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DIG 245 Critical Web Design

4-3Author Talk This Friday

Sep 18

📌 Complete before class

Author Talk This Friday — Critical Web Design (MIT Press)

Section titled “Author Talk This Friday — Critical Web Design (MIT Press)”

This Friday, September 18 at 10:30 AM, I’ll be joined by co-author xtine burrough (UT Dallas) for an author talk on our new book Critical Web Design, published this year by MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262053167/critical-web-design/

xtine and I come to this project from complementary directions. She is a media artist and prolific author working across electronic literature, participatory art, and remix culture. I am a former web designer and developer whose practice investigates surveillance and persuasion on the web. The book grew out of our shared conviction that technical web education and critical thinking don’t have to be separate endeavors.

We’ll talk through the book’s approach. Each chapter pairs a contextual discussion of design and power with hands-on modules. We will share some of the case studies and prompts we’re most excited about: Josh On’s TheyRule.net mapping corporate board connections, MSCHF’s interventions into visual branding, and Jan Diehm’s data journalism at The Pudding. We’ll also demo a few of the prompts readers build, including a subversive branding redesign, a generative art piece riffing on DADA artist Jean Arp, and a Bad Password API, an absolutely terrible password generator.

In-person: Baxter Davidson Room (Chambers 2106)
Zoom: register at lib.davidson.edu/critical-web-design
Date: Friday 9/18
Time: 10:30-11:20

📌 Homework