Twin Cities Lakes and Their Stories

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twin Cities Lakes and Their Stories
College assignment: local focus, retro style

For an assignment on a local theme I opted to use the popularity of Twin Cities' recreational lakes to introduce residents to the stories and changing names over history, and through them , a wider understanding of the regeon's general hsitory and geology. taking my visual cue from pre-World War I postcards. Each lake would include information about current recreational options, depths and physical specific, as well as the history and source of it's name and historical occurrences associated with it.

The intent is for it to be amusing for quick browsing, yet reward deeper exploration through additional articles on relevant historic figures and events, as well as the forces that brought them (both American Indians and Euro-Americans) to this area.

The two-column layout would be accomplished by adjacent <divs>, with side padding to establish the gutter. General and recreational information would occupy the left column, while historical information would be to the right. The lake maps would reside in the background, with transparent .gif bars set to <clear="right"> and <clear="left"> establishing the run-around within the columns. It is intended that current recreational activities will be represented on the maps with retro pre-WWI style icons with the possibility of pop-up labels. I wanted to implement the run-around iin a way that even fairly early browsers could handle.