Interactive Identities
By Paul Dempsey
At Dickinson College, we recently adopted a new visual identity, including a redesigned logo. I was given the task of building a Web site to introduce this identity to students, faculty, and other interested parties. In addition to putting up some sample images and an explanation of the new system, I figured I'd have some fun with the logo.
If you've been doing this for four or five years, you may remember when the Web was a little less serious and sites were a lot more entertaining. Rather than just toss the logo online, I decided to work it into some JavaScript games. The games would not only enliven an otherwise static site, but also help visitors understand and remember the details of the new logo by letting them interact with it.
Both games are available at www.dickinson.edu/logo. The first game is based on part of the new identity system that requires the logo to appear in only one of six different colors (red, blue, green, yellow, orange, and purple). Logo matching is a memory exercise in which players try to pair logos of the same color by peeking under two tiles at a time (see
Figure 1). If the logos under the two tiles are the same color, the player has made a match and continues peeking under tiles until he or she matches all the logos.
I thought of the second game after my son brought a toy home from a museum gift shop. It was a plastic square with a picture divided into three rows and three columns.
