EPJ: Multimedia critique

November 11, 2011
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www.theglobalfund.org/accesstolife

Access to Life

In Access to Life, eight Magnum photographers portray people in nine countries around the world before and four months after they began antiretroviral treatment for AIDS.

When you come to this project the first time it automatically plays a kind of trailer which introduces the project in showing a significant picture for the nine people in different countries. Also it shows you the which photographer what story has done.
You can either skip this trailer or it connects you afterwards to an interactive map, so you can choose at which country you want to have a look at. When you hover over the country a little window will pop up and you can see a strong image with the name of the photographer and a story summary. So the user is not forced to look at all stories and can only pick regions where the strongest interest is lying.

Wherever your journey brings you, it loads very fast and the controlling is really easy and very understandable. What I also like is that the movie is only playing after it has buffered. So in a kind of way this forces you read a little bit about the story and get more access to it.

The Multimedia pieces itself is sometimes with video sometimes not. But there is always the typical music for the country and the voice of the person. The translation is at the buttom and not disturbing. I love the design because it is very calm and a family of grey colors is used but the green highlights the whole project.

I think for a project like this you have to use flash. Otherwise there has to be too many buttons and it is also very good for explaining in short and in chapters. So there is not a overdose of information at first sight. You are coming slowly into the project and it aroses the interest so much more. Also it is fun to play with it.
But if you don’t want to have the map, you can go to „stories“ and there they will appear in a row.

The audio, the design, the video and the pictures of course are great – it’s Magnum 😉