Overview

Reading List

Schedule

Resources

 

Graphic Design: Digital Layout
Course Syllabus

Art 51.4
Spring Semester 2003
Instructor:  John Sappington  - john@basearts.com - 707.874.9786

Location and Schedule:

Tuesday 1 - 4pm -Barnett Hall Room 1261
Thursday 1 - 4pm - Analy Hall Room 1261 and/or 708

http://www.basearts.com/typography.com

The instructor will be available to assist students in Analy Hall - Digital Lab, from 12:00 to 1:00 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  For additional assistance or consultation please arrange to meet with the instructor during office hours.

DESCRIPTION:
Basic understanding of computer operation is necessary. Extensive use of the computer as a design tool to develop creative page layouts for print and screen. Several popular Mac-based software programs are explored to design with text and display type in a variety of formats. Projects include the layout and design of ads, newsletters, and booklets. Topics include: the art of typography, design and composition, aesthetics, and an overview of past and present design styles.

Outcomes and Objectives:
1. Create original layout designs in a digital format.
2. Explore various design concepts and design principles for page layout.
3. Become familiar with page layout software, and other graphics programs, specifically intended for designers.
4. Gain an understanding and appreciation of good design through practice.
5. Understand effective use of white space as a design element.
6. Become familiar with a wide variety of type fonts and their use for effective communication.
7. Refine design thinking skills (analytical and intuitive) and the ability to use one's creative imagination.
8. Learn to use the digital scanner, laser printer, photocopier and other design tools.
9. Become familiar with visual resources: books, magazines, and other publications for the graphic design field.
10. Learn about the World Wide Web/Internet as a graphics and information resource.
11. Gain an historical perspective of the important events, individuals and art/design movements relative to typographic design.
12. Exercise the ability to make critical aesthetic judgments through participation in class critiques.
13. Become familiar with the vocabulary and terms used by designers.
14. Define health and safety issues that could arise from the use of artist's tools and materials.
15. Develop projects to build a design portfolio.

Topics and Scope:
The primary intent of Art 51.4 is to develop the foundation for students wishing to pursue the study of graphic design while continuing to refine visual literacy and performance using digital tools and media.

This includes:
1. The ability to integrate new technology into the design process (computers, scanner, laser printer, photocopies, etc.)
2. Develop an understanding of visual communication concepts and problem solving for graphic design.
3. The ability to develop design work progressively from rough ideas to more resolved comprehensives.
4. The practice of design principles and visual elements central to art and graphic design.
5. The ability to make aesthetic decisions and judgments about design in the development of visual compositions.
6. The ability to perform specific techniques using the computer to demonstrate these elements (produce thumbnails and finished comprehensives using the computer, scanner, and laser printer.
7. The ability to intelligently use and care for the tools and materials of Art 51.4 (disks, computers, scanners, laser printer, color printer, color ink cartridges, and papers).

The scope and sequence of the course will be presented as follows:
1. Through lectures concerning the concepts, elements and historical precedents of art and design.
2. Through lecture/demonstrations of the proper use of equipment, software and techniques.
3. Through student practice and demonstration of compositional, expressive and technical concepts.
4. Through evaluative one-on-one discussions with individual students.
5. Through group critique discussions and presentations of in-class and homework visual compositions.

Specific areas within Art 51.4 include:
1. An overview of the computer and page layout programs.
2. Demonstrate several ways graphics software can be used to create original graphic designs.
3. Demonstrate basic design principles for the layout and design of the printed page.
4. Demonstrate and use the digital scanner to capture images.
5. Explore the design process from preliminary studies (thumbnails) to more finished designs.
6. Review the aesthetic concerns of typographic design.
7. Study the grid concept as a layout structure.
8. Demonstrate designs which successfully integrate text with graphic elements.
9. Create designs in a variety of formats: ads, newsletters, booklets, Web pages, etc.
10. Experiment with type as an expressive design element.
11. Study a variety of typeface designs and their unique aesthetic qualities.
12. Review digital type designs from the large (Adobe) and small (Emigre) type distributors.
13. Examine typographic and layout designs from various historical periods.

Assignments:
May include the following:
1. Create a simple lettermark design (monogram).
2. Explore several typographic designs for a business card.
3. Create a set of three ads (such as a dance center) using type only.
4. Create a series of three different ad layouts combining text and image image.
5. Create page layouts which express four important historic styles: Classical, Industrial Revolution, Modernism and Post-Modern.
6. Develop a set of "type pictures" for a class booklet.
7. Develop a set of thumbnails which explore the grid structure.
8. Design a newsletter using the grid concept.
9. Design a half-sheet order form.
10. Design a home page for the World Wide Web.
11. Design an exhibition schedule for the campus Art Gallery.
12. Experiment with type for a broadside layout (tabloid format).
13. Create a small personal book/Web Site combining text and images.

EVALUATION:

This is a degree-applicable course, but substantial writing assignments are not appropriate because the course primarily: Involves skill demonstrations or problem solving

The problem-solving assignments required:
Homework problems

The types of skill demonstrations required:
Class performances

The types of objective examinations used in the course:
None

Other category:
Portfolio of completed work, attendance, effort, growth, participation.

Writing assignments: 0% - 0%
Problem-solving demonstrations: 10% - 30%
Skill demonstrations: 10% - 30%
Objective examinations: 0% - 0%
Other methods of evaluation: 40% - 80%

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Units: 3

Recommended: Art 18, or Art 51.1, or Art 51.2, or Art 51.3, or enrollment in the Applied Graphics Program

Grade code: CR/NC option

Repeat code: 8

Transferability: CSU

Cost: $5

REQUIRED SUPPLIES:

Students are required to obtain a 100 MB Zip disk formatted for either the Macintosh or PC to backup project files.

Students are also required to have an e-mail account.  These are available through the school *see below or may be a free account like those available from Hotmail, Yahoo, Freemail, Excite, etc.  Students will be expected to check this e-mail account at least once a week.  General class announcements will be reported via e-mail.

If you are a current SRJC student, you're eligible for an account on the server Student. Student offers many Internet services, including access to Internet e-mail, remote login (ssh), file transfer (scp, sftp), Usenet news groups, and the text-based (i.e. no graphics) World Wide Web browser, Lynx. Student does not support dial-in, telnet, or ftp access. You must use an encrypted access method such as SSL or SSH.

http://student.santarosa.edu/ <--- click here

ATTENDANCE POLICY:

Students are expected to attend all of every class meeting unless they have received prior permission from the instructor. Attendance will be taken at the beginning of each class meeting. Anyone absent when attendance is taken will be assumed absent from the class.   If you are late to class it is your responsibility to make sure your attendance is acknowledged by talking to the instructor. 

If a student misses two weeks of class without being excused, it can be assumed that the student is intending to drop the class. 

If you stop attending classes, you do not drop the class, and the instructor has not dropped you from the class; the instructor may be required to give you a grade of F for the class.

 

Graphic Design: Digital Layout

Art 51.4

READING LIST:

Design Writing Research Writing on Graphic Design, Elen Lupton & Abbot Miller Phaidon, 1996 *Required
Texts on Type, Critical Writings on Typography, Steven Heller and Philip B. Meggs, Allworth Press, 2001 *Required

The Thames & Hudson Manual of Typography, Ruari McLean, Thames & Hudson, Ltd., 1980
Web Style Guide, Patricia J. Lynch and Sarah Horton, Yale University Press, 2001
---
Great Type and Lettering Designs, David Brier, North Light Books, 1992.
Creative Typography, Marion March, North Light Books, 1988.
Type Design, Color, Character & Use, Michael Beaumont, North Light Books, 1987.

STUDENTS PLEASE NOTE: DO NOT BUY TEXTBOOKS before checking with the SRJC Bookstore.
These titles are representative only, and may not be the same ones used in your class.

 

Graphic Design: Digital Layout

Art 51.4

Course Schedule
(subject to change)

Weeks 1-9 Course Calendar and Assignments

Week 1
01.14

Introduction to Digital Page Design - Course Structure and Objectives - Signature Moment

01.16

Presentations - Review Signature Exercise
Show and tell : 3 examples(photos) of typography/signage from life.
type in life


Week 2
01.21

Application: Illustrator

Assignment: Modify Limited Character Set - Alphabet +0-9
and example of use.
Example files - Letterform Manipulation
A and B

01.23

Review Character Sets
Remaining Presentations

Assignment: 1 + 2 Representative Letterforms
Select and perfect modified letterform (lower and upper case)- producing 1 assigned letter from the alphabet and 2 others of personal choice.

Show and tell : 3 commercial product labels


Week 3
01.28

Application: Illustrator w/ Intro to Photoshop
( )

01.30

Lecture/Dialogue: Letterform Histories - Type Classifications - Parts of a Letter - Legibility - Traditions - Digitization
Critique : Letterforms

Show and tell :

 


Week 4
02.4

Finishing up Photoshop / Illustrator / Intro to page layout.
Exploring the digital page.

Exercises: 1-24

02.6

 



 


Week 5
002.11



02.14



 


Week 6
02.18



02.20



 


Week 7
02.25



02.27



 


Week 8
03.4



03.6



 


Week 9
03.11

Mid-Term

03.14

Review

 


Weeks 10-18 Course Calendar and Assignments, Weeks 10 - 18

Week 10
03.18

Application:


03.20


Assignment:

Show and tell :



Week 11
03.25

 

03.27


Critique :

Show and tell :


Week 12
04.01




04.03


 


Week 13
04.08


04.10

 



 


Week 14
004.15



04.17



 


Week 15
04.22



04.24



 


Week 16
04.29



05.01



 


Week 17
05.06



05.08



 


Week 18
05.13


05.15



 


Week 20
05.20


05.23



 


 

Graphic Design: Digital Layout

Art 51.4

Resources

Technical Type:

Type Topics
http://www.adobe.com/type/topics/main.html
http://www.adobe.com/type/topics/glossary.html

Webmonkey Fonts
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/design/fonts/index.html

Web Typography Tutorial: Overview
by Nadav Savio
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/design/fonts/tutorials/tutorial3.html


Upper and lowercase Magazine
http://www.itcfonts.com/ulc/default.asp?sid=0SW23EEFSMF19KVS3JWWCFCWG4S6DKRF

Counterspace
http://counterspace.motivo.com/

Microsoft Typography | Developer information
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/creators.htm

Type Houses

Emigre
http://www.emigre.com/

ITC
http://www.itcfonts.com/

T .26 Digital Type Foundry
http://www.t26.com/

Type Creation

FontLab
http://www.font.to/

FontLab Ltd: FontLab
http://www.pyrus.com/html/fontlab.html

ParaType
http://www.paratype.com/shop/default.asp?page=soft/software.asp

Dave Emmett's Softy
http://users.iclway.co.uk/l.emmett/

Font Avenue
http://www.fontavenue.com/

Chank
http://www.chank.com/howto/

From [Divide By Zero] Fonts and the Tom 7 Institute of Computer Knowledge (TICK):
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~twm/makefont/

Electronic Publication(s)

Project Gutenberg - electronic books
http://gutenberg.net/

Night Kitchen, Inc. - Multimedia Software
http://www.nightkitchen.com/

Technical - HTML

Web Style Guide - Online
http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/contents.html

Bare Bones Guide to HTML
http://werbach.com/barebones/
http://werbach.com/barebones/download.html

NCSA GUIDE to HTML
http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html

WEBMONKEY
http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/html/

Project Management

Charting Multimedia: The Process Between Concept and Creation
http://www.rcc.ryerson.ca/rta/flowchart/samples.html

 

Materials - Supplies

Digital Art Supplies
http://www.digitalartsupplies.com

 

Graphic Designers / Groups

John Maeda
http://www.maedastudio.com/
http://dbn.media.mit.edu/
http://www.maedastudio.com/indexold.html
http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/maeda/

Guillaume Appollinaire
Herbert Bayer
Lester Beall
Saul Bass
Herbert Bayer

Henryk Berlewi
Joseph Muller Brockmann
Will Burton
Alexey Brodovitch
Lucien Bernhard
A.M. Cassandre
Ivan Chermayeff
Seymour Chwast

Sonia Delaunay
Lou Dorfsman

Marcel Duchamp
Hans Erni
Gene Federico
Louis Dorfman
Bill Golden
Karl Gerstner
Milton Glaser
Tibor Kalman
Wassily Kandinsky
Leo Lionni
El Lissitsky
Herb Lubalin
Alvin Lustig
Herbert Matter
Kasimir Malevich
V. Mayakovsky
Paul Rand
William Sandberg
Paul Schuitema
Lisa Starck
Kurt Schwitters
Ladislaw Sutnar
Vladimir Tatlin
John Tschichold
Bradbury Thompson
George Tscherny
Mossimo Vignelli
Piet Zwart

Institutions

Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum
http://ndm.si.edu/

Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography
http://www.cooper.edu/art/lubalin/

Mixing Messages
http://ndm.si.edu/EXHIBITIONS/mixingmessages/essay/typo/start.htm

http://www.cooper.edu/art/lubalin/SlideLibraryCollections.html

American Institute of Graphic Design
http://www.aiga.org/

LOOP: AIGA Journal of Interaction Design Education
http://loop.aiga.org

Mission:
http://loop.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentID=2

Table of Contents
http://loop.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=tableofcontents

A Curriculum Statement
Designing Experiences, Not Objects
http://loop.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentID=9

NET ART Groups/Institutions/Artists

Arts Listings
http://www.diverseworks.org/home.html
http://www.rhizome.org
http://www.theredproject.com


The Calls and Opps List
http://www.artswire.org/Artswire/www/awfront.html
http://bbs.thing.net/login.thing
http://adaweb.com/home.shtml
http://adaweb.walkerart.org/context/events/moma/technology.html
http://www.artnetweb.com/
http://www.artnetweb.com/projects/projects.html


Artists

http://www.turbulence.org
http://rhizome.org/fresh/artists_A-Z.rhiz

http://www.artnetweb.com/projects/projects.html

John Maeda
http://www.maedastudio.com/
http://dbn.media.mit.edu/
http://www.maedastudio.com/indexold.html
http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/maeda/

Richard Rinehart
www.coyoteyip.com

Julia Scher
http://adaweb.walkerart.org/project/secure/sec1.html

Dirk Paessman and Joan ?_
http://www.jodi.org/
http://404.jodi.org/index.html

Jeffery Shaw
http://www.jeffrey-shaw.net/html_main/frameset-explore.php3

Victoria Vesna
http://www.bodiesinc.ucla.edu/

George Legrady
http://www.georgelegrady.com/
http://www.pocketsfullofmemories.com/

Lisa Jevbratt
http://cadre.sjsu.edu/jevbratt/

Tina LaPorta
http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/i/ga2750/tina/portal.html

Ken Goldberg
http://teleactor.berkeley.edu/
http://ouija.berkeley.edu/
http://queue.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/garden/Ars/
http://www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/

Collaborative Groups

C5
http://www.c5corp.com/

Group Z
http://adaweb.walkerart.org/~GroupZ/

http://art.teleportacia.org/

Brick and Mortar

Visual Studies Workshop
http://www.vsw.org
http://www.afterimageonline.org/

New Langton Arts: NetWork
http://www.newlangtonarts.org

Zentrum fŸr Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe
http://www.zkm.de/

Pompidou Center
http://www.centrepompidou.fr/Pompidou/Home.nsf/docs/fhome
http://www.newmedia-arts.org/cgi-bin/sommaire-dev.asp?LG=GBR&FILE=encyclo

Walker Art Center
http://gallery9.walkerart.org/
http://adaweb.walkerart.org/usage/reach/

Whitney Museum of American Art
http://www.whitney.org/artport/
http://www.whitney.org/exhibition/biennial.shtml

Dia Center
http://www.diacenter.org/rooftop/webproj/index.html

Eyebeam
http://www.eyebeam.org/

Franklin Furnace
http://www.franklinfurnace.org/

GroundZero
http://www.groundzero.org/zeroone.html

TAM
http://www.alternativemuseum.org/home_nodon.html

ArtNet
http://www.artnet.com/index.asp?N=1

C3: Center for Culture & Communication
http://www.c3.hu/

SFMOMA
http://www.sfmoma.org/espace/espace_overview.html

TATE
http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/default.htm

Austin Museum of Digital Art
http://www.amoda.org/about/digitalart.php

 

Net Art Topics

Historical Links
Hypertext
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/historical

Internet
http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/
http://www.forthnet.gr/forthnet/isoc/short.history.of.internet
http://www.pbs.org/internet/timeline/timeline-txt.html

http://www.elsop.com/wrc/h_web.htm

New Media/Internet Theorist/Historical Figures

Computational Design

http://proce55ing.media.mit.edu/
http://www.media.mit.edu/

Marshal Mcluhan
http://www.mcluhaninstitute.org/

Marvin Minsky
http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/

Ted Nelson
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0155.html
http://xanadu.com/
http://ted.hyperland.com/

Timothy Druckrey
http://users.rcn.com/druckrey/
http://users.rcn.com/druckrey/texts.html

Global Ideas Bank
http://www.globalideasbank.org/

Intellectual Property (Copyright)

Illegal Art
http://www.illegal-art.org/print/index.html

Copyright Website
http://www.benedict.com/fair.htm
http://www.benedict.com/digital/webIssues/webDesign.asp
http://www.benedict.com/info/fairUse/fairUse.asp

United States Patent Office - Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/doc/ipnii/index.html

Electronic Frontier Foundation
http://www.eff.org

Stanford University Copyright and Fair Use
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/

Fair Use and Multimedia
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/multimed/

Intellectual Property Law Primer
http://www.timestream.com/stuff/neatstuff/mmlaw.html