Iconography - Somerset Art Week

Somerset Art Week

Somerset Art Week, Exmoor Treasure Hunt

Mini-site and CD-Rom with interactive games and puzzles.

Background

Art Week is the largest visual arts event in Somerset. Open studios, special events and exhibitions are held throughout the county to provide a unique opportunity for people to meet artists and see their work. The two-week festival has been running every other year since September 1994. Amongst the various SAW projects was the Exmoor Treasure Hunt. This project was inspired by and developed from a series of workshops with young people in Exmoor woodlands as part of a Landmarks artist residency on Exmoor.

The brief

Our client wanted a professional web design to encourage people to visit Exmoor and take part in the real-life treasure hunt. They had clear ideas about what they wanted to achieve but didn't have the technical skills to make it a reality. Our brief was to create a mini-site on the Somerset Art Week Website that included an interactive "game" containing puzzles and information about Exmoor. SAW also wanted a product that could be delivered both on the Web and on CD-Rom.

The solution

Artists from SAW and local young people worked together to obtain information and photographs during a visit to Exmoor. This source material and ideas were then given to Iconography to work with. Iconography worked closely with the client to ensure their product looked and worked exactly how they imagined it.

The chosen medium for the project was Macromedia Director as it allowed us to create content that was suitable for both CD-Rom and the Web. The game had to be rich in multimedia for the CD-Rom but still had to be small and efficient enough for downloading from the Internet.

The finished mini-site included 8 puzzles that the user had to work through in order to complete the "virtual" treasure hunt. When the game was finished, users were encouraged to feedback information via an online questionnaire that also entered them into a prize draw. Users could also download information and maps for the real-life treasure hunt.