites... summon him whenever the need arises...
The question of the Concierge is not so much answered by what you see here now... but rather what’s envisioned for our man Elroy in the future... He’ll be realized as a four-dimensional avatar that appears when summoned, no matter where you’re at on the Hub or across any of the Satellites. He’ll be wired into an ever-updating database of news, feeds, suggestions, info and answers... as well as the occasional proclamation...
So, to put it simply... whenever you see a link, icon or other representation of the Concierge... click it if you’d like a bit of help understanding the section you’re in... images, diagrams, instructions, suggestions, etc...
Credit where credit is due, the image we’re using to temporarily illustrate Elroy (above), was derived from the software packaging art from a now defunct competitor to Macromedia Director back in the 90’s called mTropolis. The best part of that software for us ended up being the beautifully designed packaging... as for the rest of it, that’s $4000 we’ll never see again.
Understanding the Hub
The Hub was born from necessity. The problem was that the scope of this site, how we imagine it finished, is so sprawling... to completely develop it offline was unrealistic and has contributed to much of the procrastination that has kept this revision from seeing the light of day up until now.
So we changed gears... decided to build the site in real-time... online. But in order to make the process cohesive and keep the site useful during construction, we needed an initial offering that charted an overview of where things were heading... from this, the idea of the Hub was born.
The Hub has two main functions;
First, every community needs a town square, a central place to meet for the news of the many. The Hub is such a place... It also provides a landmark you can always return to if you start to feel lost and are in need of hitting the reset button...
Second, as a jumping off point... links to the Satellite Sites run horizontally below the masthead and currently lead to overviews of what’s to come. As these disparate sections of optiflux.com go live, links will be updated away from the overviews and towards the new construction.
Another feature of the Hub are the right-side columns. The Hub itself has two such columns, the overview pages have one. These columns are home to a rotating set of links both internal to optiflux.com as well as external links to stimulating web wizardry that exists under Strong Coffee and the Links Archive...
The design or graphic conventions of the Hub are intended to be utilitarian... easy to read, illustrations as simple floats, links to information that will further enhance... the design will evolve and improve over time, but keeping it simple now ensures we won’t get bogged down in details and things will continue to move towards a complete site.
Visit Our Satellites
If theHub is the town square, then the Satellites are the neighborhoods... and just like any urban center, each has its own flavor and personality. Style changes, interfaces change, navigation and intent change as well. For the time being, overviews have been put in place to track and index development... links to the satellites are up above, running along the bottom edge of the masthead.
WebOutpost : The WebOutpost has been a part of optiflux.com since the beginning... it has always served as a catch all satellite for the site, playing host to sites affiliated with optiflux.com but not necessarily directly related... although here in this Revision 4 of the Outpost, the Links Archive, part of optiflux.com proper will be housed here.
EdgeCity : EdgeCity is a bit difficult to summarize. In essence it’s a prototype for both a virtual and a physical community simultaneously. Encompassing architecture, character design, 3d modeling and animation and advanced web interfaces, the centerpiece is a structure simply called theArk. Visit the overview for a longer description of things.
Sound/Vision : Sound and Vision would primarily be considered a laboratory of experimentation... many audio and video ideas end up resulting in either a single film or a single audio file. This section of the site will serve to catalog and archive these projects. This section will also serve as home for the many songwriting collaborations that have always been a part of Optiflux over the last decade plus as well as those still to come.
Portfolio : The internal debate over what the Portfolio section will end up becoming is ongoing... but in the meantime, current projects hot off the presses will be posting to this overview section to illustrate what we do, as we do it... In the end, the Portfolio will be its own independent section of the site... The trick is amassing the best of the best and coming up with an interface that presents things in the best possible light. Development continues...
theScroll : theScroll is one of two Optiflux authored blogs. The blog currently up and running is the show site for the radio show Optiflux participates in on WGN late Wednesday nights... That site is focused on Macintoshes, culture and technology and can be found here or under the WebOutpost menu above. theScroll on the other hand is a blog envisioned with an anything goes format linked directly here to the Hub... so we’re looking forward to getting going on that sho’nuff.
theDrawingBoard : theDrawingBoard is our password protected client area which we use as a home for our design projects to evolve from start to finish... although the interface is currently being redesigned... the concept of theDrawingBoard is one we’ve been using for years with great success. Hire us and find out!
