WRIT 4230/5230 - Autobiographical Index Page Experiment

A One-Page Experiment
In this first project, you will create a single web page--a prototype of a home page for a prospective personal web site.

I will ask you to experiment with using autobiographical details from your life to create this page. You will not be required to use it as your actual home page. It is simply an experiment.

Two or Three Themes
We will try to generate some autobiographical, visual themes to unify this page design through writing. I will ask you to write a "Memory of Earth" in the style of samples from Douglas Coupland's novel Generation X. The themes are important because, together, they will suggest (without explaining) something individualzing about yourself. You will not include this writing on the page itself.

Obviously, you should choose only themes that you don't mind sharing with other people to convey an impression of yourself.

The Home Page vs. Blog Genre
This project is an experiment specifically in the design of a home page rather than a blog. While a blog design is a generic container or wrapper for a long, vertical chronology of entries--often with links to subject-specific archives--home pages serve as a front door to an site. Home pages work best when they make their content and links immediately available (ideally in the first screenfull), rather than buried in denser, textual entries, or spread out down a long, scrolling page.

In essence, the home page serves as "synchronic" spring board, while a blog is like a "diachronic" trail to travel down.

While a home page should not be too text-heavy, your design should include some space for editable text that can be readily updated.

Web Design's "Indexical" Voice
Web design is less like writing a book and more like making a movie.

In writing, you speak directly to your reader and explain what you have to say. Often, you even explain your explanations.

In making a movie, on the other hand, you don't explain so much as point. You point the camera at this, and then pan around to make the viewer look at something else, and then something else, etc. Movies are called an "indexical" medium because they suggest meaning by pointing, as if with your index finger.

Web pages are like movies in that they don't explain themselves at length, but suggest larger meanings by pointing. Rather than actors, scenery, and actions, web pages point at information, images, menus, lists, quotations, colors, fonts, and other small chunks of visual and verbal content and leave it up to the viewer/reader to make a judgment about how they fit together.

Unity Paragraph
I will ask you to write a substantive paragraph--to be included in your commentary, but not on your web page--which describes how your page's several themes arise from your autobiography, which might include your past, your "position," your tastes, your opinions, your values, your plans, your vision of the future, etc.). This paragraph will explain how these varied--maybe even contradictory--themes are unified by some idea of you which is more complex and truer than simply saying "I'm a typical, busy college student," or "I like the outdoors."

Begin this paragraph with a list: three or four items from your autobiographical inventory (or "Memory of Earth"). Themes on my home page, for instance, include Duluth seasons (especially fall and winter), cats, academia, and the color orange.

Try writing the paragraph unifying your themes before you start designing the page.

Summary
In this first assignment, then, you will make an autobiographical inventory to invent a complex, autobiographical idea or "story" that suggests something essential about yourself. (I hasten to add that this autobiographical idea or story is not the only one possible, but simply the one you've chosen for this experiment from two or three of the millions of details of your life. The idea/story doesn't even need to be true.) On a single web page, you will strategically convey that defining idea or story by designing your page around two or three themes suggested in your choice and presentation of visual or informational content.

Criteria:

that the assignment is completed as a single web page
whether the page's tone, choice of content, design, etc. are appropriate for a prototype of a personal home page
the extent to which the page's design is defined by the choice of two or three autobiographical themes
the degree to which these autobiographical themes or motifs are restated and reinforced in images, colors, word choice, headers, choice of content, etc. (One picture of a lake doesn't constitute a lake theme.)
that more than one theme is used, and that the themes are individualizing enough to avoid the effects of caricature, monomania, obsession, flat-characterization, etc. (example: Marsha's Angels Page, from a parody "Fall of the Site of Marsha" by UMD's own Rob Wittig
the extent to which the themes are presented in a way that suggests an individualizing story, complex idea, personality, style, viewpoint, etc. without your explicitly explaining their appearance together or the meaning of their relationships.
whether the design of the page makes effective use of screen real estate without seeming cramped or uninviting to the eye
whether the design of the page makes effective use of visual hierarchy to give the eye useful landing places which reliably reveal the meaningful structure of the page
the degree to which the page design uses a combination of words and images appropriate to contemporary web-page design.
that the page functions consistently
that images are well optimized and functioning, and correctly proportioned and scaled.
to what extent the commentary fulfils the general criteria for excellent commentaries.
how well the commentary explains the sources (such as a Memory of Earth) and the unity of the themes in a "Unity Paragraph."
how well the commentary conveys the logic and intention of the themes' choices, and the strategies used to deploy them in a coherent design scheme.
how well the commentary compares the project's purpose and method with at least two of the examples considered in class.
that the commentary thoughtfully employs--and elaborates its use of--the critical vocabulary of web design and the assignment at least four times. The use of these terms should be productive and seem natural, rather than forced and mechanical. Please type these critical terms in bold.
whether all outside references in the commentary--including online ones--are cited correctly using MLA-style in-text citation format and bibliographic documentation at the end of the commentary.

Examples

A Tale of Two Cities (Rick B.)
Applied Forces...Trying to Achieve Equilibrium (Hal P.)
(accounting, art, and humor) (Tristan T)

Resources