Hands-on Web Design

911 Media Arts Center is the proud home of Seattle's longest running web publishing workshop. Over the years, hundreds of students have gained the skills necessary to create effective web sites. The class series combines informative lectures with interactive "hands-on" sessions. Students will gain a working knowledge of the latest web publishing tools like Photoshop, Imageready and Flash. Additionally, students will learn HTML coding and the fundamentals of the Internet.

Class One: Hands On Internet Literacy
Internet Literacy is a crucial skill necessary for anyone who navigates the modern data landscape. Have you ever wondered what happens when you go online? Or how e-mail travels around the world? This class will solve those mysteries and others in easy-to-understand terms. We will chart the growth of the Internet from the early days to its current ability to deliver rich media via the Web. We will explain introductory concepts such as client, server, and networking protocols. The class will include hands on demonstrations of FTP, Telnet, Mail, Traceroute, and more. This entertaining class is suited to both Internet novices and also those who, though they may be experienced surfers, have always wondered how the Internet and World Wide Web work.

Class Two: Hands On HTML
This class puts the fun in the fundamentals of web publishing. Who says Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is boring? What could be more thrilling than creating your first web page! In this class, we'll do just that and more. Students will create web pages with links, images, fonts, and colors. We'll learn how to do layout with tables and frames. We will also discuss the capabilities of several useful HTML editors and teach you how to post your completed site on the Internet.

Class Three: Hands On Style
In this class we will learn more advanced web coding techniques to create web pages that are both visually appealing and offer advanced interactivity. Students will learn to use Cascading Style Sheets to do more complex design. A complete explanation of client and server side scripting will be followed by a hands on session building good looking forms and working with Javascript.

Class Four: Hands On Graphics
Learning how to create beautiful web pages with stunning images is the focus for this class. Students will learn computer graphics concepts like aliased vs anti-aliased, pixel vs vector, and lossy vs lossless compression. We will learn how to acquire free stock images and graphics for your website. Hands on time will be spent with Adobe Photoshop and Imageready. With these tools we will create background images, transparent gifs, imagemaps and 3D buttons for your web pages.

Class Five:Hands On Animation
As bandwidth increases, the web is more likely to include rich media. This class looks at more advanced web page capabilities like including sound, movies and animation. The class will include a discussion on the implications and limitations of broadband with a particular focus on its benefits for independent media makers. Additionally, students will have hands on time with Photoshop and Flash to create animated movies for their site.

Peter Mitchell
Peter Mitchell has been creating content for the world wide web since 1995. He started out by taking 911's web publishing class and soon after created a website for the organization. Three redesigns and hundreds of pages later, 911media.org currently serves over 150 visitors a day. Additionally, Peter built 911's streaming media portal webflicks.org which has been featured in the Seattle P-I and national indie-media magazine, The Independent. When he's not building creative websites at 911 he contracts for clients such as HyperBole Studios, N2H2, Global Photo Tours and Cole and Weber. Check out the full meal deal at http://www.petenice.com.

Here are some samples from the May 2003 series

Here are some examples from February 2003 series

Here are some examples from the October 2002 series

Here are some examples from the May 2002 series