Design issues in the visual era

ABSTRACT

In art, "Design is composition. A design consists of parts arranged into a coherent whole." In computer science, "The design lays out the classes and objects needed in a program and defines how they interact." Are we not saying that software design is parts (classes and objects) arranged into a coherent whole? The paper looks at design principles as expressed in beginning courses in these two seemingly disparate disciplines. The majority of the paper is concerned with the presentation of a minimal working vocabulary for visual design issues. It concludes with some observations about the worldviews from computer science and from art, and the importance of making students aware of the worldview of the typical user of their products.

REFERENCES

• 1: Professor Joel Collins, Art Department, Mount Union College, Alliance, OH, U.S.A.
• 2: John Lewis , William Loftus, Java Software Solutions: Foundations of Program Design, Update, Javaplace, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 2001
• 3: Computing Curricula 2001 Computer Science Volume December 15, 2001. A report of the Computing Curricula 2001 project (CC2001) -- a joint undertaking of the Computer Society of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE-CS) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to develop curricular guidelines for undergraduate programs in computing. <http://www.acm.org/sigcse/cc2001/index.html>
• 4: Joel Collins
• 5: Lewis and Loftus, page 151, 152
• 6: Joel Collins
• 7: "Picasso/Matisse" at the Tate Modern Museum, London, U.K. Commentary guide, page 8. <http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/programmes/>
• 8: Joel Collins