New Media Visuals 2016

Description

New Media Visuals is a rigorous course for those interested in pushing the boundaries of visual storytelling. While some time will be spent examining and producing more “traditional” online stories, much of the course will seek answers to today’s questions about new media:

  • In what ways can we innovate online journalism?
  • What makes for an engaging user experience? How do we determine the “success” of a story?
  • What are the tools and techniques we can use to produce an immersive and comprehensive visual narrative?
  • What can visual journalists adapt from other industries, like entertainment and tech?
  • How can we create greater empathy for stories? What are the limits on empathy?
  • Which medium is best suited for which story?

Students will find some answers to these questions through both smaller assignments and a larger creative final project. The emphasis of the course will be on process and creative thinking, from pitching an idea to storyboarding, prototyping, and at the end, presenting a final project that is visually compelling. Because of the increasing use of video online, analyzing and producing web video will be a significant part of the class.

However, students are not obligated to use video in their final projects and several media types will serve as areas of inquiry for this project-driven course. Students will explore and produce various elements of a persuasive digital story, like interactive video, explainer graphics, 360-video and VR.

Intructors

Avni Nijhawan