Create Your Account

Beginning Digital Arts - Web Design

PDF Print E-mail

** Please Note: This curriculum was prepared for the YouthLink program which BAVC ran from 2000 through 2006. It is no longer being maintained, so you may find some out of date links and resources. Despite this, we wanted to make this curriculum available for educators to mash up and take what they can use. **

Course Overview

The Beginning YouthLink Digital Arts course is designed to give students a solid foundation in the basics of Web technology and design. Students learn the fundamentals of basic Web skills and applications, developing artistically and technologically through the hands-on creation of one individual Web slide show with at least five pages, and one larger educational Web site focused on a global issue, created with a small team of classmates.

Theory of Learning

The Beginning YouthLink Digital Arts course is a hands-on, project-based approach to learning. In small classroom settings with a five-to-one student-to-teacher ratio, students are supported in their learning with individual attention from instructors, a teaching assistant, and their peers. They are given access to sophisticated tools used in the field of digital arts, and are introduced to new concepts and applications, but with the freedom to experiment with technology and arts. Hands-on technical learning of software applications is supplemented with discussions and activities designed to increase student knowledge of global issues, media literacy, and the professional technology field.


Skill set development

Digital Photography

  • taking photos with a digital still camera suitable for use on the Web
  • describing photos using photographic terms and concepts
  • downloading photos onto the computer

HTML

  • hand-coding a basic page
  • adding paragraphs, and formatting font size, face, and color using attributes
  • adding links, images, and simple layout tables
  • editing and correcting HTML created with a WYSIWYG editor

Content Development

  • Brainstorming ideas for Web projects that meet established goals and are relevant to a specific target audience
  • Using the Internet to gather information and data
  • Utilizing primary source interviews to collect information
  • Documenting and properly referencing information gathered
  • Defining the essential message
  • Writing content for the Web that is readable, relevant, and of interest to the target audience

Project Management

  • Understanding web design roles and processes
  • Planning a complex Web site project
  • Working efficiently and constructively with a Web team

Photoshop

  • designing simple graphics using drawing tools
  • using filters and layer effects
  • resizing, cropping, and rotating photos
  • optimizing images and graphics for the web, and correctly assessing whether the image is best saved as a GIF or JPG
  • designing rollover buttons

Design

  • Evaluating the usability and design of Web sites
  • Translating site goals into a compelling design
  • Choosing complementary and user-friendly colors and fonts
  • Understanding and applying the principles of user-centered design
  • Using digital photos and graphics to enhance a design
  • Using Photoshop to create wireframe layouts
  • Using Photoshop to create design compositions
  • Enhancing designs with blending modes, masks, and layer effects
  • Slicing pages in Photoshop, defining slice areas to plan for programming, and outputting HTML and graphic slices
  • Translating critical feedback into design revisions

Dreamweaver

  • Preparing assets in a site folder and defining a site
  • Creating and formatting basic pages with layout tables, images, paragraphs, colors, and fonts
  • Creating absolute, relative, anchor, and mailto links, both text- and image-based
  • Working with a page sliced in another application, and modifying the resulting table to create an optimal layout template
  • Using stylesheets and templates to maintain a cohesive design
  • Programming rollovers, image maps, and navigation bars to enhance interactivity
  • Making sites more accessible to users with metatags and alt tags

FTP

  • Preparing web site assets and folders for FTP
  • Configuring remote server connection information
  • Establishing an FTP connection and uploading files and folders
  • Determining the URL for files and folders on the world wide web

Quality Assurance (QA)

  • Definitions of terminology for quality assurance
  • Practical application of quality assurance
  • Quality assurance challenges and pitfalls
  • Thoroughly and methodically error-checking a completed site, and resolving issues

Collaborative Site Creation

  • Understanding and circumventing the challenges in working collaboratively on evolving Web projects

Media literacy

  • The role of a media maker
  • Responsibility and ethics related to digital photography and design
  • What open source software is and how it is used
 
[ Back ]

Youth Programs

Support our Curriculum!

BAVC provides all of its curriculum free to instructors and students, but we are a non-profit organization that works hard to keep our resources free for everyone. If you can make a contribution, please do! Thanks.

$