Smithsonian Selects Charlotte Firms for Online Archive Design Project CHARLOTTE . NC . 04.05.05 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Smithsonian Archives of American Art (AAA) has contracted Stafford.Tisdale to design a new AAA website. The project, a collaborative with M15 Media and SuttonSoft, will consist of the redesign and restructuring of a massive online collection comprised of thousands of items of art. This project will focus heavily in the realm of usability to accommodate the 50,000 visitors a day that visit the site to browse the art as well as the historical media that backs the work up. David Tisdale, Stafford.Tisdale Principal and Creative Director, said "It is a very interesting and unique project for us. A strict attention to information design is required because there is so much material within the existing site. For example, selections from Jackson Pollock's work is included within the archives but, in complete separate collections, are photos of his youth on his parents' farm, and a scan of his passport from 1955. The challenge is to connect these associations so a user can digitally acquire all of the material more easily than they could in the physical world." The Archives of American Art, founded fifty years ago, and part of the Smithsonian Institution since 1970, annually provides several thousand researchers worldwide with access to the largest collection of materials documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States from the eighteenth century to the present. Now totaling over 14,000 linear feet -- approximately 15 million items – the collections include letters and diaries of artists and collectors; manuscripts of critics and scholars; business and financial records of museums, galleries, and schools; photographs of art-world figures and events; sketches and sketchbooks; rare printed materials; motion picture film and video documentation; and nearly 2,000 oral history interviews. AAA launched its website in 1997 and has steadily been digitizing photographs, letters, sketches and other art work, publications, diaries, and other types of documents, and oral history interview transcripts for display and basic searching on its website. These efforts have resulted in approximately 12 million web users annually who currently connect to the Archives’ website. The design of new "Guides" is part of the Smithsonian's ongoing effort to develop and standardize a framework for the Archives' web-based collections. {Visit current Smithsonian Archives of American Art} . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stafford.Tisdale is a design house delivering web, print, and special media. We produce creative solutions with muscle. On point. On time. www.staffordtisdale.com / © 2005 Stafford.Tisdale