Yes thats me. But I have permission! And after I have explained I’m sure you’ll sympathize with me and forgive me for the theft.

On monday 12th of September I got up earlier than usuall. I’m always 5 minutes late for the lectures, which results in me having to go faster than Thor Hushovd (or Cadel Evans, whatever.. We’ll get them next time Thor!) on my bike to be there in time. As you probably can imagine it isn’t very comfortable to arrive to school tired, panting and sweaty. So yes, I got up earlier than usual, and indeed, I arrived at uni, comfortable and only slightly warm. I even had time to go and get a coffe from that place with only cute guys working there.

But we all know that the universe works in very mysterious ways. I think my karma is good; I even borrowed my bike lock to Rob yesterday because he lost his. However, when I started searching through my bag for my lock and the key, I could only find the lock. I emptied my bag, which contained:

- Macbook something something
- Authorship and Narrative Dossier
- Notebook
- Pencil case
- Lunchbox (tuna, salad, mushrooms, beetroot and carrot)
- Wallet
- Phone
- Keys to the house
- Lock

But no keys for it..
Turns out it was lying on the ground outside our apartment. After considering different places to hide my bike (there is NONE! Stupis fucking city with no caves or threes to hide stuff in..) my only solution was to do the 20 minute ride back home, and then return to Uni. Most sporty morning I’ve had in a while.

Yeah that photo is completely unrelated, I know, but I just really love my bike. I want to put it on a rainbow..

The reason I’m writing this is because I came to late to the network lecture. It wasn’t on purpose, and after finding out that it was actually a good one I was quite sad. Ian Ngo agreed to let me steal his notes from his blog, so I could keep track on what’s happening this week.

Thank you Ian! I wish I knew how to tag you..

So here they are. Looking forward to get more info in the tute. Thanks again Ian

IAN’S NOTES:

Today we will be having a guest lecturer, the powerpoint presentation titled “Web Design” with Miek, I assume he spelt his own name wrong.. He is a freeland web designer and he works with a computer programming and they create web applications and websites for commercial clients. At the moment he’s moving more toward applications as opposed to webpage design specifically.

“Everything we use is accompanied by an experience. Every decision that do or don’t make in shaping your hypertext has an effect on the way a person may experience it.”

“Many think design is about making pretty things, design is about planning and shaping things for certain purposes.”

‘Design is about shaping things to in turn shape the way a person has an experience.”

“That experience may be learning, understanding, being informed, playing, sharing.”

“Your essay will be experienced too.. But what do you want to people to experience?”

The following are some of the principles of web design.

Layout:

• Hierarchy, the order of the things on the page/screen, what do you want people to read first? What is the order of importance for information? People read in an ‘F’ pattern. Do you want any order at all?
• Page/Screen structure: Templating your layout can be useful to create predictable order, make things easy to find, like navigation.
• Screen size: We have to take into account how large people’s monitors are. Currently, we can safely say that 1024×768 pixels is the minimum. So, to stay within that, we say 960px is the max width, but height can be anything. This is just a rule of thumb which is Miek’s little guide, but rules are made to be broken, we don’t have to follow this, we may want something else.
• Typography: The craft of arranging to type. Good type is easy to read, and easy to scan. On the web, we only get a few fonts, but we can make those fonts look pretty good. Typography is all about contrast.. About making headings obvious that they are headings. Link obviously links, and emphasised things obviously emphasised. Keep line lengths at about 10-15 words across. Too many can be hard to read, or just plain daunting. Put space between your paragraphs, give your text room to breathe. Be careful about white text on black backgrounds. It can get hard to read for sustained periods of time. Good for headings, not good for body text. Never use comic sans.
• Visual language, Genre: You can use genre to situate your hypertext design in relation to others. Even in relation o other media forms, things from the world. Examples: The Requiem for a Dream website or the “Lost” weird mini-sites.
• Narrative, information architecture: In web design, the structure that you give to your pages an navigation is calle the “information architecture.” Like architecture, it is about creating spaces for people to experience and find things. Experience is as much about what’s in the pages as what’s in between them.”The way you structure your hypertext network can change the way it is read or experienced… Adrian will point out, hypertext allows us to break linearity and create something that can be experienced in many different ways. Hierarchy and non-hierarchical narratives. You can mix the two to form clusters, allowing for a more diverse experience and allows for more exploration and interactivity but we can still have a hierarchy which guides the viewer. Re-visit ideas and allow people to explore. Surprise people, it doesn’t have to visually jarring but using scale and hierarchy you can get someone into a rhythm and break that maybe to highlight something or to raise a point..
• Navigation and wayfinding, menus: You can use menus to allow people to get ot the various cluster sor sections in your hypertext. Menus can also communicate “where” a person is in your text. But be aware of how it affects the experience. Category > Idea.
• Designing your hypertext, sketch your ideas: You can use a pen and paper to sketch out an information architecture for your hypertext. What ideas go where? How do they link together? That sketch can inform the way that you write. As you write, the sketch of your structure will change as well. Use the medium to fit in the way with how we might think.
• Have an intent: Remember, the decisions you make effect the experience that people have. It is good to have an intention, like what kind of experience you would like to create. For instance, you may want to explore a topic in detail. You may design you hypertext to give multiple viewpoints on a topic.  Will it be fas-paced? Slow? Why? Do you want people to feel confronted, bored, confused?

twistori.com <– cool tweeting website.
thewildernessdowntown.com <– Arcade Fire interactive music video.
dailywriting.net <– Run by high school writing teacher.