Utsav is an experimental web-publication that employs a non-linear narrative structure inspired from the Indian art form of 'Pattachitra'. It presents all themes and sub-topics related to a larger topic on the screen at once, giving the user the choice to scroll into and move around each of them independently and create their own hierarchy in the narrative. The primary impetus for this project was my intention to prove that traditional storytelling forms can be successfully used as methodologies to make interesting and alternative design for the web. The starting point for structural explorations was examining the existing digital formats. Regular websites are a linear reading experience. To shift this reading experience to a non-linear one, the structural base I chose was the Pattachitra format from Indian storytelling. Here, structurally, the webpage is divided into multiple panels that would be filled with different forms of content. To enable the user to have control over the grid, sizes of the gird panels were made changeable. An evolution of the same concept was to make the grid panels re-positionable as well as re-sizable; the user can click into the panels and drag them around on the webpage to place them wherever he wished. This project establishes that traditional storytelling forms can be successfully used as methodologies to make interesting and alternative design for content on the web. It displayed, an active dialogue between the technology/medium I was designing for and the formats that I used as my conceptual base. Here the designer merely created a framework or system within which the actual point of interest came with the interaction of the user; thus, the design was not complete unless the user interacted with it, which created an interesting relationship between designer, content, and reader.

gandhar.vamburkar@gmail.com

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