need ideas for web design class

[erova]

hi everyone,

so this fall i'm teaching a web design course at the Corcoran College of Art & Design and am interested in hearing from folks here at FK who have taken web design classes in college.

were there any exercises/assignments/tasks that you really thought were effective? or did anything really suck about it?

just curious if i can borrow some ideas or improve upon stuff that's already been going on in the classroom.

thanks!
chris

[Markp.com]

Ours had a "design an intro for a website" project... shows how idiotic my lecturers were!

What level/age are you teaching? (our college is 16-19 year olds)...

[gerbick]

Erova... please talk about typography. Discourage multiple, unassociated fonts. Talk about color palettes - that's something that people tend to overlook. Complimentary and supporting color palettes are oft-overlooked.

I took 2 years of typography as well as color theory and it stuck with me. I'm almost a font snob when it comes down to fonts - I make a lot of my own, edit some others, and research fonts like it's homework.

Ergonomics and logical layouts - all theory - need to be also brought up. Just my opinion. The technology side, I'm sure you'll have that covered.

[erova]

Ours had a "design an intro for a website" project... shows how idiotic my lecturers were!

What level/age are you teaching? (our college is 16-19 year olds)...

sorry for not bein more specific--these students will mostly be 18 to 22 years old, and will already have a decent art/design background as they have to have a portfolio review for admission.

gerbs--you're spot on. i'm definitely not just trying to teach 14 weeks of dreamweaver and rollovers...i really want to make this a worthy effort for these students and not just a community college technical class with an art school price tag.

[admedia]

Sorry I have never had a web design course. It might be fun though to look at some examples of bad design to mix up the serious design theory for some comic relief every once and a while.

[PAlexC]

Is this just design for the web, or are you teaching them technical skills?

Impress upon them to step back and think about how a user will experience the site. How they'll react to navigation, etc.

[lefteyewilly]

...i really want to make this a worthy effort for these students and not just a community college technical class with an art school price tag.

hey hey hey now...you can learn alot from a community college outside of technical crap.

Refrains from fighting...sorry

[Sybersnake]

i'd like to teach a flash course, tho the pay would probably suck, so maby not. lol :P

gerbick has some really good comments.

[Sybersnake]

Sorry I have never had a web design course. It might be fun though to look at some examples of bad design to mix up the serious design theory for some comic relief every once and a while.

I took web design in high school for 2 weeks, as soon as frontpage came out, i left and never came back.

[Markp.com]

Oh, you're so wrong! I ran a three day course, £300 a day, I only worked about 4 hours... it was amazing!

[indivision]

be sure to have at least one class where you focus on the evils of banners and pop-up ads.

seems like a very broad subject to cover, unless there is already a focus?

[zakp0]

Go with Gerbs. DEFINATELY talk about typography. At uni, in design classes (not web design, rather graphics design and product design and all), we were kept under pressure all the time. The pressure forced us to make better stuff in less time.

I say teach your students how to handle pressure.

[david petley]

stylesheets...do a zen garden type of project.

dp

[Markp.com]

stylesheets...do a zen garden type of project.

dp

Oooowww... good idea... a totally CSS site project would be great! I'd have loved to have been taught that at uni... you know, something useful, rather than "this is a shape tween"

[erova]

hey hey hey now...you can learn alot from a community college outside of technical crap.

Refrains from fighting...sorry

yeah, you're definitely right, and i didn't mean to imply that a CC course was inferior--but i meant that it would have a different focus than a continuing education course, that's all.

i basically plan to really stress the xhtml/css side of things, only a bit of flash (there's already a flash curriculum that i'm not teaching).

thanks for the ideas of subject matter--definitely appreciated. has anyone had any in-class or take-home assignments that were especially rewarding or frightening?

[PAlexC]

stylesheets...do a zen garden type of project.

This is the best idea I've seen in the CL in months.

[Sybersnake]

Oh, you're so wrong! I ran a three day course, £300 a day, I only worked about 4 hours... it was amazing!

I want that job.

[Sybersnake]

This is the best idea I've seen in the CL in months.

i don't agree with zen garden, they just give you examples and some tutorials. Several are using exact positioning, not relative. Theory must be learned first. I don't like quick fixes to a problem.

[Markp.com]

I want that job.

Shame its only a once a year gig! Or else I'd do it 24x7!

[erova]

i was thinking of doing a zen garden project with students' resumes--get them to design 2 or 3 completely different styles with non-changing markup. should be interesting. i dont think that will be too early in the class though!