Friday, January 9, 2009

Welcome to Design for Journalists

JOU 1114 - Design for Journalists - will use Blogger and Temple's Blackboard system for this course. Below is some information you will need to know before we get started.

Required Texts
The required textbooks should be available in the Temple Bookstore. They are also readily available online at most booksellers.


  • Harrower, Tim. The Newspaper Designer’s Handbook (6th ed). (McGraw-Hill.) ISBN: 0072996692.
  • Williams, Robin. The Non-Designer’s Design Book (2nd Edition). (PeachPit Press). ISBN: 0321193857

    Recommended Texts

    The recommended textbooks should be available in the Temple Bookstore. They are also readily available online at most booksellers.

  • Warner, Janine. Teach Yourself Visually: Dreamweaver CS3. (PeachPit Press) ISBN: 0470144750
  • Cohen, Sandee. Adobe InDesign CS3 for Macintosh & Windows Visual QuickStart Guide. (Peachpit Press) ISBN: 0321503066
  • Weinmann, Elaine. PhotoshoP CS3 for Windows & MacintoshVisual QuickStart Guide. (PeachPit Press) ISBN: 0321473795

    You Might Consider...

    If you already have some digital production skills, you might consider a monthly subscription to Lynda.com. For $25 per month, you get unlimited access to online video tutorials on every software package imaginable. I subscribe to Lynda.com to get up to speed on new software versions of my favorite production software packages, such as Dreamweaver and Flash.


    Using Blackboard

    The syllabus and other important course documents will be posted on the Blackboard site associated with this class. If you have a question about the class schedule, or the details of an assignment, check the Blackboard site. Grades are also posted in the Blackboard Gradebook.

    Using Blogger

    I will post all of the lecture notes and some additional information on this blog. You must create a Blogger account to participate in this blog and post assignments to your lab blogs. You must become a FOLLOWER of this blog. The next post will give you detailed information about how to create a Blogger account and become a follower of this blog.

    Computer Labs

    Students should use the Tech Center to complete their assignments that are due outside of class. The hours for the Tech Center are as follows:

    • Monday-Thursday - Open 24 hours
    • Friday - 12am-7:30pm
    • Saturday – 9am-6pm
    • Sunday – noon to 12am

    Storage Media

    Students will need to purchase storage media for their production projects. Student files may not be left on the computers in Annenberg 2 or the Tech Center. The choices for storage media include:

  • A 10-pack of CD-Rs -CD-Rs are “write once” media, meaning that once you have written files on a CD-R you cannot add anything else to the disk. We do NOT recommend CD-RWs, which allow for multiple re-writes on a single disk, as the process for re-writing is cumbersome.

  • A portable USB drive - Get at least 512MB of storage (about $10 at Staples).
  •