Introductory Questions

1. My name is Victoria Xu; I'm a Communication Design major (minors in Biology and HCI) and I'm a junior.


2. I'm from Westchester County, NY, but I have moved around a quite a bit. I am taking this class as part of the Communication Design major requirements, but I am also excited to learn more about CSS. Especially with the explosion of online interactions thanks to the pandemic, design for digital platforms have become ever more important.


3. I have taken one or two HTML workshops as a child and experimented with HTML/CSS for my player profile on an online game quite a few years back, as well. Apart from those familiarities, I haven't used HTML/CSS/JS extensively before.


4. Through this class, I hope to learn more about the process behind styling webpages so I can better design projects for the screen with the developer in mind, as well as be able to comprehend code when presented with it.


5. Digital interfaces have a lot more dynamism in terms of sizes, animations, and interactivity. Thus, there will no doubt be differences between designing for the screen and for paper. Things I feel I would have to keep in mind would include responsive design (to changing screen sizes and mobile interfaces) and accessability (contrast, colorblindness, etc.). Additionally, there are many givens to physical products like magazines that must be actively implemented in digital design, such as subsections and nagivation, due to the breadth of ways one can interact on a digital platform.


6. The Collaborolorio is an architecture studio whose site whose design I find to be visually pleasing and effective. The use of a large, minimalist sans-serif typeface throughout reinforces its branding of modern, clean, Nordic design. Custom cursors are often a risky addition to a web page as they can potentially be distracting, but the dot-shaped cursor on this site moves smoothly, and the way it inverts the color of whatever it hovers over is a unique interaction. Staggering the thumbnails of the studios projects also provides interest as the viewer scrolls down, without compromising readability.


7. The website for IKEA is one I find to exemplify good communication. There is a unified visual language throughout, consisting of rounded sans-serif type and ample negative space, along with rounded icons to match.. The menu opens off to the side, giving the view options to browse by room or by product. The stark contrast between the scale and the weight of the type in this menu makes the different menu categories clear: shopping, articles/inspiration, and account/ordering.


8. Netlify's Million Devs celebration page is a site that combines a strong visual language and engagine interactions to result in a site that works well holistically. On the top left, there is the option to turn animations off, which is a thoughtful feature regarding accessability and empathy for users who potentially have slow internet connections that would hinder the website experience.The animations are smooth and add visual interest without distracting from the information. The incorporation of the illustration path with the text boxes' fade-in transitions prompt the viewer to continue scrolling down. Finally, links open in a new tab to prevent viewers from losing their place in scrolling.