The Charles H Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, Michigan contracted Magian Design Studio to provide Magian's MMaPS Content Management System for the storage and management of the Wright Museum's digital image, video and other collections.

Magian subsequently extended the MMaPS capabilities to include the system's publishing functionality to produce the Underground Railroad: The Struggle Against Slavery online project.

The Wright Museum's Underground Railroad: The Struggle Against Slavery website places particular emphasis on Detroit, Michigan, and the Midwest and illuminates the Underground Railroad from a national as well as a Canadian perspective. The website is designed to cater for all ages. From the website's Home page users can locate encyclopedia entries, media resources such video interviews with descendants of abolitionists and freedom seekers, and educational resources for an Underground Railroad online course.

The Underground Railroad: The Struggle Against Slavery presents history through a mosaic of the lives, communities, organizations, events, and places that made this unique freedom-seeking network possible.

The website [www.ugrronline.org] provides users with comprehensive and high quality information about this significant period in African American history. In addition to numerous iconic photographs and other art, many images included in the project have rarely been seen before.

Magian worked closely with key Wright staff to design and organise the content for the Underground Railroad website, in ways that provide appropriate interfaces for online users as well as students enrolled in the twelve part online Underground Railroad course.

Magian designed the user interface to provide sympathetic visual support suited to the nature of the resources being displayed. For the most part the images, sketches and photographs are monochrome, quiet and subtle and the gentle color palette of the interface allows the content images to retain their integrity. Magian also provided technical design and development, production and implementation services.

An interactive exhibit touchscreen program for the Museum's African American history permanent exhibits was also developed to support The Underground Railroad: The Struggle Against Slavery website. Both aspects of this project were implemented using the MMaPS Content Manager.

Project:

Underground Railroad: The Struggle Against Slavery Website
Charles H Wright Museum of African American History

Location

Detroit MI, USA