levels project- comp 5250 - New Media Writing

Choose a piece of writing that you've already done: a paper or essay for a class, a school-newspaper editorial or column, a story. It can be any genre of writing meant for public view.

Translate this piece to New Media by creating a "blurb" that encourages visitors to click to your text, and a "designed" full-text version that works well on the screen.

In print form, your piece is read from beginning to end. It follows print's "diachronic," linear logic—like a road unfolding before the reader, paragraph after paragraph, page after page.

This assignment will ask you to prepare this piece to post online, where writing and reading tend to follow a more non-linear, synchronic logic. That is, we experience online texts more as we would a swimming pool, dipping a toe in here, jumping in somewhere else, floating around on an inner tube. We browse rather than read.

Front-Page Blurb

First, you will create a visual/verbal "blurb" to go on an assignment's front page with the blurbs of your classmates. This blurb's purpose is to entice the reader into clicking a link to the full text of your written piece.

This blurb has the following requirements:

it must fit into a 150 wide x 250 high pixel space
it must use words, but no more than 55 words
it must use at least one image (a visual "teaser"),
it must provide a link to the designed full text (see below),
it must hook the reader without being corny, salacious, or dishonest (unless your full text is corny, salacious...).

A Designed, Full Text

Print-style text on the screen defeats and exhausts the eye because of the low resolution of computer screens.

The point, however, is not to say less online, but to design that verbal text to invite the eye to explore it.

Prepare your full text to work online by using some of the tools of "content design," including:

breaking up the text into section with headers,
using bullets and numbered lists for list-like content,
including "sidebars" that feature quotations or asides
creating visual "hooks" or icons that conduct the eye down the page and suggest the topics of sections or paragraphs (visual hierarchy)
using link "anchors" to allow visitors to jump to certain sections or passages
breaking the single page of the online text into separate pages according to topic, accessible through a menu on each page.
using color in headers,
creating a banner for the page(s) that recalls the visual "teaser" of the blurb.

A Printable Version of the Text

Include a link from your Designed Full Text to a printable version of your original text. To create this printable version, simply copy and paste the text into a plain HTML page. Format the page only for readability on paper.

Criteria

You can download and print the checklist (in Word) I will use to evaluate your finished project. Note that this checklist may be corrected or updated. I will announce any substative revisions to the description of the criteria in class.

Concepts

diachronic and synchronic
content design
visualization
visual hierarchy
thumbnail