week 1
Laurel Schwulst My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be?
After one week of beginning to code a website, I very much see my website as a garden, in need of constant care and attention. While I personally love plants and gardens, sometimes they don’t like me and this is a very sad occurrence. Even with all the attention, care, and watering a garden can still be unhappy. I currently feel like my website is an unhappy plant, with me having no knowledge of how to take care of it properly. As I get further into this class I look forward to my website growing and behaving, but right now it is a difficult plant. Like a garden with variety, different plants are bound to need different care. Some may flourish all on their own and some may require a good bit of work. I knew this website wouldn't be a snake plant, resilient and strong, but I am hoping it will one day become a pothos with long trails of leaves, healthy and happy.
week 2
Callum Copley- New Document 1, A Friend is Writing
For starters, when I first went to do this reading it was so overwhelming I had to close my computer and go take a nap. I didn't have the heart to look at it again until it was discussed in class and seemed interesting and worth the read.
As discussed in class, the section about changing your behavior and putting on a mask for social interactions with different groups caught my attention. Especially after a year of not being able to interact with people in person, talking via zoom and social media is all we have had. Not that I forgot how to socialize in person but I am now more aware of myself and relearning what used to come so naturally. Was I putting on an act before, do I want to act in the same way as before? These are questions a lot of us are facing as in person interactions are becoming increasingly frequent. Instead of focusing on all these different behaviors and how I change around people, I have chosen to focus on the best version of myself I want to present. I could easily get caught up in juggling all these different versions, or, I could put all that energy into improving myself. This was quite a tangent, but I feel like it applies to online interactions as well as in person.
week 3
Frank Chimero The Good Room
This reading really came at a time I desperately needed it, a lull of summer when I am spending far too much time looking at my phone and realising I am not enjoying that time. My attention is short, the scrolling is infinite, and I don’t feel like I am gaining anything significant from that time. While I have been reading some, I would like to set aside more time to focus on that and find a book series I can really get into.
The downfalls of technology, social media, and large corporations are a common topic in the field of ethics and graphic design. Is it ethical to design for something like Instagram that leads to endless scrolling and no personal connection? What about other large companies that may be doing more harm than good? What role do designers play in this balance? I find most gdes classes circle back to that central question. I think people design better, and enjoy design more, when it is in the setting of a free space like a library. “It means that a person can be a person there: not a customer, not a user, not an economic agent, not a pair of eyes to monetize, but a citizen and community-member, a reader and a thinker, a mind.” This handmade web class is giving us the tools to create online spaces for existence, not just a space for consumption.