Last Memory

The Project

Last Memory was created as an in-class teaching example for my Technical Narrative Design students at GDS. The goal was to walk students through the process of building a complete, well-structured linear narrative inside Arcweave — from blank project to finished experience.

I gave myself two deliberate constraints before writing: the story had to be exactly five elements long (clean, manageable for classroom demonstration), and the final element had to be visually distinct from the rest — a red theme instead of green. I then wrote a short sci-fi story that made both of those constraints feel purposeful rather than arbitrary.

The CSS Trick

Arcweave supports custom CSS per-element, which I had discovered while exploring their documentation. I used this to change the visual theme of the final card — switching from the project's established green palette to red — so that the shift in color coincides with the story's twist ending.

For students, this demonstrated two things simultaneously: how intentional visual design can amplify narrative impact, and that Arcweave's toolset extends meaningfully beyond just text and links. It was a concrete, memorable demonstration of what's possible when you read the documentation thoroughly.

As a Teaching Tool

Walking students through this project in-class covered the full Arcweave workflow — creating elements, linking them in sequence, structuring text for readability, and applying custom CSS to individual components. The story itself is short enough that the entire experience fits within a classroom session, but substantive enough to demonstrate real narrative craft.