Courses




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Web Design: Crafting Micro Enterprises [TOC]

Crafting Micro Enterprises

In this course, students will learn the ins and outs of web design by crafting their own micro enterprises in order to create websites for ecommerce, marketing, blogs, education, and portfolio purposes. Students will design their own products, learn how to conduct market and audience research, design graphics, and demonstrate best practices in building their own websites using front-end technologies.

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Digital Media and Design for Communication: Aesthetics [TOC]

Aesthetics

In this course, students will develop a cohesive aesthetic across media inspired by their own interests. Students will learn how to use industry-leading technologies and software to create raster and vector graphics as well as print/web layouts, and polished videos. Students will develop critical perspectives on media consumption and creation while learning intermediate skills in design and imagining for visual communication in print, web, social media, and time-based media. The course focuses on conceptual thinking and problem-solving in the development and production of digital media projects.

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Visual Methods: Trompe L'oeil [TOC]

Trompe L'oeil

In this course, we will study how trompe l'oeil, the artistic and scientific endeavor to trick the eye, can be applied to photography, vector illustration, video, and 3D objects. We will explore, create, and apply magic, optical illusion, perspective, and special effects to our creative projects, learning tricks in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects.

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Interactive Methods: Magic Books [TOC]

Magic Books

In this course, we will learn the principles of digital interactivity by studying magic books, including choose-your-own-adventure gamebooks, interactive picturebooks, and augmented reality books. This course will be divided into four units of interactivity: text, image, surface, and material. We will consider how to translate or adapt interactive books using hyperlinked text with Twine, animated images with Scratch, and augmented reality with AR.js and 3D modeling. In addition, students will enhance their design and coding skills with Canva, Tinkercad, and Autodesk Slicer. This course will engage with concepts of 1) subverting expectations of the book, 2) defining interactivity and interactive books, and 3) considering bookmaking as a technological process. Students will prototype print, digital, and hybrid interactive books throughout the semester. For our final unit and project, students will learn how to incorporate sensors, paper circuitry, CNC cutting technology, or other mixed materials to create an interactive digital magic book.

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Coding for Humanists: Escape Rooms [TOC]

Escape Rooms

In this course, we will become escape room designer extraordinaires! We will first craft a persuasive narrative themed around a humanities topic to engage our players in their quest. We will then learn how to use HTML to format text, CSS to design and style our site, and JavaScript to create the actions and responsiveness to the puzzles for our virtual escape room. We will use CodePen to tinker with our code and GitHub to host our assets. In addition to traditional web design coding, we will also play with physical computing using Tinkercad Circuits and Arduinos to see how coding can interact with the physical world to create an escape room puzzle.

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Visual Methods: Aesthetics [TOC]

Aesthetics

In this course, we will learn the principles of raster, vector, code, and motion visual design. We will explore, create, and apply individual aesthetics to our creative projects, especially photography, print graphics/digital fabrication, web design, and motion graphics/animation/video.

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Film, New Media, & Culture: Disney+Technology [TOC]

Disney+Technology

In this course, we will learn Disney's role in the history of film technology (synchronized sound animation, multiplane camera, rotoscoping) and explore the representation of technological innovations in Disney+ films and new media.

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