Independent Learning Exercises.

Thematic Mapping.

The publishers Dorling-Kindersley specialise in both multimedia and books that use multimedia-derived ideas in their organisation and page layout. An interesting example is their 'Art Book' series of low-price handbooks on well-known artists. This series has a standard structure built around a time-line and a set of standard themes indicated by coloured margins (I used their idea as the basis for the colouring of these notes). Take one of these books (either peruse it in a bookshop or, if you have a favourite artist whose work might be useful to your design thinking, then buy one) and see whether you can draw up a thematic map based on its organisation. How would you translate this map into a practical multimedia version? Draw up an outline storyboard for your multimedia version.

Storyboarding.

The technique of storyboarding comes from film-making, so it would probably be worth making yourself familiar with some film studies textbooks and reading what they have to say about storyboards. I won't specify any particular books since there are so many on the market and in our library. You might take this opportunity to familiarise yourself with our library 'OPAC' system and the way in which you can order books from our other sites ... you will need to do this to take advantage of the bulk of our film studies stock, the bulk of which is held in Cambridge (the same applies to art and design). Get used to searching for books on-line.