Week 7: Typography

This week's reading: MacDonald, Chapters 13 and 14 and Beaird Chapter 5.

Chapter 13:
MacDonald presents "Making money with your site." While I am designing a professional website for the Web Design project, and I am thus not looking to make money, I do plan on utilizing the skills learned in this course in future professional endeavors which may include fundraising, organizing events, or even possibly selling something. This chapter offers really easy to follow guidelines about Google searches, Amazon, and PayPal. These are things that could be challenging to new web designers, but MacDonald presents them clearly.

Chapter 14:
Javascript! I utilized JavaScript on my web design project for the menu bar (pop-up) and the calendar because I thought it made the site look cool. This chapter offers guidelines about JavaScript and usability. Page 431 discusses collapsible text. I utilized this on my website. Page 440 shows how to use scripts from other websites, and discusses credit for the creators. Overall a good chapter with easy-to-use information.

Beaird Chapter 5:
Beaird presents imagery in this chapter. One important discussion is on page 132 about stock photography. I utilized stock images on my site, images of books, libraries, people reading, etc. I used free images. Beaird makes the important note of considering image usage guidelines even for free photos (p. 133), which I made sure to do. It is important that you are using the images in the ways that are allowed.

Beaird also presents important elements of copyright and ownership of images. This is really important, especially for librarians! We are very careful about copyright. So, it is appropriate to make sure the images are free, and that you are using them appropriately according to their usage guidelines.

Also interesting is the discussion of cropping (p. 141). This is a great chapter.