Teaching Visual Design Principles for Computer Science Students

Computing has become highly visual as interactive programs become increasingly prevalent. Computer science students need to be able to create effective visual displays as part of interface implementation. This paper describes a course covering graphic design topics relevant to computer science students. In this course, students learn the basic visual elements, the visual organizational principles and how to use them in the context of the digital page. The other topics of this paper are the presentation of course information to the computer science student, the implementation of the course information as praxis, course project construction, and a method for critiquing student projects. Curriculum Integration will also be discussed as a feature towards achieving a seamless and collaborative experience.