Week 2a outside of class

I've decided to go outside of my comfort zone and work in a group of 3 for this responsive event website. My portfolio is full of small projects, none of which are developed web designs, so I think that it will be good to not only include a developed web piece but to also work in a group in order to produce better work than I would be able to if I wasn't working collaboratively (I hope!). Anyways, I am partnering up with Alannah and Kira for the project and I'm pretty pumped about it! We discussed a few concepts about what kind of event we would like to do and I think that we all decided on either a "Lancaster Beer Crawl" event or a "Scavenger Hunt" fundraiser. Both of these concepts will be Lancaster based and we will use different places in the city as meet points. We are going to design our website using chalk lettering and a dark rustic feel seeing as none of us have anything dark to showcase in our portfolios. I am excited to see what each of us brings to the table as we work together. Hopefully it'll be a good project!

To brainstorm for this concept and get an idea of where we want to go with our design, I created a Pinterest board with inspirational responsive sites and images.

http://www.pinterest.com/arjames123/event-site/

Week 2a

We started class today by watching a  couple of Youtube videos about responsive design. One was just a basic introduction to responsive design and the other was an interview with the author of our textbook for this class. Pannafino then went on with a lecture about responsive design, introducing us to the core concepts (mobile viewport, breakpoints and media queries, and planning and mockups. We ended the class by being introduced to our first big project where we are to design a responsive 2-3 page website for an event. We are allowed to work in groups of 2-3 or on our own. I spent the rest of class exploring different event websites and also talking with Alannah and Kira about possibly working together.

Week 1 outside of class

1. Bought my book
2. created my blog!
3. I'm not quite sure what this youtube account is, so I'll have to ask Pannafino in class today
4. Read 'responsive_web_design.pdf' foreward, and pg.8-19

I really enjoyed this small reading assignment. It was a really good introduction to the ideas behind responsive web design. The author is also very witty and makes the read fun. I noted that the 3 components of responsive web design are a flexible grid-based layout, flexible images and media, and media queries (a module form the css3 specification). He also mentioned that a 'reset stylesheet' overrides a browser's default styles for HTML elements (I would like some clarity on what exactly a reset stylesheet is?). I was so absorbed in the reading that I actually lost track of where to stop and read a few pages beyond our assignment. I learned about em's and how to calculate them using the 'target px size/context=result'. I thought it was really interesting to learn how the type size would resize itself according to different browser specifications.

Week 1b

Today was the first day of class! YAY. We went over the syllabus and Professor Pannafino's general class rules (attendence, HW expectations, blogging) and also talked about the main gist of the course, which is to learn advanced web design. He introduced us to some of our projects such as having to present interaction design with a group to a high school class, mini projects (where we have an entire class period to finish a small project from start to finish), and then the general grading scale/progress documentation of our bigger projects. What I was most excited to hear about today was our class trip to different design agencies. I am really excited to see different agencies that I am familiar with in the area and how they differ from one another!