Project Proposal

The Mexican Culture (Music/Dance and Cuisine)

For my Senior Project, I will be creating an interface design that will communicate the history of Mexico’s music/dance and cuisine. Being of Mexican heritage, I have experienced a lot of encounters with other people who are not familiar with the Mexican culture and will confuse certain types of music and food with other Latin American countries. Going off of that, my goal is to bring awareness of the authenticity of music/dance and food that Mexico should be known for.

The topics I will be covering are:

Traditional Music and Dance

Their History of Origin, Instrumentation, Performance, Attire, and the dance style

Mariachi

Banda

Norteño

Rancheras

Corridos

Cumbia

I would like to include my own personal graphic design for each genre, a musical example, and the dancing type. This would be through interface design, by having either links or buttons that would lead to a song recording or a video.

Cuisine

Barbacoa

Pozole

Menudo

Tamales

Carnitas

Flautas

Enchiladas

I will include a brief description of what they are, my own digital illustration of them, and the ingredients used. I will also include the history origin and influences of each cuisine dish. The idea is to familiarize the audience with authentic Mexican dishes as opposed to other Latin American dishes and “Americanized” Mexican dishes.

The design aspect of this project will include the interface design itself, which will be a website, only I have a different style of outline in mind. Rather than the typical outline, I was hoping to experiment with placement and transitions. I will also be including my own digital illustration for each topic. Voice over recordings was also something in mind to include in my interface design. I would record my voice explaining what each music or dish brings to the Mexican culture, rather than having the viewer read a long paragraph of text. A 5x5 scale is what I had in mind, but for printing, I would consider doing a larger scale around an 8x8. Because they would be around 14-15 illustrations, I think the scale would not exceed an 8x8.

The presentation of prints would be set up to where the information is typed out, and the prints would be placed next to them. I would then include the link to my interface design on each posted image/text.