Publication Design (CD2320)

Parsons Communication Design and Technology

Irwin Chen

irwin.chen@gmail.com

Overview and Objectives

The original promise of the Web to radically democratize publishing has only recently begun to be realized with the explosion of blogging, online journaling, and social networking sites like MySpace and Flickr. This course will explore the historical roots and evolution of publishing technologies, markup languages (HTML and XML), and style sheets (CSS) through a wider examination of the revolution of movable type to the on-going development of the Web. Students will learn the fundamentals of typography, page layout, and image treatment with current web browsers in mind, how to create semantically correct HTML in combination with current stylesheet techniques. Prerequisites: Type 1, Communication Design 1. Rudimentary knowledge of web coding, and familiarity with modern operating systems will be assumed.

On completion of this course, students will have learned:

• How to write semantically correct, accessible markup (HTML, XML)
  
• Control typography, styling, and layout with CSS
• The history of writing and printing technologies
• Fundamentals of typography
• A process for working collaboratively to develop a product
• Basic Web publishing concepts and methods
  

Evaluation

Students will be expected to attend every class, and will be graded on the completion and quality of two projects.

Attendance: 20%

Midterm Project: 35%

Final Project: 40%

Syllabus

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Sept 7, Week 1

LECTURE: Overview: What is Publishing?

WORKSHOP: Survey of skills/background

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Sept 14, Week 2

LECTURE: Technologies of Writing: Pre-Gutenberg

READING:

• “What is writing and who needs it?” A History of Writing, Albertine Guar, 1992.

• “Reading and Writing”, From Script to Print, H. J. Chaytor, 1945.

• "Evolution of Writing", Dean Allen, http://www.textism.com/writing

WORKSHOP: Establishing a Process

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Sept 21, Week 3

LECTURE: Technologies of Writing: Gutenberg's True Contribution to the Enlightenment

READING:

• “History and Development of Typesetting”, Printing Types, Alexander S. Lawson with Dwight Anger, 1990.

• “Enlightenment Origins”, Modern Typography, Robin Kinross, 1992.

WORKSHOP:

• Semantic Markup Exercise
• View Source

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Sept 28, Week 4

LECTURE: From Print to Hypertext

READING:

• Wikipedia: Hypertext, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext

• As We May Think, Vannevar Bush, July 1945, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush

• The Elements of Typography Style Applied to the Web, Richard Rutter, Brighton, 2005, http://webtypography.net/

ADDITIONAL READING:

• ENQUIRE WITHIN

WORKSHOP:

• Hyperlinking
• Controlling Typography with CSS

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Oct 5, Week 5

LECTURE: The Separation of Data and Display

READING:

• “Web History Primer”

• World Wide Web Consortium website

• SGML History

WORKSHOP:

• Controlling color and images with CSS

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Oct 12, Week 6

LECTURE: The Page

READING:

• Wikipedia: Jan Tschichold

• Grid Systems In Graphic Design, Josef Muller-Brockmann

• Designing Grid Systems for the Web, Mark Boulton, http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/five_simple_steps_to_designing_grid_systems_part_1/

WORKSHOP:

• Controlling position with CSS
• Designing a Grid System

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MIDTERM

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Oct 19, Week 7

LECTURE: The Display Layer

READING:

• CSS Zen Garden

WORKSHOP:

• Thirteen ways of looking at a web page (one data source, multiple style sheets)

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Oct 26, Week 8

LECTURE: The Web and the Expansion of the Public Domain

READING:

• Project Gutenberg FAQ

• “Scan This Book!”, The New York Times Magazine, Kevin Kelly, May 14, 2006

WORKSHOP:

• The Reader Project: The Ground Rules
  

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Nov 2, Week 9

LECTURE: The Death of the Page

READING:

• “Industrialization and new technology,” A History of Writing, Albertine Gaur
• "A visual vocabulary for describing information architecture and interaction design", Jesse James Garrett, March 6, 2002, http://www.jjg.net/ia/visvocab/

WORKSHOP:

• Basics of Information Architecture
  
• Modularization
• Reader Project
  

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Nov 9, Week 10

LECTURE: The Browser Wars

READING:

• Wikipedia: The Browser Wars

• “The future of HTML, Part 1: WHATWG”

WORKSHOP:

• Coding for Compatibility
• Reader Project
  

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Nov 16, Week 11

LECTURE: Data and Meta-Data

READING:

• “Web 2.0: Data, Metadata, and Interface”

• “A Really, Really, Really Good Introduction to XML”, Tom Myer, August 24th, 2005

WORKSHOP:

• Writing XML
• Reader Project
  

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Nov 23, Week 12

LECTURE: Google and The Deep Web

READING:

• “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine”, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, 1998

• Deep Web

WORKSHOP:

• Along came a spider...Search Simulation Exercise
• Reader Project
  

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Nov 30, Week 13

Final Project Presentation