You may not know this but I have an archive of old mazes that are unlinked from the website. If you don’t know what that means - it means there is no menu option to reach the archive. It includes old pages that were not very popular on the site but still had traffic and so I keep them around. If you click on a search that includes them you can reach the archive or if I give you the link like above. Today’s maze of the Museum of the North in Alaska is part of the archive. The maze is ok. But, as I have found out, people don’t care about mazes of buildings, signs and locations unless they are famous. So I think I did a good job on it, but even if I did a great job….eh. I decided to improve it anyway. It’s good practice. I enjoy the process. This post will be read more than the maze will be sought out. Here is the original post:
Maze of the Week #3 - The University of Alaska Museum of the North
So my MOTW#3 becomes the 3rd maze of the year again 3 years later and officially MOTW #160.
Here are the enhancements I made to improve the maze:
1. Changed the Start/Goal. I changed them from arrows to an internal written Start and Goal.
2. Changed the size. I reduced the height reduced from 8 inches to 5.5 to eliminate empty space, which reduced the lawn and the sky size as a result.
3. Changed the title. The title was reduced from 42 to 28 size, which allowed me to put the title on one line. Then I added the location below.
4. Added textures. I textured the lawn, the walkway/parking lot and the background trees.
5. Added shadows. I added shadows to the front building nook, on the left side of the building, and around/onto the front windows.
6. Fixed the windows. The window panels on the front of the building were fixed (were showing incorrectly in original maze). Minor, but it needed done.
7. Changed outlines. I switched front lawn outline to none (there is no longer a black border for the lawn) and the background trees to no outline. This makes them read more green than green with black outlines.
Let’s see the before and after:
I don’t know quite how to express this, but the end result was minimal changes, but it looks so much better. It looks the same…but at the same time…..not the same at all.
Some data: The new file is 471MB from 49MB.
I will be replacing the archive with the new maze going forward. You can find the maze download there (if you can find the archive) !
If you like this type of content check out all of my case studies:
A Collection of Maze Design Case Studies to Improve your Mazes
Happy maze-ing !