Metro Campus

The minor and /or certificate in Website Design and Development consists of 15 credits. The minor provides students with a foundation in web-site design and development, and it can enhance their career and employment opportunities. The courses for the Web-site Design and Development minor are as follows:

Required Courses (12 Credits)

  • ART1177 Introduction to Digital Media
  • CSCI1105 Survey of Computers and Computer Software
  • INFO2105 Internet & Web Applications
  • INFO2106 Web-site Design and Management

Elective Courses (3 Credits)

With the approval of the academic advisor, students may take a higher level INFO or CSCI courses as an elective.

One course must be chosen from the following:

To take any course in the minor and/or certificate, a student must meet all prerequisites for that course.

Florham Campus

Web Design Minor

In this 15-credit minor students will explore the field of web design, learning the industry standard tools and software for development of personal and commercial web sites for the computer and mobile devices. A focus is on design, composition, color therapy, typography, interaction, and responsive design.

Required Courses (9 credits)

CGD 1313 Creative imagery with Photoshop
CGD 3303 Web Design
CGD 3315 Word Press

Elective Courses (6 credits)

Select two of the following courses:

CGD 3358 Project Based Web Design
CGD 3360 Business for Graphics
CGD 3361 Mobile Web Design
CGD 3362 Mobile App Design
CGD 3373 Email Blast Design and Implementation
CGD 3374 Online Ad Design and Implementation
CGD 3376 Contemp HTML and CSS
CGD 3380 Social Media Marketing Design
CGD 3385 Ecommerce Design
ANIM 1850 3D Computer Modeling
ANIM 1750 Motion Graphics with After Effects

Course Descriptions

  • ANIM1750 By learning how to animate virtually any aspect of each element using Adobe After Effects, students create high- impact communications combining moving imagery, graphics, video, text, and sound. This course focuses on manipulating moving images, dynamic effects and compositing techniques to produce animated content for virtually any media. The focus is on quality design and animation targeted at high-end commercial style production. Color management and enhancement tools used in the manipulation of photos and videos while preserving clarity and color integrity are also covered in this course.

  • ANIM1850 This course is an introduction to the Autodesk 3DS MAX software interface and its various features. The focus is on learning how to build high detail 3D models, create and apply high quality textures, and implement lighting and cameras. Students create manmade and organic objects and learn to effectively critique their own as well as their classmate's work.

  • ART1177 Fundamentals of using the computer as a drawing/painting medium. Digitizing, video imaging, manipulation of digital information to create visual art.

  • CGD1313 This course is an introductory exploration of computer graphics as a technology and a creative medium. Through the use of industry-standard software, Adobe Photoshop, students learn the fundamentals of working with raster editing techniques. The focus is on manipulating images and learning about the production workflow as it pertains to digital imagery.

  • CGD3303 This course will provide the students the opportunity to learn Adobe Dreamweaver, the industry standard web development software. The class prepares students with the skills and knowledge of web publishing and the application of multimedia skills for the design and implementation of responsive web sites using a variety of software, HTML and CSS.

  • CGD3315 This course focuses on how to utilize WordPress open source templates and its HTML and PHP coded themes to design, create and maintain webpages and online blogs. Students learn to use WordPress' robust plugins and widget tools which allow designers and developers to broaden its capabilities beyond the basic features. This course also teaches how to set up and employ WordPress' dynamic content management system to change and revise the visual design and functionality of a WordPress website without changing the international content that is stored in MySQL databases.

  • CGD3358 This course focuses on intermediate to advanced design features, extensions, and behaviors available in Adobe Software. Students enhance their web design skills while learning more sophisticated Dreamweaver tools, focusing on CSS, HTML 5 and current trends in design. This class covers intermediate to advanced web design topics on how to build effective navigation, laying out pages, and working with typography, color, and backgrounds. Instruction is project-based where students learn through the process of creating web sites, while developing more extensive CSS ad design skills along the way.

  • CGD3360 This course teaches students ways to network in the community and how to initiate client connections resulting in appointments to present their portfolio and discuss how they can be of service to their company. Students learn good communication, listening and note-taking skills to aid in understanding, organizing and evaluating the client's wants and needs. The course also covers how to expand the creative thinking process by utilizing basic principles of marketing and business practices. Students learn to write proposals (including timelines and budgetary costs) with the goal of obtaining contractual graphic arts projects. Hardware, software and outside service requirements are also covered in this course.

  • CGD3361 Having a mobile-optimized website that is formatted for smaller screens with features that take advantage of touch screen capabilities can improve the mobile web browsing experience. This course teaches how to design and develop for and strategize on how to deliver web content to mobile devices. Students will learn the criteria and the various options that will help them to decide whether to create a native mobile site or a responsive site to satisfy each particular client's website needs.

  • CGD3362 .Anticipating the limitations of the small screens, the various screen sizes, the different screen crops and the text size preferences set by the user, good design planning is critical in app design. In this course students learn adaptive design, which adjusts the layout accordingly while still standardizing the look and functionality to be consistent across all devices, guaranteeing that the experience is the same regardless of device. This course emphasizes how app designers must take into consideration mobile device limitations while still thinking creatively within those constraints. Taking advantage of mobile capabilities not available on a desktop computer, such as the use of the camera to snap images, signatures or location services are also topics covered in this course

  • CGD3373 This course teaches tips, tricks and resources for designing and creating beautiful, professional-looking email blasts and newsletters that render well and are useful to its recipients within this challenging medium. Learn how to work within the coding limitations of email clients across the board, supplying plain text versions, how to implement thorough testing before launching and why to never make compatibility assumptions. Emphasis is placed on designing for relevance, coding within the medium constraints, respecting the reader, setting measurable goals and how to measure success. Legal topics, such as email blast subscription options, terms and policies are discussed in this course.

  • CGD3374 In this course students will consider the needs of a website visitor and why clients buy ads. Students will analyze why different company's goals vary from one campaign to the next and how to creatively design and implement for all sorts of advertising media on the internet. The focus will be on designing to gain exposure, brand recognition, and improving sales and traffic to the client's website, thus expanding and strengthening business as a result of the ad campaign. Topics such as ad placement, click-through rates, direct communication, interactivity, flexibility, measurable results, and the effectiveness of ad campaigns will be covered in this course.

  • CGD3376 Learning to create an application and a browser friendly web site is essential in today's ever-changing web market. Using industry standard software, students will study the various features of HMTL 5 to create dynamic web sites. The focus will be on learning the structural markup elements and attributes of HMTL 5, native multimedia, drawing with the canvas element, and browser support. Techniques on using cascading style sheets with CSS 3 to make visually stunning web sites will also be covered in this course.

  • CGD3380 This course focuses on designing and implementing social media marketing pieces and establishing brand continuity to be used to engage the target audience, inspire them to act, and keep them coming back for more. Students begin by creating an identity that will get a client noticed and remembered. Then, by incorporating the established branding, designing supporting graphics, writing engaging copy and structuring an exciting social media marketing campaign, students learn how to increase a client's online presence. Through the use of graphics, animations, videos and written content, they will discover how to inspire engaged social media communities, including forums, blogs, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Organic features as well as paid social media strategies, increasing the loyalty of customers, keyword selection, search engine rankings, setting goals and measuring successes are covered in this course.

  • CGD3385 This course teaches how to design database storefront websites which draw on technologies such as electronic funds transfer, online transaction processing, inventory management systems, automated data collection systems, and security features. Students will carefully plan their product categories and displays, ease of navigation, and how to provide a good built-in search engine to make finding specific products easy. The importance of featuring the products on an ecommerce site over incorporating unnecessary bells and whistles will be taught in this course. Topics, such as how to set up a secure functioning shopping cart, making it as easy as possible for the customer to add items to their cart and to accept credit card payments in order to complete the checkout process will also be covered. Students will also learn how to design and incorporate online contact forms. Legal issues will be discussed and students will learn how to implement confirmation clause checkboxes where necessary, store policies, terms and conditions, and FAQ pages.

  • CSCI1105 History of computers, hardware and software systems, files and data bases, algorithms, personal computers, computer communications and networking, computers and society: applications, issues and responsibilities. (No credit for computer science majors.)

  • INFO2105 This course provides an introduction to the Internet services, the World Wide Web, accessibility, search engine optimization (SEO), multimedia and social networking. Students learn how to create and publish web pages using eXtensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML)and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and construct and maintain a web site.

  • INFO2106 This course introduces students to the principles of website design and management, business applications and security, and e-commerce. Students study graphic web design concepts such as usability and scalability. They learn how to create interactive web applications, enhance web pages with dynamic images, implement a web server and integrate the website with a database management system.

  • INFO3201 This course introduces the students to the current theories and issues in human-computer interactions. Students learn the techniques and technologies needed for the analysis, design and implementation of human-computer interfaces. They also study usability testing and rapid prototyping.

  • INFO3205 This course provides an overview of the design principles of desktop and multimedia publications. Students study the proper rules and procedures for creating publications. They learn how to create interactive multimedia content for both CD-ROM and the World Wide Web using authoring software packages. Topics covered include audio, image and video processing and compression.