Graphic Design ART 742, On Gathering: Digital Collections and Virtual Events

For first- or second-year graphic design students. This course is part studio, part reading and conversation seminar about online gatherings in two forms: (1) crowdsourced digital collections, and (2) virtual events that activate these collections. The course itself is a gathering. Multidisciplinary practitioners visit and lead discussions with students: half share the use of websites to share collections of field reports and grassroots archives, and half introduce different forms of online events and their facilitation. Through hands-on design projects, readings, and discussions, students delve into different material and social forms of gathering. Workshops include an introduction to GitHub, alternative content management systems, and print-to-web tools. This class is intended for those with a working knowledge of HTML and CSS. JavaScript would be helpful but is not required. Completed projects are expected to be technological in nature.