Here are the week by week topics that you are required to respond to with a post of your own. There’s really no required format for how you go about developing your response. That said, I encourage you to be creative in the approach, style and structure that you employ. Like I said in class, a real asset that you guys bring to the table is your ability to write well. Leverage that ability by honing your craft and finding your voice. There’s nothing stopping any of you from becoming, amongst other things, published critics of interactive media.
Week-by-Week List of Topics
Week 1: “Toward An Aesthetics of Transition” by Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn
Chapter from the book, Rethinking Media Change.
Week 2: “Stitch Bitch” by Shelley Jackson
Chapter from the book, Rethinking Media Change.
Week 3: Formalism and Post-Modernism
Chapters from our textbook, Why Is That Art?.
For this week’s blog post, discuss formalism and post-modernism both in relation to each other but also compared to realism and expressionism.
Week 4: Helvetica
A documentary film by Gary Hustwit.
A documentary on, yes, Helvetica the typeface, but also on broad issues of typography and type design.
Week 5: Artist Series with Hillman Curtis
Short video/interviews of renowned graphic designers (plus one design firm).
Week 6: Story of Stuff
Lots to ponder here. Great example of digital media convergence! Make sure to watch at least one of the “stories” — stuff, electronics, cap and trade, bottled water, subsidies, or cosmetics — so you can really understand all the different types of media that are being leveraged.
Week 7: Journalism In the Age of Data
Excellent discussion of information and data visualization seen through the lens of journalism.
Week 8: Short Films
Watch at least one of the selections of short films produced by Hillman Curtis (except for “Movement Study”). Comment on the narrative devices, film-making techniques, editing choices, characters, etc. in the film(s) that you watch.
Week 9: Pica Towers
Watch the three short animations in the Pica Towers trilogy created by Marc Craste and Studio AKA: The Good News, Hounds of Flesh, and Pizza Sangre. (Make sure you watch them in that order.) Comment on the narrative devices, film-making techniques, character designs, etc.
Week 10: Art of the Title and/or Forget the Film, Watch the Titles!
Watch a handful of title sequences. Find some that are typographically interesting to you and analyze them in your post. Address questions such as the following: What do you see?; why do you like it?; what makes the design and animation effective at conveying the spirit of the film or at hinting at its content?
Week 11: Select documentaries on broadcast designers.
Watch at least one of the following from the documentaries section of Lynda.com. These four are all, in some way, related to motion graphics and broadcast design. (When you click the link above you’ll be taken to the list of all 47 documentaries–hey, maybe you should watch all of them. You’ll find the following four in the list. If you click on one of them you’ll be taken to the page with the video segments. Clicking on the button that says “description” will give you a brief overview of what you’ll be shown and why these people and/or agencies are significant.)
1. Rick Morris: Motion graphics designer.
2. Harry Marks: Broadcast designer
3. Troika Design Group: Design and branding agency
4. Dale Herigstad and Schematic: Interactive design agency
Week 12: Thirty Conversations On Design
Watch three–or, at your leisure, watch more than three!–of the short videos on design. There are many to choose from. Make sure to look through both the 2009 and 2010 sets to see all of the possibilities.
Week 13: Edward Tufte: iPhone Interface Design
Watch the short video that features Edward Tufte talking through the advantages and successes (and occasional flaws) of the iPhone as an interface.
Week 14: 79 Short Essays On Design by Michael Bierut
Selected essays from graphic designer Michael Bierut. (These are in PDF format on Moodle.)
Week 15: Musings.
This week’s blog post doesn’t require you to watch or read anything. Yeah? Yeah! Instead, I want you to think and write about visual aesthetics. What have you learned this semester that impacts the way you approach the design of visual communication content? Why is having an understanding of visual aesthetics important (or not) when the artifacts being created are interactive? How will your increased sophistication with visual content impact the choices you make about the potential direction of your career?