This is a project for (Visual) Principles for Screen FL25. The goal of the project was to translate an existing piece of text into a website. I chose the novel/play "Ideal" by Ayn Rand, which I read over the summer of 2025. Ideal was originally written as a novel, then scrapped and re-written as a play by author Ayn Rand, who is most famous for her other works including "Anthem", "Atlas Shrugged", and "The Fountainhead". Neither version of Ideal was ever officially published, but both were made available after her death.
Ayn Rand is intriguing to me as an author because of her unique philosophy and her captivating writing style. Her works, including Ideal, are very character centric, and use one or several characters to illustrate some social commentary. Ayn Rand's philosophy, "objectivism", refers to the idea of accepting reality as irrefutable and unchangable. I wouldn't say I entirely agree with her viewpoint, but it does make for some very interesting and compelling works of writing.
Ideal follows the central character of Kay Gonda, an actress who is on the run for the murder of oil baron Granton Sayers. Gonda is the most famous actress in the world: beloved, worshipped, and almost completely detached from modern society. In the story, she takes the opportunity presented by Sayers' death to "test" several fans who have written her letters expressing their complete and utter devotion to her as their ideal. In each chapter/scene of the play, the other characters embrace her and assure Gonda that they would not betray her. By the end of each scene, however, they all turn against her, but not before she slips away to continue her journey.
Only at the end of the story do we meet Johnnie Dawes, another character who feels detached from society, isolated, and disillusioned with the present circumstances of his life. Ultimately he is the only character to follow through on his promise to keep Kay Gonda safe, confessing to the murder of Granton Sayers and promptly shooting himself so that he cannot be further questioned about his role in Sayers' death.
In the final scene of the play, it is revealed that Granton Sayers was not murdered, but rather ended his own life as a result of financial ruin, meaning Kay Gonda was never in any real danger. She converses with her press agent Mick Watts, expressing that she has found the drive to continue working for the few others out there like Johnnie Dawes. Watts, dismayed, reprimands her, saying, "But you are a murderess, Kay Gonda! You killed that boy!... Don't you realize what you've done?". "That, Mick", Gonda replies, "was the kindest thing I have ever done."
To see more coding projects of mine you can visit my Github. To view more design oriented projects, I actually don't really have anything set up, sorry, but you can visit my linktree to see other things I've worked on.