Syllabus

Spring 2005, Tuesday/Thursday afternoons, 2:00 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. in Solon Campus Center 42. Section 001, #47336. Course home page: http://www.d.umn.edu/~cstroupe/sp05/3220/

Dr. Craig Stroupe, 726-6249, Humanities 424
cstroupe@d.umn.edu; Office hours Tues. and Thurs. mornings, 11:00-noon or by appointment

Purpose | Expectations | Resources Needed | Grades

Purpose

This class looks at images the way a creative writing or composition class looks at words, exploring the creative, rhetorical, technical and social possibilities of creating graphic projects. In addition to learning the mechanics of graphic production, this class draws widely on the disciplines of digital design, statistics, narrative literature, engineering, and technical writing to offer you the interpretive and strategic skills to conceive, to think about, and to write about the visual critically.

This course is designed to give you skills, practice and understanding to realize the following goals:

employing principles of rhetoric and design to create visual projects that convey information and analyical insight;
creating projects that effectively combine visual and verbal discourses;
discussing graphic work in critically and historically informed ways;
working with teammates and clients in productive relationships;
using a variety of software to create graphic projects for delivery via the Internet;
engaging potential audiences of visual texts on a variety of levels;

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Expectations

Exercises and Projects

This course is organized as a series of project and exercises. The projects are long-term, individual works. The exercises are done together in class, usually in 15 to 30 minutes.

The Projects. As described on the Works Page, the projects are larger pieces of work that you'll complete individually over a period of two or three weeks using the skills you learned from the exercises and insights from the readings and class activities. One of the projects is an essay about digital culture. You will also have an opportunity to do a "global revision" of one of the projects.

There is a three-point penalty per day for late projects, including the commentaries and printouts that are explained below.

Due dates for all requirements are included in the online schedule, which will be updated throughout the semester.

Exercises. We'll do the exercises together in class to learn particular skills or techniques, and you'll have 24 hours after the class meeting (if needed) to complete and post each exercise to the Web for credit.

Printouts and Commentaries

I will give you specific directions for submitting the finished projects and exercises. All Web-based projects should be

posted to the Web,
the URL sent to the Webx discussion board, and
all the pages printed out and handed in. Be sure to number the pages of your printout.

In a separate document, you will write a commentary on your project, which will comprise two parts:

An opening paragraph that explains how your project fulfills the most basic criteria and goals of the assignment. This paragraph should reflect the depth of your understanding of the assignment--what it asks you to do rhetorically and creatively, what's interesting about it--rather than just a list of mechanical requirements. Here you should make big claims for your project as you look back at it, even if you weren't aware of everything you were accomplishing as you were working.
A list of annotations should follow the opening paragraph. The items in this list should comment on particular features in the project to which you want me to pay attention, or about which you want me to answer questions or understand more.
Each of these comments should be labeled with a number like "1.1" or "3.5." The number before the decimal point refers to a page number on the printout. The number after the decimal point refers to a number you've handwritten on the page to point to the particular feature. For instance, the sun in the sky in the first image of the Graphic Narrative project printout might have a circled (1) next to it, and, on your typed comment sheet, the annotation on how you did that sun in Photoshop should be labeled 1.1 (page 1, numbered item 1).

Other Writing and Design Work

In addition to the design, creation and/or writing of the projects themselves, you will complete

writings on our online Webx discussion board
plans and preliminary writings or designs for your projects,
peer critiques for workshops
other writings.

Readings

On days when readings are assigned, please do the following:

have the readings done by the beginning of class;
expect brief quizzes or guided reading responses at the beginning or end of class. There are no make-ups on these responses if you are absent, late or leave early.

Attendance

Since this class will function as a community of writer-designers, your regular attendance is absolutely necessary.

Absences in excess of 3 will deduct 3 percent each from your overall grade.
These 3 possible absences can be spent however you wish and so there are no "excused" or "unexcused" absences. Save your "free" absences for a rainy (or snowy) day.
If you are absent, you are responsible for all material covered in class.
In the case of absences or lateness, some requirements like quizzes and guided in-class activities cannot be made up when timeliness or group interaction is critical.
In addition to your budget of allowed absences, you also have 3 instances of arriving late or leaving early to use (with or without an excuse) if necessary. Instances in excess of 3 will decrease your overall grade by 2 percentage points each. If you need to leave class early, even if it's one of your allowed instances, please arrange it with me in advance.

Participation

A larger goal of this course is to establish a community or network of writer-designers--with a wide variety of backgrounds, expertise, and interests--to enhance your learning and enjoyment during the next sixteen weeks. The class is designed to provide a number of avenues for this community building, including peer workshopping and critiquing, in-class "studio session," support groups, and various Internet-based communications and collaborations. Your sincere and regular contributions to maintaining this collaborative environment will count in your grade, and of course will greatly benefit your final products in the course. Because your work is the subject matter for this course, turning in all projects and writings on time is critical; work turned in late will be assessed a 3% penalty per day.

Incompletes

Incompletes for the semester will be given only in the following very limited circumstances:

you must contact me in advance of the semester's end to make a request for an incomplete;
no more than one or two weeks of class, or one or two assignments, can have been missed;
you must be in good standing in the class (not already behind, in other words);
you must have a documented family or medical emergency, as required by university policy;
you must arrange a time table with me for completing the missed work that is acceptable to both of us.

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Resources Needed

Scott Kelby's Photoshop 7 Down and Dirty Tricks, Pearson 2002
Molly Bang's, Picture This, Little Brown, 2000
Edward Tuft's Visual Explanations, Graphics Press, 1997
a UMD e-mail account
Zip disk or pocket drive for saving and transporting your work (at least 100 Mg.)
occasional access to a digital camera, or several high-density, IBM-formatted floppy disks for use in a digital camera to be checked out from UMD
access to a printer, or funds for printing

Grades

Your work on the major projects and various exercises (weighed according to the size and complexity of the project): 85% total
Participation in class generally, including in-class activities and contributions, online discussions, attendance, conferences, quizzes, peer workshop responses, Webx discussions, class discussion, promptness: 15%

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