Introductory Questions

Michelle H Kim, Interactive Foundations, Fall 2018

Michelle H Kim, Communication Design, junior

I think of design broadly as a means of communicating and creating spaces that facilitate interactions, so I'm interested in all types of design, physical, digital, flat, 3-dimensional. Interactive Foundations is required for Communication Design majors, but I also gained interested in interactive design as I saw my friends' projects last semester and did some html at my summer internship.

We had a small project in Typography 1 last semester, and I Googled my way through my html projects at work.

I hope to learn html, CSS, and JS foundations. I know some solutions but don't have a foundation about the basics to branch out from. I also find the html and CSS that I know quite limiting in the spacing, typefaces, etc. that I can use and want to know how to make it more flexible.

I expect that designing for screen is different from designing for paper in that the audience has their own different screen through which they can consume my content, thus I need to account for those differences (like fonts, size of image, and styles).

I believe Hansje's portfolio website exemplifies effective design because it uses the space effectively, has a nice staggered photo layout but still works within a grid, is clean with enough negative space, and does not have a distracting background or other elements.

The Be Vocal website exemplifies effective communication to me because the visual hierarchy, size, real estate on the page, typeface, location, and most importantly contrast work to bring the words and the messages to the forefront. The logo is also very prominent and the language calls for action.

I think the DABR website works well in that it has strong branding particularly with color, there are intuitive functions like navigation and search buttons, and it feels very complete and resolved with menus and pages. It is also much more approachable than any other real estate website.