Works

Choose three print documents that you have already written to put on the Web. These might be papers or reports you've written for classes, stories, personal memories, arguments, etc.

In this assignment, you'll create a set of visual teasers, verbal blurbs, summaries and banners to encourage visitors to your Web site to click to and read your documents from the top level of your site. Since they represent and advertise different pieces of writing, the visuals should be distinct from each other, but they should also work as a matched set of images on the main page where they appear together. More...

Using Photoshop and Dreamweaver, take the content of an verbal text (your own or someone else's) and create a series of hypertext screens that realize the original's effects by "visualizing" it. That is, rather than just pasting the words into a long, continuous online document, use visual design to help create meaning, including images, various fonts, contrasting sizes and colors, layout, backgrounds, layering, visual heirarchies, etc. More...


Parody(Facade)

In this assignment, you'll create a parody of some digital genre--for example, an eBay auction page, a personal Web site, a blog--in the voice and style of a character who is not you.

As this ficticious author speaks through the words, images and design of this work, however, the author reveals more about him/herself than he/she realizes.

Basically, you'll use the page or site to reveal the facade of the character, and bring the reader to an understanding that undercuts or enlarges the meaning intended by the ficticious authors.

Consider these examples:

In each of these pages/sites, see how the creators of the parody allow the "facade" to slip, revealing some truer face beneath.

You can also choose a


A Defining Example of New Media Writing

In a five-to-seven page text (double spaced), look at a single example of "New Media Writing" to identify and understand one defining technique, issue, problem or principle.

This example could be a Web site, DVD movie menu system, online game, hypertext fiction, media CD, online class, etc. etc. The idea is the choose one "defining example." You will want to use screen shots and images to illustrate what you discuss in the essay, but don't count the space taken by the images in your page count.

In your discussion, show how this example helps us understand what "New Media Writing" means:

  • How is this an example of "New Media" (where old media are converged into a single experience on the screen)?
  • What's "New" about the technique, issue, problem or principle (vs. the techniques, issues, problems or principles of "old" print or analogue media)?
  • How does your New Media example also still call upon the "writing" and "reading" parts of our brains, rather than just our "design" brains?

 

In a hypertext fiction, place a main character in a situation that draws people together: a party, a competition, a meeting, a holiday festival. More to come...

 

ReVision Project

Revise one of your previous projects with a new vision of what you want to do.

By "ReVision," I don't mean a revision that fixes up a previous project with lots of local corrections and improvements. Instead, ReVision entails a global transformation in the idea or strategy you pursue in the project, which will require changes throughout. This might be a better, more complete vision of what the original assignment asked for, or it might be a further goal or intention for the project.

Global transformations for Web-based projects might include the following:

  • a better, fuller realization of the intentions of the original assignment (if you missed it the first time)
  • a different, more specific audience for the site
  • a new structure and navigation scheme for the site that better realizes your purpose and vision

Your annotation of the ReVision should therefore be specific about the new idea or vision and how it guided the various changes you made.

Turning in the ReVision:
Be sure to save the original version of the project to compare to your ReVision. Post the ReVision project to the Web in a folder called "revision." When you send the URL of the ReVision to the Webx discussion, also include a link to the original in its folder on the Web.

If you revise a print project, please turn in a hardcopy of the revised document as well as the original copy with my comments and markings.