AIDS Quilt Now on the Web

by Gary Brickman

As part of the observance of World AIDS Day, on which victims of the disease are remembered, vivid studios of San Francisco has unveiled a site based on the AIDS Quilt.

The AIDS Quilt Website, at http://www.aidsquilt.org, is an electronic version of the 20-acre long cloth memorial created by the NAMES Project, a San Francisco-based anti-AIDS advocacy group. vivid is a web design firm known for designing sites for Microsoft, Sony and the Bank of America.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is a collection of some 32,000 cloth panels, each one sewn by friends or loved ones of people who have died of AIDS. The AIDS Quilt website highlights a handful of these colorful panels, and, designers say, the site will eventually contain a searchable database allowing web users to call up panels dedicated to specific people and learn more about them. The site also features information about AIDS as well as links to other AIDS-related websites, information on where the Memorial Quilt will be displayed, and instructions on how to add custom quilt panels to the giant memorial.

vivid joins other groups in honoring AIDS victims on this day, dubbed "A Day Without Art, Night Without Light, and A Day Without Graphics." Those who visit vivid's site today, at http://www.vivid.com, will not be able to use the site -- instead, they will be directed to visit the Quilt site.

The AIDS Quilt website is the first of several pro-bono web design projects vivid intends to pursue. The site is sponsored in part by AT&T and the Magic Johnson Foundation. The World Health Organization predicts that 30 million people will be infected with the virus that causes AIDS by the year 2000. AIDS is the leading cause of death among Americans aged 25-44.

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