If you’ve visited the DargonZine Web page yet, you’ve experienced our design aesthetic firsthand. While the Web gives us the ability to really go nuts with our graphic presentation, we’ve gone with a very basic parchment design with sparse graphics.
We’ve done this for a few reasons. One of our principles was to make the site both usable and appealling, even over a 14.4 Kb modem line. We’ve accomplished this by using images sparsely, using them repeatedly (to take advantage of local caching), and designing our graphics to take up minimal storage space. Another principle is simplicity — our use of black text on a parchment background maximizes readibility, without sacrificing the medieval “feel” of the presentation. We’ll leave the funky, hard-to-read, graphically intense design to others.
Which brings me to our most important principle. The Dargon Project is all about text, and those of us who write for the magazine are very focused on its textual contents. The fact that the site is visually appealling is due in great part to one or two of our writers (most notably, Carlo Samson and myself) contributing even more of their free time. But although spending hours developing slick graphics for the Web site may be fun, it’s also a distraction from our real job: writing stories.
And so we’re putting the word out that we need graphic artists who are willing to volunteer their work to be used on the Web site. Typical work would include illustrations for stories and the rest of the site (browse around to see examples of what we’ve done so far). If you are interested, or know someone who might be, please drop me email at <dargon@shore.net>.
Since day one, back in late 1984, this magazine has survived and prospered because of the contributions of its readers. It’d be really great to have someone step up and help us make the magazine that much better than it is today.
This issue could well be subtitled “DargonZine 9-2, Part 2”, since all the stories are second chapters to storylines which were begun in our last issue. So I’d encourage you to go back and read DargonZine 9-2, if you haven’t already. Here’s a quick reminder…
In Dan Granata’s “Intentions”, Balor the entertainer arrived in Dargon and was reunited with his childhood friend, Dalis.
Dafydd’s “Shadowstone” series brought an unexplained fateful mission to a thief named Chandras, leaving him trailing the victors in a battle between his brigand friends and an unknown group of horsemen.
And we continue to learn more about the main characters in Mark Murray’s series: Raphael, a jaded wanderer, and Megan, his seemingly catatonic charge.
As ever, feedback is welcome, keep spreading the word, and thanks for your continued interest!
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