How negotiated systems encourage relational authorship and systemic sensitivity.
Bei Hu Assistant Professor Washington University in St. Louis
As artificial intelligence increasingly participates in creative processes, the distinction between human authorship and machine generation grows more complex. Traditionally, creative computation—rooted in open-source culture, conditional design methodologies, and human-authored algorithms—has emphasized transparency, rule-based emergence, and collaborative process. In contrast, contemporary AI models often function as opaque systems, producing outputs that blur the boundary between human intention and machine autonomy.
This paper examines how creative computation can serve as a critical lens for navigating this shifting boundary. It argues for a framework that sustains human agency even within projects that incorporate AI technologies. Drawing on case studies from a Conditional Design course—where students created emergent works through simple rules and collective negotiation—alongside examples from the author’s own open-source creative coding practice, the research explores how negotiated systems encourage relational authorship and systemic sensitivity.
The paper proposes an approach that embraces AI’s generative capacities while reaffirming the importance of process, openness, and participation. Through this lens, creativity is reimagined not as a product of isolated genius, nor as a fully automated output, but as an emergent, co-constructed process shaped through conditions, collaboration, and responsiveness.
By reframing creative computation as a site of critical engagement, the paper advocates for practices that foreground relationality, transparency, and negotiated complexity—offering pathways for sustaining deeply human forms of creativity within an increasingly algorithmic cultural landscape.
It can be seen, spoken aloud, even meditated upon.
Andrew Shurtz Assistant Professor Louisiana State University
N.H. Pritchard’s The Mundus, unpublished for over fifty years, is a work that is at once deeply radical and almost impossibly understated. Subtitled “a novel with voices” and described as an “exploded haiku,” it offers the viewer/reader a sequence of textual elements that gradually coalesce into language—only to fracture, detonate, and dissolve back into nothingness. A vital contribution to Black poetics, The Mundus operates on many levels: it can be seen, spoken aloud, even meditated upon. It is the ultimate exploration of what Pritchard described as the “transreal.”
The Mundus was composed through an analog process—Pritchard assembled multiple sheets of typewritten and photocopied text, collaging them together with tape. The result is a visually arresting object, where the mechanical precision of the typewriter is interrupted by the intervention of the artist’s hand. Yet its ultimate form emerges only through an act of transcoding: reinterpreting this typewritten collage as digital typography. Drawing on my experience designing and typesetting The Mundus, I will examine how this act of typographic transcoding is not just a technical process but a crucial extension of the work’s meaning—one that activates the text’s latent potential and intensifies its formal and semantic resonance.
This act of transcoding allows The Mundus to exist across multiple frameworks simultaneously. In contemporary discourse, visual communication is often framed as a dichotomy between two poles: maximalist expression versus minimalist restraint. Pritchard’s work resists this binary, offering instead a vision that holds both extremes in tension. The Mundus creates a space where presence and absence, language and silence, structure and fragmentation coexist—where nothing and everything unfold at once.
Typefaces that prioritize disability concerns to reduce barriers to equitable access for written material.
Katie Krcmarik Assistant Professor Illinois State University
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), vision disabilities rank among the top 10 most common disabilities in the United States. The World Health Organization reports that approximately 2.2 billion people worldwide experience some form of vision impairment. With an aging population, the prevalence of vision-related disabilities is expected to rise. Additionally, learning disabilities affecting reading have a significant societal impact, with the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity estimating that approximately 20% of the population experiences dyslexia. Given the number of people affected by some form of vision-related disability, communication design, especially type design, must respond by developing and utilizing typefaces that prioritize disability concerns to reduce barriers to equitable access for written material.
The history of type design often focuses on aesthetics and form, with readability and legibility viewed more through the lens of reproduction and technology. Historically, type designers demonstrated no concerted effort to explore accessibility meaningfully, and even now that we understand accessibility, few center these concerns. Instead, typography functions similarly to an outdated structure needing retrofitting, using legibility testing for typefaces to determine if they meet accessibility standards. Just as retrofitting buildings for accessibility often fails to meet the needs of disabled individuals fully, using typefaces designed without considering accessibility fails to meet the needs of those with reading and vision disabilities.
Despite its ableist history, the field of type design shows promising signs of change. This presentation will explore three typefaces—Lexend, Atkinson Hyperlegible, and Luciole—demonstrating the potential of centering disability needs in developing a typeface without sacrificing aesthetic concerns. The emergence of such typefaces is a beacon of hope, signaling a potential future where collaboration with the disabled community can integrate accessibility without sacrificing aesthetics, challenging misconceptions about accessible design, and paving the way to expand accessibility practices in design.
The online Academic Abstract Writing Program at Design Incubation offers a series of activities that will help design researchers to craft a written synopsis of their research. The outcome(s) will be a concisely written document typically expected of academic publication venues. This includes conferences, journals, grant applications, publishers, and academic organizations.
The program is designed along two tracks:
The first track is for design faculty who are new to academia and want a program that will help them to navigate the academic publication arena.
The second track is aimed at design faculty who have established their research agenda and activities, and would like to explore ways to broaden their scope of publication opportunities.
We are excited to announce Leslie Atzmon, Eastern Michigan University, Jess Barness, Kent State University and Dan Wong, CityTech, CUNY will be facilitating and moderating the various activities.
Agenda
Time (EDT)
Activity
10:00am-11:15am
Presentation on Abstracts. Dan Wong, Jess Barness. Abstracts Reviewed. Breakout rooms with Mentors. Atzmon, Barness, Wong.
11:15am-12:15pm
Fellows Abstract Workshop
12:15-1:00pm
Lunch Break
1:00pm- 2:00pm
Abstracts—Repurposing Research. Leslie Atzmon. Group Consultation with Mentors. Atzmon, Barness, Wong.
Fellows
Katie Blazek Assistant Professor University of Illinois- Urbana Champaign
Grace Hamilton Assistant Professor CUNY, Baruch College
Brooke Hull Assistant Professor Pennsylvania State University
Megan Asbeck Assistant Professor SUNY Brockport
Ruichao Jiang Artist/Designer
Minoo Marasi Graduate Student University of Illinois Chicago
Golnoush Behmanesh Assistant Professor University of Mississippi
Samira Shiridevich Assistant Professor University of North Carolina at Charlotte
How environmental data and creative technology can expand the narrative.
Lingyi Kong Adjunct Professor Parsons School of Design, The New School
In the context of interdisciplinary integration, artist books are undergoing a fundamental shift—moving beyond the static interplay of text and image toward dynamic, spatial experiences. This project explores how environmental data and creative technology can expand the narrative and material dimensions of book art. It builds on installational and conceptual traditions in artist books while rebuilding reading as an immersive, embodied act.
This work aims to create a new framework for storytelling in book art by incorporating sound-based data and real-time generative systems. Drawing from the visual and temporal qualities of oceanic rhythms, the project materializes narrative through movement, projection, and sensory modulation. Reading becomes not merely visual, but multi-sensory and spatial—offering a hybrid mode where story is felt as much as it is read.
Developed during a two-year coastal residency in Rhode Island, Resonant Pages uses Python to analyze ocean wave recordings via Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), extracting dynamic frequency and amplitude information. This data is streamed into TouchDesigner using OSC (Open Sound Control), where it drives a generative particle system. The system produces constantly evolving linework and motion fields that echo the energy of tides and coastal wind, projected in real time onto physical artist books.
These books, printed with hot foil transfer and tactile materials, paper serve as both narrative medium and expression surface. The linear structure of the printed text interacts with the ambient, non-linear rhythms of projected visuals—creating a layered narrative system where content, code, and environment co-author the reading experience.
Friday, June 20, 2025
11:00AM – 12:30PM EDT
Online (ZOOM)
Recent research in Communication Design. Presentations of unique, significant creative work, design education, practice of design, case studies, contemporary practice, new technologies, methods, and design research. A moderated discussion will follow the series of presentations.
Friday, June 20, 2025 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM EDT Online
Colloquium Attendee Registration
Please register here to attend the upcoming DI colloquium.
Moderator
Cat Normoyle East Carolina University
PRESENTATIONS
Resonant Pages: Artist Books, Natural Rhythms, and Digital Interactivity Creative Practice Lingyi Kong Adjunct Professor Parsons School of Design, The New School
Inclusive Characters: Merging Aesthetics and Accessibility in Type Design Katie Krcmarik Assistant Professor Illinois State University
N.H. Pritchard’s The Mundus and the Limits of Typography Case Studies Andrew Shurtz Assistant Professor Louisiana State University
Creative Computation in the Age of AI: Reimagining the Boundary of Human Creativity Scholarly Research Bei Hu Assistant Professor Washington University in St. Louis
From Designer to Design Facilitator: Turning Studios into Dewey-Inspired Learning Labs Design Pedagogy Michael Berrell Assistant Professor SUNY Farmingdale
Type as Cultural Bridge: An Interactive Fusion of Iranian and American Design Narges Sedaghat Graduate student East Carolina University
“Ask the Expert” is a series looking at various considerations and practices related to design research, scholarship, publication, and other academic topics.
We invited Design and Culture’s Principal Reviews Editor, Maggie Taft, to respond to questions about different aspects of journal publishing. This is the first of a series from Taft, an independent scholar and Director of Writing Space, a community-based writing center for artists and designers.
Question: What is your top tip for scholars and designers interested in publishing in a design research journal?
Answer: Read.
We often think of reading as a parallel activity to writing. (Consider the elementary school trifecta “reading, writing and arithmetic,” which seems to position reading and writing as separate enterprises.) Yet when it comes to academic writing, reading is essential in so many ways.
The most familiar way to connect reading with academic writing is in the form of research. You read existing scholarship on your topic so that you can reference and draw upon previous findings and build a bibliography that demonstrates your knowledge of the field. Reading for research is essential.
But reading supports academic writing in at least three other crucial ways–
Reading will strengthen your methodology.
The more you read, the more you’ll learn about different ways to structure an academic argument and mobilize evidence in support of that argument. You’ll encounter some authors who highlight their subjectivity as a researcher and others who minimize it. You’ll find some authors who interpret case studies and others who analyze data sets. By reading widely and keeping track of the texts you find most compelling, you can identify the kinds of arguments you want to make and get ideas about how to use your research to make them.
My colleague Liat Berdugo recommends prospective article authors identify “sample journal articles”. These need not be articles that address the same topic as yours, but rather articles that make the types of arguments and interventions you hope to make. Having a good example of the kind of writing you wish to do will make it easier to figure out how to put together your article.
Reading will help you to identify how your work fits into the conversations that are happening in your field.
Academic arguments offer new ways of understanding, new paths of inquiry, and/or new recommendations for practice. These interventions are meaningful insofar as they respond to existing conventions. What is your work responding to? What is it seeking to change or rethink? To do meaningful work, you need to know what other people in your field are paying attention to and talking about so that you can explain to them the connection between their concerns and yours. Keeping up with ongoing scholarship in your field by reading will allow you insight into the kinds of work people are doing right now and what they’re paying attention to. This will, in turn, allow you to connect your specific area of research to broader patterns in the field, whether your ambition is to shift or refocus these conversations or to develop them in new directions or through new approaches.
Reading will help you identify the journals that are the best fit for your article.
There are many international journals that publish design scholarship but that doesn’t mean every one of them will be a good fit for your design research article. Every journal has a different historical focus, thematic emphasis, and methodological bent. Familiarize yourself with different journals’ respective missions (available on journal websites) and read the scholarship they’ve been publishing recently so that you can evaluate which is most likely to publish your work.
During my five years as the Managing Editor of Design and Culture, I think we rejected 50% of the articles we received not because they were bad scholarship but because they simply did a different kind of work than that which the journal sought to highlight. Some submissions deployed a scientific approach whereas the journal favored a humanistic one. Others focused on architecture, which at that time fell outside of the journal’s purview. Read the journals in your field so that you can both target your article submission to the ones most likely to publish your work AND target your article to that journal’s constituents. For instance, if you’re publishing research on graphic design education in a design history journal (like The Journal of Design History) you might frame your argument a bit differently than if you were to publish the research in a design education journal (like International Journal of Designs for Learning).
Ultimately, it is easy to think of reading as extraneous to the publishing process. You’re busy. There are so many urgent personal and professional matters vying for your attention. It can be difficult and even feel indulgent to dedicate time to reading, a task that typically rewards slowness. But for all the reasons described above, reading is not extraneous to writing for journals (and to writing more broadly). It is fundamental to it.
The online Academic Abstract Writing Program at Design Incubation offers a series of activities that will help design researchers to craft a written synopsis of their research. The outcome(s) will be a concisely written document typically expected of academic publication venues. This includes conferences, journals, grant applications, publishers, and academic organizations.
The program is designed along two tracks:
The first track is for design faculty who are new to academia and want a program that will help them to navigate the academic publication arena.
The second track is aimed at design faculty who have established their research agenda and activities, and would like to explore ways to broaden their scope of publication opportunities.
Application:
Academic Abstract Writing Workshop Program
This program is designed to facilitate design researchers in the development of their academic research abstract(s) for conferences, grant proposals, journal articles, and other publications.
The program does not guarantee abstract submissions will be accepted by the academic venues. The program is designed to improve your understanding of abstract writing, and the factors involved in developing a successful abstract submission.
Complete all required application information. Submit as much information as possible in the other fields to help us to understand your interests, goals, and challenges.
Seats are limited for this fellowship program. Upon acceptance, there is a $100 (members)/ $150 (non-members) program registration fee.
Event date: Friday, June 20, 2025 Format: Virtual/Online Location: ZOOM
We invite designers—practitioners, creators, and educators—to submit abstracts of design research, creative investigations, and productions. This is a virtual online event format. Abstracts can be submitted online now for peer review.
There is a $10 conference fee required upon acceptance of the research abstract for non-members. The conference fee is waived for active annual members. Find out more about our annual memberships.
Researchers will videotape their 6-minute presentations which will published online in advance of the colloquium. The video recording is due by Thursday, June 5, 2025. We encourage all attendees to watch the videos in advance of the moderated discussion.
Designing Your Research Agenda (DYRA) 4.2 Friday, March 7, 2025 2:00PM EST Virtual Event
Designing Your Research Agenda (DYRA) is a panel discussion and open forum for design scholars and researchers to discuss aspects of their research agendas. We aim to open a dialog regarding the challenges of discovering one’s design research inquiry. DYRA is a design research webinar series.
This event focuses on Fulbright scholars in our Communication Design community.
Panelists
Sarah Edmands Martin Assistant Professor University of Notre Dame
Natalia Ilyin Professor Cornish College of the Arts and VCFA
Natacha Poggio Associate Professor University of Houston–Downtown
Some of the questions we will discuss with panelists include:
How did you determine your research agenda (high-level timeline of your career/trajectory)?
If you were going to position your work within a category, would you say your research addresses: design theory, design history, design practice, design research (traditional graphic design, speculative design, UX, UI, typography, AR, VR, creative computing, design solutions, etc.), design pedagogy, or something else?
What led you to pursue a Fulbright?
What are some highlights from your Fulbright experience?
How has the Fulbright affected your creative/research trajectory?
Moderators
Jessica Barness Kent State University
Heather Snyder Quinn DePaul University
Biographies
Sarah Edmands Martin
Sarah Edmands Martin is Assistant Professor of Visual Communication Design at the University of Notre Dame where her practice unfolds at the intersections of speculative design, digital storytelling, and media aesthetics. She has received fellowships that include a 2024 Fulbright, a 2023 Design Writing Fellowship at Chicago’s Writing Space, and a 2021–22 Research Fellowship at the Institute for Digital Arts + Humanities. She has published in books and journals such as CounterText, Ethics in Design and Communication: New Critical Perspectives, Digital Transformation in Design: Processes and Practices, and AIGA’s Eye on Design. Her current book projects include Beautiful Bureaucracy: A Design Brief for Civic Life (MIT Press, 2025) and Otherworldly Games: An Atlas of Playable Realities. Her design work has been recognized and published by PRINT, Graphis, the Paris Design Awards, London International Creative, and the Creative Communication Awards. Her industry-facing work spans clients from Citibank to AMC’s The Walking Dead.
Natalia Ilyin teaches design history and criticism, design for social activism, and transition design at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington. She and her former co-teacher Liz Patterson created the Parallel Narratives curriculum and published the Parallel Narratives anthology. These are extensive annotated historical bibliographies created by third-year undergraduate students on topics not covered in the contemporary canon of design history. A second volume is in production. Natalia is also Founding Faculty for the MFA in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she advises candidates in histories, criticism, and critical writing. She has taught at Rhode Island School of Design, Yale University, The Cooper Union and the University of Washington, and has acted as Critic for the MFA in Graphic Design at Yale University and at Rhode Island School of Design. Her most recent book, Writing for the Design Mind, is available from Bloomsbury Publishing. Her new book will be available in 2027 from the same publisher, should no new thing arise.
Fulbright Scholar to the Brno University of Technology Architecture Program in Czech Republic.
Natacha Poggio
Natacha Poggio is an Associate Professor of Design at the University of Houston-Downtown, inspiring socially responsible citizens through design. In 2008, she founded Design Global Change, a collaborative focused on planet-centered solutions for global health, environmental, and social justice issues, impacting communities across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. A three-time recipient of Sappi’s Ideas that Matter award, she has secured over $76,000 in funding to support design for social good. In 2022, she was awarded a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Scholarship for a marine conservation project in Ecuador. A 2013 TEDx speaker and advocate for social impact design, she lectures internationally, judges competitions, and volunteers with the Winterhouse Institute Council. She holds an M.F.A. in Experience Design from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.F.A. in Graphic Design from the University of Buenos Aires. Originally from Argentina, Natacha considers herself a global citizen.
Fulbright Scholar to the Universidad de las Artes del Ecuador, in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
