— Request for Proposals —

Alchemies of Scent
Reconstructing the Practices of Ancient Greco-Egyptian Perfumery:
An Experimental Approach to the History of Science

is soliciting proposals for the re-design of the project website.

Who We Are

We are a 5-year Junior Star Research Project funded by the Czech Science Foundation and hosted at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Our Mission Statement

Our mission is to bring back to life the lost art and science of perfume making in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. We publish innovative interdisciplinary research in top academic journals using experimental methods combined with rigorous historical and archaeological scholarship; we also teach the public about our research with interactive perfume-making workshops co-led by our team and professional perfumers and scent artists. Our academic readers learn about the complex role of perfume in the history of science, art, and culture, as well as about how new methods combining science and humanities research. Our public audience get to experience the past for themselves and learn about the ancient origins of many scents and products used today. Besides academics and scent enthusiasts, our audience includes historical enthusiasts, health care providers, and those interested in complementary approaches to well-being (aromatherapists, herbalists, etc.).

Vision and Plan for Growth

Our goal is to raise awareness through our website and social media over the next 6 months, to create a dynamic and active social media presence, to incorporate new visual designs, and to implement a schedule of project events. Increased awareness will let us get our research out to a wider audience, get information about our programmes out to the public, and attract an academic and public following that will increase opportunities for collaboration, funding, and international recognition.

Goals and Objectives for the Website Design

Our core areas are research and public outreach. For research, the site serves as a way of disseminating information about what we are doing, when, with whom, and what our results were (including text, image, video). For outreach, events calendar, galleries, and a signup protocol is central.

In both cases, our current site includes much of information we would like to merge into a new site. Our current site, hosted by Squarespace, also has features we are looking to retain: a responsive design and a simple, flexible interface for adding new content (blog posts, team member pages, updates, events, photos and videos).

We would need these features in the re-design. We would, however, like to move our content to an open access platform (e.g., WordPress) and to hose it on the Institute of Philosophy servers in order to ensure the project record remains online in perpetuity.

We also would like to integrate the new visual identity for the project, which is being created in parallel by a design team, into the site.

The goal is to merge the content we have with our new visual identity and host it on the Institute of Philosophy servers with a responsive, flexible design that allows us to add content easily (new staff members, new events, as well as news and blog posts), with a core set of pages:

  • Home

  • About

  • Contact

  • Job Postings

  • Research

  • Teaching

  • Project Team

  • Events

  • Signup

  • Contact

  • Impressum / appropriate recognition of funders

  • Privacy policy / disclosure pages

Wish List

Here are some nice-to-haves in order of priorities:

  • Multiple language options (English, Czech, with ability to add languages)

  • Social media integration

  • Blog / News with RSS

  • Publications and Press page

What Works and What Doesn’t with the Current Site

From focus group studies, our audiences love the minimalist, image- and photo- focused design. They also like that the site did not look typically ‘academic’. Audiences did not like that some sections of the site are repetitive. Some readers found the language still too academic. We want to keep focus on the visuals of the ancient images and our experiments, and we want to keep a vibrant feel that is both academic, but accessible and open to everyone.

Other sites we like

We like the many of the ideas and the vibrance of the Making and Knowing Project site (https://www.makingandknowing.org/) at Columbia University in New York, although we would like our site to have more open space. We like the simplicity and visual focus of Eidolon, although it is a blog. The Recipes Project is another blog whose visual style is closer to what we aim for. We want to avoid looking academic and avoid the clumsiness of most academic Content Management Systems. What has been very influential as a standard to strive for has been recent PBS Digital Studios content: Eons, SpaceTime; as well as independent content producers like Cody’sLab, NileRed and documentaries by Eugenio Monesma.

Current Website

Our exiting website: https://www.alchemiesofscent.org/

Crucially, our funders are mentioned in our “About Us” page. Our events page keeps past events up as well listing upcoming ones. This is needed so that the site serves as a record of what we have done over the projects’ run. Events allow export to ICS and integrate with G-Suite.

We use Google for email, docs, calendar; but we do not have a license for G-Suite. We will use coda for team / project management. FLU AV CR will provide hosting services. We own several domains hosted by namecheap and netim. We use Adobe CC for embedded fonts.

Current sitemap

https://www.alchemiesofscent.org/sitemap.xml

Budget

Maximum budget: 50,000 CZK

Evaluation Criteria

Innovative and responsive proposal, portfolio, cost, timeline

Delivery Date

1 June 2022

Proposals and Submission Deadline

Proposals should include the following:

  • Design Proposal, including sketch of site / visual sitemap

  • Financial Proposal

  • Timeline

  • Company overview / CV

  • Portfolio / Link to Portfolio

  • References / Testimonials

Please address proposals to Dr. Tereza Šímová and send to alchemiesofscent@flu.cas.cz by 14. February 2022.

If you have any questions, please write to Dr. Šímová.

Response Time

You can expect to hear a response back from us by 21. February 2022.



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Zdroj: Filosofický ústav AV ČR