Terms

Jan 18
0

1/17/16

Posted by | Terms, Truly Wu | No Comments

Reading/Typographic design

Chapter 2 was quite helpful unraveling the mystery of how most websites are creatively built with beautiful and intricate appearances. Developing and creating a single style sheet is definitely the most essential key to the internal world of creating a good looking website. Although there are a lot of rules to be remembered, the reading still helped me to understand the basic structures; as far as, how to use styles and style sheets. Creating an external style sheet seems very interesting because it does not contain any HTML so it is different compared to creating an internal style sheet where we need to have the <style> tag and always remember to close it at the end.

The term I have is CMS, because they are often used in websites, such as blogs and news. So for my typographic design, I decided to have a similar concept as if I was writing the definition in a blog. I created this compact blog theme by using Gill sans semi bold for the heading and light weight for the actual definition. The reason I chose this font is that it looks profound and “many consider it to be quintessential British type style” which can portray CMS in a very disciplined manner, while not lacking its own unique style.

GRPH325_Wu_Truly_Assignment01

 

Jan 18
0

1.13.16

Posted by | Leah Urbank, Terms | No Comments

Class

During class, as always, the work is fast and dense, but I felt I learned a great deal. Coding is something that was completely foreign to me in the past, so I was happy to have the chance to get down and dirty with some code, so to speak. Codecademy.com is a great resource, and I look forward to more of the lessons, as they are easy to understand and easy to flip back through, so I can freely go over some of the content I had gone over once.

Reading

This was the first dive into the CSS sheets, and while I didn’t know about them initially, the reading was clear and made it seem quite simple and borderline self-explanatory. While reading, the explanations of Internal and External style sheets really interested me. I didn’t realize that there was even an option to not imbed the CSS into the HTML. It seemed to make sense that you would do it all in one place if you could, so the explanation on how it taxes the machine to have the CSS embedded makes it hard to edit was a welcome one. I find it much easier for me to remember things if I know why they are that way, so it makes logic sense, rather than just saying because we said so.

Transmedia Design

For the typesetting of my chosen term, I wanted to do something rather clean and modern. I did not want there to be a struggle to read the text, so I wanted to let the type speak for itself.

My choices for typefaces are Caslon for the header, and Univers for the body. I only did a small amount of kerning and moving around of the body texts. No crazy stragglers and no hyphens.

GRPH325_Urbank_Leah_TransmediaDesignDefinition

Jan 18
0

Universal Type

Posted by | Charles Wetzel, Terms | No Comments

Having spent a solid 3-4 hours with the concept of “Universal Type,” I realize that what I thought this definition would be and what I think it is are very different. I was expecting something like a standard, sans-serif font comprised of the typical character-sets most font families have available. Helvetica instantly came to mind. But my notion of a universal typeface was not nearly as grand in scope as the idea that Tim Brown puts forth in this video posted last August. To attempt define Universal Type in a singular idea is almost impossible. What Tim wants is not a single typeface, but really the tools and expertise to create dynamic typography for all digital platforms; even future technologies or interfaces that have yet to be developed. He’s already thinking past the physical devices and get his audience to consider digital typography more abstractly and on a worldwide scale.

Tim is currently developing tools to reach this confluence of creative power + typographic harmony. Here are three found on his website:

  1. Adobe Typekit – Adobe’s easy to use typography layout tool for web-based type. Tim is currently the Type Manager for Adobe Typekit.
  2. Modular Scale – Software that builds compositions on values from modular scales, creating balance and beauty not found in programs that use whole numbers.
  3. WebFont Specimen – A site where type designers can see what their fonts look like on the web in a variety of formats and platforms

Tim is involved many more programs than just these three. The various overlaps and slight difference in focus of each program create an ethereal venn diagram working towards defining something like a “Universal Type.”

Aside from Tim Brown’s hardwork, check out the fun project the BIC company (the famous ballpoint pen manufacturers) at this site where they are creating a Universal Typeface from an aggregate of digitally-drawn submissions from people all over the world! Check it out here and add your own submission to this ongoing experiment.

UniversalType-01

Jan 16
0

1/13/2016

Posted by | Ally Frame, Terms | No Comments

The second day of class we dived into some more technical terms. These were harder for me to understand because if I can’t actually see how something works it’s very hard for me to understand it. One of the things that confused me was the FTP (file transfer protocol). We used fetch in class for an FTP and it’s pretty easy to maneuver through however it’s just frustrating not understanding how exactly it’s doing what it does. We also learned about WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). Dreamweaver is an example of this. I feel like I understand this term more so. Dreamweaver shows you exactly what the coding looks like and that’s exactly what it will look like on the webpage. At least that’s how I understand it.

We started using Code Academy online to practice basic HTML coding. I was really getting the hang of that and enjoyed it quite a bit. I see how HTML helps set up the basic structure and CSS will add all the pretty stuff. In chapter two of the reading it discussed some CSS basics. There two main elements to a style, the selector and the declaration block. In the declaration block you define the property and value to change. Honestly, coding so far is not nearly as confusing as I though it would be. You just have to break down all of the parts. Once we start coding our definitions though, it will probably get a little trickier trying to make it look like the way I have it in Illustrator.

The term I have is multisensory type. There is no actual definition for this term. I just explored the website typetasting.com to see how the creator of the website describes multisensory type. From my understanding it’s basically just using type choices carefully to evoke certain emotions, experiences, and associations in the viewer. The creator actually does workshops though where you can match fonts to different smells or foods. On a subconscious level we all match specific senses to typefaces and she aims to study that so designers can use it to their advantage. Since multisensory type isn’t in the dictionary I made my definition sheet into a dictionary type entry but more colorful. I wanted to keep it elegant with clean type.

multisensoryType-definition

Jan 14
0

January 13, 2016

Posted by | Shawnee Johns, Terms | No Comments

While creating the word definition sheet, I wanted to make the acronym the biggest on the page.  I wanted the letters to be sans-serif, but not stiff looking.  The font I chose to emulate how I interpret Cascading Style Sheet is “Coradium” which I felt look more rounded, but still formal.  The other two fonts I chose were “Sathu” and “Cochin.”  I wanted a serif font to offset the primary sans-serif font.  “Chochin” wasn’t as thick and rounded as the serif font I normally use and felt like a good fit overall.  “Sathu”  is a sans-serif as well, but I thought complemented “Coradium.”  I also looked for readability on screen while choosing my fonts.  The color scheme is subdue and isn’t normally my style, but it felt right for the piece given the font.  For the most part, I get a sixties/seventies vibe on the overall piece.  I chose three definitions, one from the book, one from the internet, and my own definition.

 

johns_interactivedesign_cssdesignpage_20162

Jan 14
0

11.13.16

Posted by | Emily Gauger, Terms | No Comments

In class today I learned a lot of terms that I didn’t know before including php, ftp, and what it means to be dynamically generated. The big word of the day in class was a WYSIWYG which is the ‘indesign’ of webages. An example of this is DreamWeaver which I used for the first time in class today as well. It was actually fairly simple! I coded in HTML back around 7th grade, and to my surprise, as I started doing it again in class today, some of the information was coming back to me and it was a lot more simple than I had anticipated which was a relief.

We also chose our term that we will be researching. I chose “human centered design”. I did some quick research on it tonight and found out from http://hcdi.brunel.ac.uk/files/What%20is%20Human%20Centred%20Design.pdf that it “is based on the use of techniques which communicate, interact, empathise and stimulate the people involved, obtaining an understanding of their needs, desires and experiences which often transcends that which the people themselves actually realised.” I think its really interesting, I like the idea of including viewers in the experience with more than just site. I’ve begun typesetting my word with its definition and its looking a bit bland so I need to figure out a way to spice it up.

When I created my term and definitions, I made multiple variations that I couldn’t decide. I uploaded the whole document to box and the link below will bring you directly to the file.

Gauger Typeset Term

HCDdefinition

Jan 13
0

Jake Headid post 2

Posted by | Jake Headid, Terms | No Comments

The word I signed up for is user experience, but you might see it referred to as UX. Prior to hunting down the exact definition I had a pretty decent idea on what the term meant, but it’s nice to know the actual definition. Since UX is my word, I wanted to mimic an experience I enjoy which is the experience when using a mac computer. Though my term isn’t User Interface; which would refer more to the systems software or operating system, I really enjoy my experience when using a Mac.

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