ART 3463
The Digital Page - Spring 2003

Syllabus
The purpose of this course
There are several goals for this course. First to build you knowledge of digital tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark Xpress and Dreamweaver. With these tools you will explore four fundamental aspects of design, typography, compositional elements and principles of the page design, concept development, and the design process. Ultimately, the goal is to further enhance and grow your design and compositional skills to gain a higher level of maturity in your work.

Assignments, projects, grading and attendance
There will be several weekly assignments. These are designed to build your knowledge of design in general as well as contribute to the research for our projects. It is important to keep up with these. They will become part of your grade for participation. You will also keep an ideabook/sketchbook (research). For our two projects we will be working with an actual client. The client will come for research, creative, and progress report meetings throughout the semester. Participation and attendance is important and will be a significant factor in your grade for the course. Because we are working for a professional client, it is important to be as professional as possible.

Grading
Grading will be based on a 100 point scale broken down in the following way:

Your “book” (the idea/sketchbook) will be turned in on Tuesdays. I will check them over briefly in class or keep them until the next class (Thursdays). Use this to sketch, doodle, paint, collage, write and paste your notes, research, brainstorming and ideas about projects or whatever. MAKE IT CREATIVE! You are all artists. You are all capable of FUN! Let's see it.

This will become a source (your bible) for our projects. This book is a place to be creative and to map out ideas before you sit at the computer. It is also a big chunk of the grade for this course. I can be impressed by your book's content which can improve the grade of your projects. On the other hand, if your book is undeveloped, lacking at least an attempt to be creative, this can hurt the grade of your projects -- the book is important!

Participation is especially important for giving feedback during critiques and the research phase (brainstorming etc.) of the design process. We will discuss this in more detail as we develop the first project.

Attendance and deadlines will affect your grade. If you have perfect attendance, you will receive a bonus of 5 points added to your final grade for the course. If you miss a day scheduled for a critique, you will lose 5 points from your final grade for that project. If you consistantly miss a deadlines for assignments, it will reflect poorly in your grade for participation. If you miss more than 5 classes I recommend you drop the course. If you are having problems with attendance, please talk to me about it as early as possible.

Course Materials
Textbook - Layout Index by Jim Krause, and The Quark Xpress 4 for Macintosh Quickstart Guide by Elaine Weinmann
1 Sketch/ideabook
You will need to store and back up any work you do on the computer. Loosing your project because you did not save your work in more than one place is not an excuse for not having your work finished. So, back up your work.
Use CD -R’s or Zip 100’s for this.

Digital Studio Hours
The Digital Studio will be open during regular business hours (8AM to 5PM) or on evenings when the lab managers are working. We will have a schedule outside the door of the Studio soon. We will have a new card lock on the door soon. When it is installed, you will have access to the Studio with your ID card from 7AM to 11PM weekdays and 9AMto 9PM on weekends.

Contact
Office: RFA 243. Phone: 230-5020. If I don’t answer, leave a message. E-mail: stoddad@hsu.edu
My office hours will be posted outside my office soon.