Week 16A

Today the class will review all of the artist pages. Students will make a presentation of their work. A final critique to discuss, each designer, explain the web design and development of project.

This is what my Paul Klee's webpage looks like:

Week 15B

Continues to work on Klee website. Just a few adjustments and it will be ready.

Week 15A

Continue to work on Klee's website. Many challenges still to overcome. I am puzzled as to why there are links on the text words. nothing that I can notice on my html. I will need to see this with fresh eyes.
The sections colors are not the final ones, but I wanted to have clear boundaries of the regions, as I continue to work on them.

Week 14A Out of Class Work

Thanksgiving break. Many family commitments during this holiday. I spent time reading a great amount of information from different sources to apply to my Klee website. There is still a lot of work to be done, but I manage to create some original buttons to be placed on the main section of the website, that will link to the corresponding text and images.

A few color changes. Now it is more unified

My illustration of Klee based on a photo portrait

Week 14A

Today, Professor Pannafino assigned a 30 minute exercise to design a logo for the English Dept of Millersville University.

The rest of the class was spent working on Klee's website.
I am still tweeking things, and trying to figure out how to apply the layout I designed. In the meantime, this is what I have:

desired layout

Week 13B Out of Class Work

I organized the web regions better, but I am still working on the classes and divisions.

Week 13B

I kept on working on Klee's website, and met with prof. Pannafino for a short 1-on-1. My design is clear, no bells and whistles. Prof. Pannafino gave me tips on how to organize my space. I feel I have a better understanding of how to proceed.

My design so far. It is not near close what I want it to be.

Prof. Pannafino's suggestions on how to organize regions

Week 13A Out of Class Work

Still figuring out how to make Paul Klee's website. I managed to create some classes in CSS, and write part of the content in HTML

Week 13A

In class, prof. Pannafino prompted the students to work in groups to execute an exercise. The idea was to write in html and instruction to change an image for another when the cursor or mouse hover on it.
It took us a while to research consistent information on the web. There were several approaches but we were unsure on how to link the images, but we succeeded at last.
Prof. Pannafino demonstrated how to create a link within the text.

Week 12B Out of Class Work

For the upcoming website design of artist Paul Klee. I created the image for the header of the page.

This may still have a few changes. I continue to research how to present the elements in HTML and CSS.

Interactive Design Conference

The conference held on McComsey Hall, Millersville University on November 16th, presented four professionals of different disciplines and backgrounds, who work the field of design.

Justin Kunkel, director of strategy of ANDCULTURE, a design agency based in Harrisburg, PA had a lot to say. He defined himself as an user experience designer, not a graphic artist. Kunkel started out as an architecture student, but quickly shifted to English and Philosophy. For him, the most important aspects of his job are his ability to solve problems and his communication skills. His advice to the attendees:

• Recognize design as a PROCESS
• Think Holistically
• Learn Consciously and APPLY constantly
• EMPHATHIZE always
• DEVOUR information
• RESEARCH design

The next presenter, Robert Deraco ( prefers to be called Bobby), a self-made professional, owner of SYNAPSE, agency located in Lancaster, PA, had seven lesson for the audience:

1. Never stop learning
2. Data sells ideas
3. If you think hiring a professional is expensive, try hiring an amateur
4. It costs $200 to turn a bolt
5. Think Code, but speak at level
6. Your mom is the user
7. Chaos is profitable

Joshua Buckwalter, Creative director at INOVAT, and president of AIGA Central PA. He is also a musician and has a band, so many of his early efforts were designing the artwork for the CDs and promos. Also, talked about learning from one's mistakes. He emphasized the importance to start somewhere, but to be smart and move on quickly. Buckwalter explained his personal experience at Clipper Magazine, and later  redesigning and rebranding for The Mailbox, a site of resources for teachers.

The last presenter, Aaron Chu, a web engineer, Millersville University alum, and currenty a front-end developer for Huge Inc, a New York based agency. Chu, originally from Hong Kong, was exposed early on to Japanese animation. Sailor Moon had quite an impact during his childhood, and prompted him to research further the symbolism present in the series. His studies opened new worlds of knowledge to him; from Buddhism to Roman mythology. He has special interest in sculpture and contemporary art.
Chu advised the  audience to be confident, and pay attention to details.

Week 12B

Prof. Pannafino explained several steps to distribute and divide the space using html and css. He also explained how to use google fonts and include them in the webpage we are designing.Now I have a better understanding about how to indicate a wrapper and float boxes on the page.

Google Fonts

my sketch so far

Week 12A Out of Class Work

Work on Sketch in color

Week 12A

Evaluated several websites to get ideas on how each student will develop their websites

www.bestwebgallery.com showcases websites considered successful

Use X-Ray Googles app to examine how the elements are distributed. Also sketched ideas to create a layout later

Week 11B Out of Class Work

For the structure of an HTML document, one must first indicate what type of document it is going to be, so the browser knows what’s going on. This is a practice that came with HTML5, write  <!DOCTYPE HTML>

Typical elements in HTML are:

<html>

<head>

<title>

</title>

</head>

<body>

<p>

</p>

</body>

</html>

There are also a series of elements that have become obsolete, like frame, plaintext, center, blink, space,... Now these elements or attributes are accomplished in CSS.

HTML handles whitespace in a particular way. One can put many lines in between the written information, and when it’s seen in the browser, it’s like no lines were there, so in order to show space one has to tag it as pre instead of p, which stands for Pre-Formatted Text.

These are guidelines for writing HTML:

• Focus on writing clean, efficient code
• Structure the HTML so that it ads meaning to the content
• Don’t focus on styling when initially structuring code
• Well-structure code is much easier to style

             Source: Lynda.com

CSS, Cascading Style Sheet, is a language created to control the appearance of pages of HTML. One could say they work together,  and it determines how items are going to be displayed. CSS contains formatting rules that will govern how elements are displayed.

Week 11B

Prof Pannafino sent instructions to watch 20 videos regarding HTML and CSS at Lynda.com.

As of 10:01 EST, this is what I watched so far

CSS videos, I'll need to watch again, and probably watch the whole course section for it to be clearer.

What I watched on CSS. 11:05 EST