Week 5
Download the Lesson Files:
Week 1: The Freehand MX Interface
In class exercise: The wrench.
Assignment- Create a simple personal geometric logo using circles, squares and lines. (10%)
Week 3- Functional design : Symbols and Instances:
Assignment: Using paper, create a linear drawing of your personal home page.(10%)
Week 4- Functional Design: Importing bitmaps into FreeHand MX
Assignment: Create a comp of your personal Home Page in FreeHand MX (10%)
Week 5- Information
Assignment: Locate a logo that is particularly effective and be prepared to present it to the class.
Explain why it is so effective.
What message does it convey?
Are there any potential design issues involving its use in web media and what would
you do to resolve those issues. (5%)
Week 6- Dimensions of design: Logo creation in FreeHand
Assignment: Create a personal set of letters in FreeHand spelling out your last name. The largest inside square can be no more than ¼ of the full size letter and the maximum number of inside squares is 3.(10%)
Week 7/8- Typography
Assignment: Create a personal typographic logo. (10%)
Week 9- Forms and Structure: Grid-based interface design.
Assignment: Using a 3 X 4 grid, design a balanced personal home page. (10%)
Week 10- Icons and Symbols: Developing iconic interfaces for use in web pages and mobile devices.
Assignment: Create an interface for a Palm Pilot email application. (10%)
Week 11/12- Colour
Assignment: Analyse a web site using the principals covered over the past 12 weeks and prepare to present them to your classmates. (25%)
Week 13,14,15- Critiques
Weeks 13 and 14 will be presentations of sites from weeks 11 and 12. Week 15 will be presentations of project work done in class.
Comping up a site is one of the keys to good production and workflow. This step of the process actually helps you isolate potential design problems and to actually develop the framework or skeleton for the design. This usually involves the use of a grid-based design.
Grids are not new and actually became very popular during the rise of the Bauhaus movement in the 1920'2 and 1930's. This movement essentially espoused that less is more. One of their innovations was the espousal of grid-based design. In very simplistic terms , through the use of a grid, any object- image or text- placed on a page would be in perfect balance with all other objects on the page.
This week's exercise explores the use of grid based design as it relates to the web.
The site we'll be using is : http://www.lacountyarts.org