3 A's

The first website that I went to from our class was Randy’s whose initial personal hypertext essay on taking readers through a tour of his Ipod really impressed me, and I wanted to see what he had come up with for this assignment. The work was really different, the layout had a more professional and structured feel to, and the alignment and presentation of his essay was much more academic and well planned. I think what I took from Randy’s site that was the most impressive however, was his ability to in-bed movies into his site to support his argument. The work was strengthened by his organization of links by color, yellow ones went to outside websites that he discussed, and blue for navigation to the works cited page, used when referencing works specifically. Not to mention, Randy is a very talented academic writer. His pages were engaging, elegantly structured by topic and arguments, and had supple, concise evidence that supported his claim about formulating tensions between democracy and media ownership. I would have liked to see more creative sources used for his website, the pages were mostly just writing and links, it would have been nice to enjoy more videos directly on the page instead of just as outside links.

Kate Lanier’s website is the next that I would chose to deserve an A. It is creatively designed with innovative and beautifully rendered vectors and images from Photoshop (CS3), showing that her work for her second assignment went past just writing the essay and designing a webpage, but creating the images within that website too. The links and organization of the website is something that I would like to strive or as in creating works that are in a specific hypertext language, and appeal to people who are going to be reading and using the web on a daily basis. The writing is limited on each page, and makes the work seem very specific, although really there are many links and other pages that make the work more extravagant and complex then it first appears. The format of the website was a bit confusing at first, probably because the font is smaller and the color scheme of the navigation is designed in a way to not take away from the images that she has created. I think that although the website is aesthetically pleasing, the artwork’s size and intensity is distracting from the writing, and controls the focus of the page (but I like that because I am an artist)..

The third person I believe should receive an A is Kate Bradley. I love the way her website is so colorful and decorated with attractive fonts and images that initially made me really interested to continue reading. The layout of her 2nd writing assignment is also an example of how I hope to get my writing to look when I publish my last two projects: less of something that is academic writing, and more so something where it engages a reader into the hyper-textual experience. She may have used a previously formulated layout, but the work is able to be exhibited clearly and adds to the success of her work as it is able to speak clearly to her readers in bits and pieces, rather than wearing them out in one long page of text (as I do). I think that if someone has taken the time to do the work, and to make sure that is surrounded by a layout that speaks for it, then they definitely deserve an A.