Coordinator/Contact: William Magrino
Course Description:
Information Design is project-focused. Students learn about design and software primarily by creating: brochures, flyers, newsletters, manuals, and information graphics, plus a final project of their own invention.
Students create these user-friendly publications in a series of focused modules, so that the semester plays out as a set of mini-courses, each with short readings and exercises stressing user-centered design. Along the way we practice audience-awareness, collaboration, peer critique, editing, writing, and visual design. Students spend the final third of the course developing an independent project, which they formally present to the class for feedback before final submission. Students interested in previewing the mindset of the course should peruse the Info Design blog, the best source for current information in the field.
Please note that students may take this course in conjunction with CESEP (formerly known as CASE): students doing so will devise a final project to fit their CASE Community Partner's needs.
Course Texts:
Kostelnick, Designing Visual Language
Straub, Creating a Newsletter…
Williams, Non-Designers Design Book
Grading:
Homework & Class Participation 10%
Usability Journal 10%
Small Projects 20%
Midterm 10%
Final Project & Presentation 50%
