The Livingroom Candidate
web site

client
American Museum of the Moving Image

challenge
Every presidential election year the American Museum of the Moving Image has an exhibition to educate visitors about television advertising for presidential campaigns. For the 2004 election the museum decided to transfer the exhibition to the Web and create a more robust site that would allow the curators to continually update the show as new ads (both television and web-based) were released.

solution
Because the site is an online exhibition featuring video, the video player is the central focus of the site. From the moment the visitor enters the site he is exposed to video playback, immersing him in the experience of the exhibition. The visitor can easily navigate among the ads by choosing an election year, a type, or issue. He can also choose to view a selection of ads only available on the Web and presidential campaign related Web sites.

By accessing a robust database of ads, the player displays related commercials and allows visitors to jump to these ads or to read detailed curatorial commentary.

The site also includes a Guide for Teachers to help use the site as an educational tool in schools.

agency
Off Register