Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
of low impact, low quality clipart; it just clutters up the interactive space and
takes away from your important content. Make your content have a purpose.
Content should help achieve your goals to make your final design more focused,
potent, and persuasive. A better choice for images that tell a story is to use
stock photos or photographs taken by the author either using a digital camera
or a film camera. Before using clipart, think about using an image that is
photographic as opposed to an image that is weak. Clipart only works when
it is used consistently and sparingly in the design. Most clipart needs to be
edited to make it more appealing. This can be a tedious process and digital
illustration software such as Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, or Macromedia
freehand must be used. This makes using bitmapped photographic images even
more appealing. They can be easily edited, cropped, and corrected for the Web
using Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia fireworks. For novices to computer
graphics, the process is much simpler and can be done more quickly than
manipulating vector clipart. As well, the control that you get when you take your
own photographs is amazing. It allows you to tackle any creative problem by
generating usable, effective content. You should try it for at least some pieces
of your Web portfolio.
Text as Content
Your Web portfolio will have two types of text items. Items to be read, printed,
and downloaded or body copy, navigation items, and captions.
Items that are to be read, printed, and downloaded should be contained in the
same page and not “chunked” into smaller pages. Pages such as your resume,
lesson plans, mission statements, and philosophies should be single Web pages
that provide scrollable text content. For critical text in the Web portfolio, use
small pieces of text. Be sure to scrutinize the clarity and conciseness of the copy
you present in the Web site. Body copy, navigation items, and captions should
be written is small pieces or “chunks” to insure that users have direct access to
specific information (Horton, 2000).
Text also includes links within your Web portfolio. Your links can send the user
to another site entirely, or you can have a pop-up window launch and load a
micro Web site (microsite) while your Web portfolio stays open in the
background. When the launched site window is closed, your Web site will be
available as originally launched. Think of the Web sites that are important to
