Project 1 Final Details

Hi everyone, here are some details about Project 1.

Submitting and Archiving

• Both parts of Project 1 are due on February 16, in class. I will pass around a flash drive and have you copy your files onto it. Please make sure you have your final files at the beginning of class: I recommend bringing them in on a drive and having backup copies in your email or on the server, just in case.
• Unless you have (reasonable) objections, I will be posting your projects to the website so the class can view and learn from them.
• To help with that process, please name your files as follows: Create two folders, one called lastname-project1a and the other lastname-project1b. Inside each, put files called index.html and style.css. Don’t forget to update the <link> tag in your HTML to refer to the new name of the CSS file.

Criteria for Grading

Remember that this project is both about writing valid, semantic code and employing compelling, refined, or inventive typography. As you get closer to finalizing your projects, please take into account the critiques you heard from the class in the past two weeks: in some cases this is a matter of small tweaks to spacing or fonts, with others it’s a matter of making bigger choices about what your design is trying to accomplish.

In no particular order, here are the core questions I’ll be asking:

• Does the HTML and CSS validate? If not, is there a clear reason why not?
• Is the mark-up written to be semantic and structural, rather than presentational?
• Has basic care been taken to proofread the text for transcription errors, extra spaces, etc.?
• Have proper HTML entities been used for non-ASCII typographic characters like curly quotation marks, apostrophes, dashes, ellipses, fractions, etc.?
• If appropriate to the design, have typographic “finer points” been observed? Do the quotation marks hang, do drop-caps line up with their baseline, have small caps been used?
• Does the typography retain its legibility and character if the text is resized up or down a level?
• Does the typography — not just choice of typeface, but also the measure, leading, type sizes, arrangement, and color — convey a thoughtful idea about, or approach to, the particular text? In other words, do the whole set of typographic “moves” add up to a coherent design?