WEB112 > Syllabus
Class: Typography
Time: Winter 2010 – T/Th, 02:00PM to 03:20PM in BE5148
Credits: 3.0
Class Hours: 33
Type of Course: Workforce Education Preparatory
Length of Course: 11 weeks
Prerequisite: WEB110
Course Description:
The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to the elements of traditional typography as it will apply to your web design career.
Course Goals:
Students will gain a hands on experience with various typographic techniques while designing a logo for themselves that they will implement into a portfolio website for themselves.
Course Outcomes:
Upon successful completion of WEB112, the student will be able to:
- Use the principles of typography to communicate information effectively including: legibility, letter-spacing, leading, weight, height and overall typographic principal and scale
- Incorporate effective typography for the web into web-related projects
Required Text:
- The Complete Manual of Typography, by James Felici
Recommended Texts:
- Logo Savvy: Top Brand Design Firms Share their Naming and Identity Strategies, by Perry Chua & Dann Ilicic
- Design-it-Yourself Graphic Workshop: The Step-by-Step Guide, by Chuck Green
Evaluation Methods:
Your final grade will be a culmination of your Class Assignments:
- Assignments will create an overall Class Project to be presented at the end of the quarter
- Assignments require critical thinking and problem solving skills
- Assignments will be “assigned” each week according to the class schedule
- Assignments will be “due” by the end of the week according the class schedule
- Students are responsible for assignment information on assignment pages
- Students are also responsible for assignment information given in class
- Assignments will be marked down 25% for every week they are late
ADA Confirmation:
(Americans with Disabilities Act) If you need course adaptations or accommodations because of a disability, if you have emergency medical information to share with me, or if you need special arrangements in case the building must be evacuated, please contact me ASAP.
A nice tool for testing your text and font css (though they leave out line height): http://www.typetester.org/
I found a great website for tons of free fonts. I just needed more “script” fonts and downloaded a zipped file of about 25 different ones in no time.
http://www.fontslog.com
So You Need a Font?
(We love flow charts…)
http://julianhansen.com/index.php?/alternative-type-finder/
StandardZilla! The link below tells you how to check your site in 30 secs
http://www.standardzilla.com/2007/05/15/how-to-evaluate-your-website-in-30-seconds/
Typography cartoon about one of our least favorite fonts…
http://xkcd.com/590/
Because less CSS is more! If you check the link i’ve included below, you’ll see that something new is possibly afoot in the land of CSS and that is poosible to do ‘less css’ using ‘LESS’.
Less allows for variables, mix-ins, operations and other stuff like that — I’m still trying to understand it but i think it’s exciting and if I’ had a twitter account i’d finally have something to give a tweet about
-Max
http://lesscss.org/
This site offers over a thousand logos (most of them really nice) which people can rate on a scale of one-to-ten so you can see how the world ‘views’ the logos. I disagree with most of the ratings and I think most of you will too, but by looking at them you can see how brand loyalty and brand experience play into what does or doesn’t make a logo ‘good’: http://www.goodlogo.com/top.250/n/250/interval/1
Eat your words in tasty Helvetica…
http://www.thecoolist.com/helvetica-cookie-cutters-by-beverly-hsu/
Mike – A friend who is a graphic designer, web developer and writer, has written a series of Typography for “McSweeney’s Online Habit”. They are fun and interesting and blends the history of typography with the history of the world.
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/hellbox/
A bold headline never goes out of style…
http://www.theonion.com/content/magazine/aids_after_nearly_30_years_it