Guidelines for Writing the Self Commentaries

This is your chance to explain the many ways that your project demonstrates your grasp of the ideas and techniques we've learned, as well as your degree of sensitivity and insight. You will write, print and turn in the commentary after you've completed the project by the due date specified in the assignment. Sorry, I cannot accept electronic versions of the commentary. Be sure to bring your printed-out commentary to class on the due date, or, if you will not in class that day, get it to me via my mailbox in 420 Humanities.

Nature and Format of the Self Commentary

Write a two-to-three-paged (double-spaced) commentary on your project. Try to specify and reflect on the principles or techniques of rhetoric and design you used. Claim credit for anything you see, even retrospectively, whether you were aware of using technique in your process or not. In this sense, your commentary may be partly a work of fiction, but, like all good fictions, it should lie convincingly to tell a greater truth.

Terms and Ideas

Use and italicize terms and ideas from the readings, the assignment, the project guidelines, or class discussion to describe these principles and techniques (you might even use these terms as the headings of sections within the commentary). If you use terms from other classes you've had, italicize them as well, and define them briefly in a glossary at the end of the commentary.

Models

Be sure to mention and describe any models of good design or writing that you kept in mind as you worked on your site. These might be examples from our readings, class discussions, the work of your classmates, or previous projects of your own.

Process

You can talk about your creative process as well as the final product. How did your conception of the project, your purposes, your audiences, your relationship with those audiences change? Did your idea of what you had to say develop as a result of your creative process?

Other People in Your Process

This commentary is a particularly good opportunity to reflect on how the creative process is often collaborative and social. What other people did you depend on or work with? Stepping back from the process now, what can you generalize from your experience about these critical, social, interpersonal and professional relationships? What do you want to remember, replicate or avoid with future clients or collaborators?

While You're Printing Out...

In the case of a Web-based project, I will also ask you to hand in a printed-out version of your Web site along with the commentary. This will enable me to respond directly to the text of your site.