The web is a design language, and as some of you are not primarily Communication Design students, it becomes clear that there needs to be a reference that covers what Visual Design students take for granted.
Parsons students can use these links as resources for researching their projects. Visual literacy goes beyond how something looks. It makes communication more effective.
Visual literacy is used to solve problems in communication. This is a lot like structuring an argument in the academic essay, where reason supplants opinion. Instead of finding causes and reasons why, or a genealogy, bringing visually literate structuring to the communication makes the message more engaging, apparent and clear.
To that end, I’ve assembled a number of links to help develop visual literacy.
A Modernist design manual
Designer Massimo Vignelli’s life’s work through his design philosophy with a wealth of examples in The Vignelli Canon. He distributed it free on his website for everyone to become better visually educated. That site no longer exists, so I put the book on my server. You can purchase it. The Vignelli Canon represents the status quo that David Carson opposed that we will cover in Week 6)
Design Inspiration
Use the following resources to explore your site design. Be inspired — copy, borrow, steal — but make sure that whatever you take, you make your own. The top priority is to effectively communicate the content.
- Design Inspiration
- Inspirational Sites
- Design History
- The Story of Art
- Rijks Studio
- Visual Literacy
- Adobe Behance
Design Sandbox
Canva is an online graphic design platform that lets nondesigners put together and play with designs till something clicks. You can use it instead of photoshop to prototype your design. Download it as a PDF and open it in Illustrator, and all of the elements are editable.
Web Design Sandbox
Invision is a web and mobile device application design platform that allows you to create and user test your designs before you commit to them with code.
Typography
Typography remains elusive for many, so I gleaned useful definitions, descriptions and links to explain the basics.
Books on Design and code
- Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams, and LUST, Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture
- Kimberly Elam, Geometry of Design
- Armin Hofmann, Graphic Design Manual
- Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style
- Frank Chimero, The Shape of Design
- Leah Buley, The User Experience Team of One
- Compiled by Laurel Schwulst, Very Interactive Library
- Paul Ford, What is Code?
- Emil Ruder, Typographie