We jumped at the chance to contribute design to a fansite for The Prisoner, Patrick McGoohan’s seminal 60’s era TV show. It was a rare opportunity to work with a property rich with dynamic visual assets.
Considered by many to be television’s first great masterpiece, The Prisoner has inspired a wealth of tributes and fansites. Many offer insight into the show’s core themes and cryptic metaphor, borrowing from its distinctive visual vocabulary to create an environment familiar to fans. Despite this charted territory, we still saw opportunity to leverage our digital toolset to create something unique, interactive and worthy of the original.
Much of The Prisoner’s lasting impression results from the series’ powerful graphic sensibility. Colour, motif and typography played key roles in realizing The Village, the show’s mysterious and surreal setting. In designing the site, we used these to inspire a contemporary design. The strongest contribution to this updated vocabulary comes from David Graham White, whose photography captures Portmeirion, the show’s real-world filming location, in unparalleled detail.
Primarily a Flash-build, the site offers a development platform supportive of content-specific user-interface and visual modelling. We have accurately described The Village environment, key events and visual assets through a series of tactile interactive models. By granting visitors control of these, we hope to make the process of exploration memorable and entertaining.
