The NAMES Project Foundation, sponsor of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, wanted to promote the 1996 display of the entire Quilt in Washington, DC, as well as their ongoing work in communities around the world. The overall goals for the site are to build awareness about the Quilt and the AIDS pandemic, to encourage action aimed at ending AIDS, and to demonstrate the richness and meaning of the quilt panels. Appropriately, The NAMES Project Foundation chose World AIDS Day, December 1, 1995 as the live date for phase 1 of the site.

1995

Participants:

Ann Canavan: Project Management
Nathan Shedroff: Creative Direction, Information Design, Visual Design, Production
Marsha Plat: Producer
Raoul Rickenberg: Interaction Design
Drue Miller: Information Design and HTML
Jeff Davis: Visual Design, Production
Chuck Gathard: HTML
Alisa Schulman: Event Planning
Anita Corona: Event Planning
Andy Hasse: Event Planning
Eric Forste: HTML and Programming
Pamela Gauci: Production Assistance

vivid approached The NAMES Project Foundation requesting the opportunity to design a website for the organization. vivid is proud to have utilized our technical and design know–how for a such great cause.

The website features a Gallery area with a rotating show of selected panels curated by different contributors to the project. The first of these gallery displays is appropriately the first twelve panels of the NAMES Project. The site also provides contacts for local and international NAMES Project chapters and affiliates, commentary from Foundation employees, statistical and educational information, as well as links to other online AIDS resources.

After the second phase of the project is complete, visitors will have the ability to add their own memories to any individual quilt panel via a form-based interface. Each panel will be, in effect, a non-threaded discussion, allowing text, pictures, sound and video to be added. vivid also implemented threaded discussion technology allowing an internal discussion area for the Foundation staff.

This website marks several firsts for vivid. It is the first non-profit project vivid has produced. It is also the first time vivid has taken on a major solo fundraising effort: vivid is raising money, as well as finding donors for the project (contact AnnD Canavan for information). In an effort to involve the multimedia industry and San Francisco community in the further development of the website, vivid coordinated a benefit to celebrate the site launch. The benefit, held December 7th at a San Francisco nightclub, is the result of donations and fundraising from the community, restaurants, retail outlets, etc.

This website also marks the first time a client site has affected the look of vivid’s site. On World AIDS Day, vivid shrouded its site with a black page to join in the international mourning for those whose lives were lost to AIDS. For 24 hours, all requests that came to the server were redirected to display this page.