Bare Essentials Assignment
Bare Essentials Assignment
This assignment challenges students to take a small amount of information and make it as psychologically resonant as possible. This reinforces attention to presentation as being as important as content objects.
Students should be shown some sort of media or work of art that exemplifies the use of a minimum of material for the greatest possible effect. I introduced the Danish Dogme '95 film movement, with its rigorous list of restrictions for participating filmmakers to strip cinema back down to its essentials. I chose to show Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration which is probably the finest film from that movement, and students were impressed with it.
Students were instructed to make a 2-4 page site using ONLY the information from their own ID card, and handed this list of restrictions:
- You can only use the printed matter on the front of your card
- You may scan in your image from your card, and use it as an image-object or even a background image. No other images are allowed! Excessive Photoshop treatment of the image is discouraged.
- You may not use colors, only tones (black, white, shades of gray). The same goes for your image - b&w only!
- Your navigation must be as unobtrusive and simple as possible.
- You may change font sizes, but you may use only one single, standard (boring) font.
- Table cells and CSS box-properties may be employed as design elements, but with moderation.
Examples:
