Beyond Basic CSS: Typography, Color, Effects, & Animation

Overview

In this course, you’ll learn how type communicates and how styling and organization of written content affects the message. You’ll look at advanced features of web fonts and see how type designers are taking the fields of digital type to the next level. Then, you’ll learn about color, color theory, and the practice of using color in your digital products and work with color by exploring gradients, other effects, and work to create a website using techniques learned in this course. Finally, we’ll wrap up the course by learning how to create animations in CSS using transitions, 2d and 3d transformations, as well as keyframes to create sophisticated animations on the web.

Syllabus

Typography and Managing Cognitive Load

Welcome to the course! In this first module, we will start talking about typography. It is often said that 90% of web design is typography, so understanding the basics of how type communicates and how the styling and organization of written content affects the message and speaks to your audience is super important. Let’s get started!

Color and Accessibility

Welcome to the second module! In this module we will look at some more advanced features of web fonts and see how type designers are taking the field of digital type to the next level. We will also dive more into color, color theory, and the practice of using color in your digital products. There are also exciting developments for the use of color on websites through CSS that we will explore.

Visual Effects with CSS

Welcome to the third module! In this module we will continue to work with color by exploring gradients, as well as other effects such as drop shadows and repeating background patterns. You will follow this up by creating a whole website using the techniques learned so far in the course, putting it all together, and hosting it on GitHub.

CSS Animation and User Experience

Welcome to the fourth and final module! In this module you will learn how to create animations in CSS. You will use transitions, 2d and 3d transformations, as well as keyframes to create sophisticated animations for the web. Along the way, you will learn about easing and how to use a few positioning properties to help construct sophisticated animations that could be included in your web pages.