Curious Curia Web Design
View the live site here: https://curiouscuria.netlify.app
Curious Curia goal was created as a website with a singular goal: to make Classical and archaeological education interesting and accessible to anyone who wishes to study it, but especially to those belonging to underserved and underprivileged groups in Classics in the US. At its core, the discipline of archaeology consists of telling the stories of marginalized peoples in ancient societies through the material culture that they left behind; these are the average working class everyday people of the ancient Classical world who didn’t have access to the education or resources to record their histories via epic literature, architecture, or public artworks. Any field of study, especially historical ones, benefits from the addition of multiple perspectives and viewpoints, and Classical Archaeology is sorely lacking in this way. To help accomplish this, this website will introduce prospective students to a broad overview of the study of Classics, archaeology, and how both relate to our modern world. There will be discussions about specific examples of how diverse the Roman world truly was at the peak of its empire, not because the Romans simply “conquered” peoples, but because of how they incorporated other cultures into their own pantheon and allowed them to keep their local government structure. There will also be sections of the website that are dedicated to fundraising to install extra-curricular Classics and archaeological education programs in high schools in under-served communities, as well as local chapters based at community colleges around the country so students can explore and adequately prepare for higher educational options in Classics including courses in Archaeology, Latin, ancient Greek, and the history of Classical civilizations.
During my preliminary research, I discovered that the American national average of underrepresented groups who study Classics at the graduate level is 3% as of 2014. I also discovered that the barriers to studying Classics in higher education are somewhat changing, at least at Princeton. What was a huge barrier to me to enter into a Classical Archaeology graduate program is starting to be broken down: an advanced reading knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin were a hard requirement for applying to these programs, even in disciplines that did not pour over ancient texts in the same way as others, such as archaeology. As a community college student transfer, AACC did not provide Latin or ancient Greek courses (understandably), and so I only had two years of Latin when I finished my undergraduate degree, which left me short of any ancient Greek, contrary to my peers who came to the four-year university as freshmen. I couldn’t afford a post-baccalaureate program to augment my language skills, and there was little to no financial aid available for these programs. Graduate school was financially out of reach for me because of this. Princeton is starting to admit students (who are not studying these languages directly in Classics) without this hard requirement. I believe this will widen the perspectives brought to this field by breaking down antiquated barriers to the study of Classics that have been sorely needed for a long time. It will allow for students from lower income, working class backgrounds who may have entered on their path to Classics in an atypical, non-linear fashion to offer their insight into the ancient world. Most programs are still not like this, however, and that is what my website will aim to mitigate in the aspiring Classicists’ academic career. I believe this will naturally allow for a more diverse group of academics to enter the field.
My intended audience are high school and early college-age students from underserved and underprivileged backgrounds who are curious about the field and the Classics in general. Through the use of a color palette based in earthy, natural hues and old-world-yet-modern typefaces, I hope to appeal to this younger demographic to pique interest in Classical studies. I would like my brand image to reflect the notion of a strict departure from the guarded an exclusive "Ivory Tower" of Classical academia, and to offer a more down-to-earth, pragmatic view of Classics while still maintaining subtle elements of Classical design and artwork.
I created a preliminary site map to get a sense for how the information architecture of Curious Curia might pan out; the final product had a few less pages, as once I dove headfirst into building the website, I found that my original idea was quite an ambitious one! I scaled back and focused in on what I thought the most important goal for Curious Curia was: my original idea to offer monetary assistance to underprivileged students, and so I eliminated the Scholarship, Field School, and Interactive Dig listings, and augmented my Donate page. I also changed some of the wording in the navigation a bit to be better calls-to-action: instead of "Get Involved", I changed the wording to "Donate," and my "What are Classics?" page is now just "Learn." Lastly, I switched "About Us" to just "About," as the extra verbiage seemed unnecessary.
I then roughly sketched a few low-fidelity wireframes to get a sense of how the information and the photos might be laid out. I didn't want huge walls of text from page to page; I wanted the website to be visually stunning as well as informational, to allow the archaeology of the ancient world to speak for itself through large, full- and half-page photos.
My color palette is based in hues of natural, earthy tones, to echo the stratigraphy of soil: warm brown, beige, burnt sienna, and red clay, and this palette is also reminiscent of the colors of the abstracted, figural characters found on red-figure and black-figure Greek pottery, which are very recognizable even to those who aren’t familiar with Classical material culture.
My typeface choices are rooted in both appealing to a younger audience while also maintaining an ancient, old world aesthetic; I wanted the type to feel authentic, while also maintaining the idea that Curious Curia is meant to be an inviting, inclusive place for all demographics to learn about the fascinating material culture of the ancient world.
I wanted to create an image that inspired and spoke to the study of Classics in a broader sense, and I couldn't get the image of one of the most iconic pieces of Classical Art out of my head: the Winged Nike of Samothrace. Possibly my favorite work of Greek sculpture, the Nike, or "Victory," originally stood on the Greek island of Samothrace as a votive offering to the Gods for a naval victory. In the context of Curious Curia, I wanted it to represent a victory in one's academic career; whether it's a victory in the sense that one received the funding they needed to enter into their program of choice, or learned something new from the website, I felt that the image of Nike alighting on the prow of a ship was the perfect emblem to use through the site, and so I carefully sketched her outline in Illustrator and iterated versions of her in my color palette and with various brush types.
Classical Archaeology is one of my favorite subjects, and so it was truly a pleasure to design, build, and create Curious Curia. While the site itself is not functional in the sense that users can actually donate or receive funds, it can still function statically as an educational resource for anyone who wishes to learn about the Classical world.
