Digital Design: Writing Choices

To understand the meaning of design is...to understand the part form and content play...and to realize that design is also commentary, opinion, a point of view, and social responsibility. To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit; it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse. Design is both a verb and a noun. It is the beginning as well as the end, the process and the product of imagination.

Paul Rand Graphic Designer
From his book, Design, Form and Chaos,
Yale University Press, New Haven, 1993

Please respond to one of the following writing prompts on your wiki or blog:

1. Identify elements and/or principles of visual design you value. What role do these elements and/or principles play in communicating a message?

2. What features of design are reflected in an on-line academic forum? What guidelines might you provide your students as they communicate in a digital academic environment?

3. What skills would you like your students to have related to digital design? What should they know and be able to do at your grade level? What tools do you have available to teach these skills, attitudes, habits?


Reading Choices