Project 1: Personal Course Home Page

For this assignment, you'll create a single Web page that will act as your personal home page for this course.

It will serve to introduce yourself to me and your classmates--both verbally and visually--and to provide links to all your class projects and exercises, as well as to external Web sites that you would like to collect for yourself and your classmates. We will continue to add to, improve and revisit these pages during the semester.

Rather than just a page of information, try to think of this page as your virtual living room for entertaining and helping people from the class.

Required Content

Your Personal Course Home Page should include:

• your name
• your major and year
• a main image or graphic, possibly included in a banner at the top of the page
• a "mailto" link containing your e-mail address
• two or three items of recent news, accomplishments, trips you've taken, etc. with relevant links if you can think of them. This section might have its own heading, which might be text or could be an “imagetext” done in Photoshop.
• The sections on this page should each their own headings to distinguish them visually from one another. These headings might simply be text, formatted in the available levels of headings and perhaps in colors, or could be “imagetext” headings done in Photoshop. Consider how these various headings might unify the page by suggesting themes of design or of your interests.
• a list of software that you're confident using, especially HTML- or image-editing packages like Dreamweaver, FrontPage, Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, Fireworks, InDesign, etc.
• a section of links to your various course projects (use project names, not numbers)
• a separate section for links to your course exercises (use exercise titles)
• several links to Web sites that you both like and think are helpful to look at in terms of Web design (with a couple of sentences microcontent for each saying what your classmates should look for in the design when they follow the link). You might include some images or icons from these sites to introduce them visually.
• other items, information, content or statements you think might be helpful or interesting to your classmates with accompanying images.
• an area where you might add links later to further pages in this site. Think about what other pages you might include.

What Makes This Project Interesting

This project gives you practice incorporating a variety of information like that above into a single Web page that is both usable and personal.

Think of this page as both expressing your tastes, interests, and experiences while also serving the needs of your professor and classmates. The living room analogy is apt: this page should be comfortable for your intended guests, but also a place where you can live.

In designing the page, you should also consider

• where the various kinds of information should appear in the page layout: for example, near the top (important) or toward the bottom (less important),
• how to make optimal use of screen real estate
• how related information can be grouped, and the groupings made distinct from one another (use of proximity)
• the degree of "texture" you can give the page (the sense of voice, an individualizing look and feel)
• how big or small the textual information should be,
• what should be "visualized" with an image or not,
• what design elements (images, colors, fonts, page layouts) you might repeat in subsequent pages of this site (if and when you make them) to unify and "brand" them as constituting the same "place."
• how you might use the Web-design tools of font, size, color, headings, white space, menus, bullets, etc. to distinguish one kind of information from another and to create a sense of order, flow and proportion on the page.
• the degree you can design the page without non-content pixels (bars, clip art, visible table borders, etc.)

Sample Pages

Take a look at some sample home pages on the Web to see how people have attempted to direct traffic among various kinds of audiences, intended uses, kinds of information or content, etc. on their home pages. Of course, not everything you find will be models you'll want to follow. To get you started, here's Internet researcher Christian Sandvig's home page. Have a go at my own home page if you like, or these pages by John Kapla and Greg Rupp from a previous class. What other home pages can you find to consider from the perspective of this creative design challenge?