Dan and I also talked about old video games—those great early arcade and Atari games like Tempest, Star Wars and Asteroids, specifically games that attempted to create 3-dimentional space using vector lines.

I was thinking of the target audience, aged 18 to 25, and how to hook them into a Canadian history site. I wanted to use the "dated" look of these classic games. It was a way of evoking the notion of history on a visceral level: get at those nostalgic sentiments that are stirred up when we are reminded of an old technology that was dear to us.

It was all kind of subliminal, but by using these references and their connected aesthetics to drive the design we were able to come up with a creative, "cool" and original look for a site on Canadian history. Below is a slide show of a few storyboards from several stages in the design process.