Barackas.com Design Rationale (Behind the Scenes of a Personal Project)

To those of you who follow this blog, you may remember that about a week ago I hinted at the release of a new personal project of mine. I also recently released an article about starting you own personal design project, and some of the benefits of doing so. Well, after a couple of more days than I would have wanted (due to real client work of course) I am finally able to reveal my latest project, Barackas.com. In an effort to share this project I am so proud of I am going to take some time to discuss the project and my design choices.

In honesty I cannot take credit for the idea itself (that belong to the collective power of my partners on this project) however I did develop the project and make a majority of the creative and technical decisions that I would like to discuss.

About the Art Direction
Early on in the process I knew that this was going to be an insanely fun project to work on. First off, the vernacular that is present within political sites and promotional materials allowed me to repurpose them in a way that is both whimsical and mildly humorous. Inspiration was taken from the kings of political humor JibJab.com for the flash animation which helps to showcase the product. Finally, the logotype was developed to further enhance the whimsical nature of the product through the rotated letters and type selection (American Typewriter).

About the Technology
When we set out to do this project it was more important to us that this thing spread around the web and garner some sort of attention. Because of this we chose to integrate tools that are normally found on much larger and longer developed sites. Even though Barackas.com is only a single page site we integrated the Scriptmills Comment Script to allow users to post their comments without increasing development time (and it was extremely easy to customize). Finally we integrated some social network tools in an effort to make the sharing of the site more user friendly and a quicker process.

Let me know what you think…
I have had a great time completing this project and the fun of exploring design and entrepreneurship at the same time was extremely empowering. If you would like to give me some feedback on my design or the project itself feel free to post in the comments below.

Finally, if you would like to help us in our goal of having this site make its way around the web please visit barackas.com and digg it or submit it you your social network of choice!