GIALLO.us
GIALLO.us is a website dedicated to Italian thrillers. The main idea was conceived back in 2005. I was studying some of the great “Giallo” movies and the people behind them, when I thought it would be a good idea to make an informational website about the movies, music, and maestros of this wonderful little niche genre of cinema.
INCEPTION
That idea has spawned this website. GIALLO.us is An American Website Dedicated to Italian Thrillers. The site serves as a repository of information on giallo cinema. Articles about the films, music, directors, and composers are personally curated and tailored to provide an in-depth examination of the giallo genre. This site also provides a forum area to encourage a online community and discussion of all things pertaining to this certain sub-genre of Italian cinema now referred to all over the world simply as Giallo.
DESIGN
The visual style of the site is simple and bold. Its colors and layout are representative of the paperback books the genre itself was founded from. Since giallo was most popular during the 70’s & 80’s it seemed appropriate not to fancy it up too much with animations or ultra-neo font sets. Of course the simplicity of the design also facilitated its implementation.
Starting with a Photoshop mock-up to explore color schemes and layout blocking as well as initial creation of digital assets for the site. I then created a custom theme for Wordpress.
Taking the elements from those old book covers and applying them to a semi-modern web interface was a small creative challenge. But mostly the old typesetting layout migrated fairly well visually to a web page layout. The yellow, red, and blue sections comprise the main color scheme. The fonts were chosen to emulate those of the old pulp novels as well. This included the decision to keep the content and heading text plain and black, like old pulp literature.
STRUCTURE
The site has three main sections as well as a landing page. It's main purpose is as a blog site for movies, music, and masters of Giallo. It also has a news section for current information pertaining to giallo cinema. And it has a forum as a small social channel for members of the site to communicate with one another.
IMPLEMENTATION
GIALLO.us is built on the Wordpress framework. The visual style is a sub-template of the free Responsive theme. The forum runs on bbPress an extension or plug-in to allow for a simple forum section. Custom page templates and functional plug-ins were coded in PHP and JQuery as needed. Custom administration themes and plug-ins help maintain the visual themes throughout the site. All custom code is semantic and W3C compliant.
A MailChimp newsletter campaign has been set up for the site to provide periodic updates. Social media channels have been established, as well, allowing for more engagement with any would-be fans.
GIALLO.us can be experienced in all it's heart-pounding; nerve-pulsing; eye-exploding; magnificent glorious splendor, right here.