• MWF Student Work
• TTR Student Work

Project 4: Choose your own adventure

In this project, we will use Dreamweaver and Photoshop to create a website as a "choose your own adventure" style book. Each website should have a minimum of 12 different pages with illustration(s) and text on each page. The style of your illustration is up to you. It can be hand drawn, painted, photographed, collaged, made in illustrator, etc. But, like project three, I don't want anything coming from the internet. You need to develop your own content.

The subject and style of your story is also entirely up to you. The illustrations can be simple or complex, but pick an aesthetic theme that runs through the website. Think about how your aesthetic choices effect the delivery of your story. How do you make the story and design work together? How do you turn a book into a website?

Also, consider navigation. How will your viewers advance through this story? How many choices do you want per page? How do you want to handle dead ends? How can you match your navigation to your aesthetics?

You will be required to do a preliminary sketch for the design of your story. In this, I need to see how you intend to lay out the story, approximately what the text will say, what sort of style you're aiming for, and your plan for illustrations.

Our sites will be published using the Missouri State University server, and will be linked to our class website. We'll go over the process of creating a space on the server, and you'll continue to have access to the server after our class is finished.

Here are some links worth checking out:

• 2008 Design Trends
• Creative Layouts
• Hand Drawn
• Grunge Layouts
• Grid Based Designs

Here is the link to set up your own folder on the Missouri State server. Sign in (top left corner) and choose "Get Resources." From there, you need to start a personal account. This will create a web folder for you on the Missouri State website. 

Then, follow these instructions for setting up your site in Dreamweaver, and upload your files.

It will take about 2 minutes after your first set up, but you should be able to view your website at:

http://student.missouristate.edu/firstletter/PublicID/index.html

where "first letter" equals the capitalized first letter of your name, "PublicID" equals the first part of your campus email, and "index.html" equals the name of your homepage. In general, it's a good practice to name your home page "index.html" for search reasons.

If I were a student, mine would be:

http://student.missouristate.edu/C/CStephenson/index.html