[16] Falco, E. Charmin' Cleary. 2000. <http://www.eastgate.com/Charmin/Welcome.html>  (aesthetic)

Text Menu




Charmin' Cleary tells an interwoven story from three viewpoints (hers, his, the other guy's). As does In The Changing Room [8], Charmin' Cleary uses consistent colors throughout the work to indicate who is speaking.

The anchors function in the same navigational manner throughout: the first paragraph to her story, the middle to his story, and the bottom to the other guy's. Once the scheme is understood, readers can manipulate which character line they will follow. Like Him [9], the anchors do not carry content--they are neither denotative nor connotative.

This work uses a single type of anchor--creating a uniform reading devoid of distractions such as deciding which anchor to chose. Rather, the reader choses by text. Like Reach [28] and Firefly [34], each section of text functions as a hidden anchor, negating any anchoral emphasis.

Incorrect assumptions

This uniform and non-distinguished navigation can foster beliefs about the anchors and potential navigation strategies that may not be true. Adeline Tan interviewed five readers of Charmin' Cleary [115, Section 4.1.2.1] . Her analysis revealed that:

"Color, although not multimedia itself, helped readers determine structure. In Charmin' Cleary, Lea felt that clicking on a red drop cap at the start of each paragraph would cause the story to run linearly. 'Lea: …I thought if I click on the first- the red color one, is…indication of the linear way to going about. If I want to read it linearly, so I should go about doing that.'"

As the intro screen has three anchors (Her Story, His Story, The Other Guys) with a color coded drop cap, it is easy to see where a reader might think other drop caps would be anchors that would lead to a more linear rendition of the story.

intro screen

Screenshot used by permission.
Home page

in her story Screenshot used by permission.
Content node

Here Lea has focused on the only part of the page that looks different, that may function as an anchor, and misses the idea that all of the text functions in the same manner as an anchor. Thus the invisible aesthetics may be misleading.