Decoding New York

From Decoding New York

Spring 2007 Instructors: CHC at Hunter College ITFs: Bertie Ferdman, Cristina Yunzal-Butler, Russell Hogg, Clayton McCarl, Christine Hegel

This workshop is designed to help you plan your websites by thinking about visual design principles and content editing for the web. When adapting your seminar research projects for the web, you will have to think about how the material needs to be edited and what your layout should look like to make the material readable, navigable, and visually stimulating.

Contents 1 Initial Considerations: Focus and Target Audience 2 Visual Design 3 Writing for the Web 4 Neighborhood Websites for Analysis

Initial Considerations: Focus and Target Audience

Examine the following two neighborhood-related sites. What is their focus? Who are their target audiences? What visual and textual clues can help you answer these questions?

• http://www.coneyislandusa.com/

• http://www.artseensoho.com/

Who is your target audience for the seminar 2 web site project? How will that audience impact how you choose content and design your site?

Visual Design

• What are the elements of visual design?

• • http://www.digital-web.com/articles/principles_of_design/

• What are the five most important principles you will focus on when considering the design of your site?

Writing for the Web

• How do we read on the web? Do we approach web pages differently than print text, and if so, how?
  • http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

• What are some strategies for creating effective text for web pages?

• • http://www.efuse.com/Design/web_writing_basics.html

• Which are the five most important characteristics of effective web writing that you'll focus on when creating your web site?

Neighborhood Websites for Analysis

Using the two lists you've created above, analyze two of the neighborhood websites from previous years. How well do they handle the elements of visual design and web writing that you have decided are most important? If these were your websites, how would you handle the text editing and visual design differently?

http://web.honorscollege.cuny.edu/student-projects/neighborhoods/lower_east/index.html

http://web.honorscollege.cuny.edu/student-projects/2005/neighborhoods/5/index.html

http://web.honorscollege.cuny.edu/student-projects/neighborhoods/jackson_heights/index.html

Other sample student websites can be found here:

http://web.honorscollege.cuny.edu/index.php?id=906