Due Thursday, July 2, 2020

Complete the following readings

1. Laurel Schwulst: My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be? (2018)
2. Orit Gat: Scroll, Skim, Stare (2016)
3. Olia Lialina: Prof. Dr. Style (2010)
Links and/or PDFs for all readings can be found in our library.

Due Friday, July 3, 2020

Focus on your newsletters

RE: Newsletters

1. Begin Research: Subscribe to 3+ newsletters (ones you aren’t already subscribed to). Include these in the message you write for Step 2.
2. Send an email to your classmates, Nick, and I with descriptions of two (2) entirely different ideas for your newsletter and possible content. Include 10 keywords, phrases, images, and/or references, for each direction. (20 total). See Getting Started in the PDF below for help. Let us know what newsletters you signed up for, too.

Due Tuesday, July 7, 2020

RE: Newsletters

1. Based on your own intuition and the feedback you received from your emails on Friday, choose a direction.
2. Begin refining the content and designing two (2) visually distinct drafts of the first email in that direction. Start thinking seriously about content-rich things like Title, Subject Line, a unique email address, and style-rich things like size, color, layout, typography, and how all this might lead to an iterative system.
3. Present your two drafts in class July 7th. Since there are 18 of us, you'll have ~5 minuntes to present, and ~5 minutes for feedback from Nick, your peers, and I.
A note on presentations: show, don't tell. Presentations should be image-heavy. The more we can respond to visually, the more you will get back. Images could include physical sketches, digital wireframes, scans, reference images, screenshots from your mail client, and so on.

Due Thursday, July 9, 2020

First, complete the following readings:

1. J. R. Carpenter: A Handmade Web (2015)
2. Olia Lialina: A Vernacular Web (2005)
3. Kyle Chayka: The Great Web 1.0 Revival (2014)
Links and/or PDFs for all readings can be found in our library.

Then, in response:

4. Spend some time digging around the pages on tilde.club, Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied’s One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age, or elsewhere.
5. Collect/Generate screenshots of ten (10) pages that stand out to you. Make your own handmade HTML site with those 10 images along with URLs citing their source. Somewhere on the page, include a brief writeup explaining what stood out to you for this selection. Was it color, theme, a certain type of image ("Snowflakes", "Under Construction", etc.). I’d recommend putting this new HTML page in a sub-folder of your sites folder – titled something like ‘readings’. Publish your updated class site to Netlify.

Due Friday, July 10, 2020

RE: Newsletters

1. First Email in your newsletter series sent out. Look out for initial list of recipients – this will already include some of our guest critics. Don’t overthink this very first message, keep in mind, we will be further developing and refining subsequent emails as our design/coding skills grow over the next few weeks.
2. Begin sketching ideas for your newsletter’s website. This is the site where you will translate and collect past newsletters, include a signup form, etc. Presentations of ideas on July 16th.

Due Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Complete the following:

1. Sometime between now and Tuesday’s class. Visit the website of the New York Times and take a screenshot of their front page.
2. Render (translate) that screenshot onto paper. You can use any materials you have at hand: ink, pencil, charcoal, glue, X-Actos, rulers, paints, etc. Be as abstract as you'd like. If you disagree, rewrite the content. You might choose to be colorful, monochrome, sloppy, etc. You can use drawing paper, napkins, stretched canvas... You can’t use Figma, Adobe CC, software, etc.
3. Scan / photograph / document your work from Step 2 and upload it (and your screenshot) onto your class site.

Due Thursday, July 16, 2020

RE: Newsletters

1. Continue working on and planning your newsletters. Numbers 2 and 3 should be well underway if not already sent out.
2. As our collective knowledge of HTML and CSS grows, consider how you'll re-design (improve) the layout of your emails.
3. Presentation of two (2) entirely different designs for your newsletter’s website and some ideas for a Domain Name. Sketches and Wireframes are okay. The clearer of a picture you can give us, the better. Remeber, this is the site where you might translate and collect past newsletters into the browser; where you’ll include a signup form; where it will be public / persistent, etc. Mindy Seu will join our class as a guest critic for these presentations.

Due Tuesday, July 21, 2020

First, complete the following readings

1. Nicole Starosielski: Signal Tracks
2. Ingrid Burrington: How Railroad History Shaped Internet History
3. Julian Oliver: Stealth Infrastructure
4. LOW←TECH MAGAZINE: About this website
Links / PDFs for all readings can be found in our library.

Then, in response:

5. Spend some outdoors (be safe, wear a mask) and find the internet. Try to photograph at least two examples of network infrastructure. Maybe you live right near a submarine cable landing point or not far from a massive data center. If not, try just starting from the ground up: manhole covers, spray-painted fiber-optic cable markings, junction boxes, public routers, cell towers, etc.
6. Collect your images and reflect (in writing) on what you encountered. What did you find? How was the weather? Were there people nearby; what were they doing? Did you go somewhere new? Did something in the reading stand out to you? Consider Trevor Paglen’s photos of Submarine Internet Cables or Dave Greer or Peter Garritano’s Internet series, or Nicole Starosielski’s images at cable landing points. Create a page (HTML + CSS) for your images and writing.