Research in Communication Design

Colloquium 6.1: Quinnipiac University, Call for Submissions

Call for design presentation abstracts. Deadline: Saturday, July 6, 2019.

Design Incubation Colloquium 6.1 (#DI2019oct) will be held at the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University on Saturday, October 5, 2019, 10:00am-5:00pm. Hosted by Courtney Marchese and the School of Communications. This event is open to all interested in Communication Design research.

Abstract submission deadline: Saturday, July 6, 2019.

We invite designers—practitioners and educators—to submit abstracts of design research. Presentations format is Pecha Kucha.

For more details, see the colloquia details and description. Abstracts can be submitted online for peer review.

Affiliated Society Meeting

Drop by for the Design Incubation networking event on Saturday, February 16, 2019, 12:30-1:30pm.

Saturday, February 16, 2019
12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
New York Hilton Midtown- 2nd Floor – Beekman

Attendance is free and open to the public.

Come and join us for a casual meet-and-greet networking event at the Design Incubation affiliated society business meeting at the Annual CAA Conference in NYC. Connect with other design educators, and ask questions, tell us your needs, and find out how to get involved.

Some topics of interest are:

The Research Fellowship Program at Design Incubation. What academic research are you currently pursuing? Could a series of workshops help you to design, develop, and execute research? What is research in communication design?
Promotion and Tenure. How do institutions assess and review your activities for tenure or promotion? What standards exist in the discipline? How might that differ at various institutions? Where can you find external reviewers? How is your research positioned?
Getting more involved. Design Incubation is a volunteer organization of design faculty from institutions across the U.S. and beyond. Would you like to get more involved? How can you participate or host an event or colloquium at your institution?

Please drop by if you are in the area and say hello!

Colloquium 5.3: Merrimack College

Design Incubation Colloquium 5.3 (#DI2019mar) will be held at Merrimack College on Saturday, March 30, 2019, 10:00am-6:00pm.

Hosted by Nancy Wynn and the Department of Visual and Performing Arts. This event is open to all interested in Communication Design research.

Crowe Hall
Classroom #107
Merrimack College
315 Turnpike Ave
North Andover, MA

Featured Presentation

Developing Citizen Designers: Our Civic Responsibility
Elizabeth Resnick
Professor Emerita, part-time faculty, Graphic Design
Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Presentations

Information Design and Voter Education: A Reflection on the 2018 Midterms and How to Design for 2020
Courtney Marchese
Associate Professor
Quinnipiac University

Visual Synthesis: Temporal and Expressive Exercises
Ann McDonald
Associate Professor
Northeastern University

Enter and Exit
Cheryl Beckett
Associate Professor
University of Houston

The Value of Impermanence in Design
Christopher Previte
Associate Professor
Franklin Pierce University

Using Icons to Encourage Visual Literacy on Campus
Lance Hidy
Accessible Media Specialist
Northern Essex Community College

Teaching the History of Graphic Design to Visual Learners
Ingrid Hess
Assistant Professor
University of Massachusetts Lowell

Humblebrag: A Game of Influence
Kathy Mueller
Assistant Professor
Temple University

African Americans in Advertising: Images, Stereotypes, and Symbolism
Omari Souza
Assistant Professor
Texas State University

Divided Desks: The Inequity of Gendered Design
Nina Bellisio
Associate Professor
St. Thomas Aquinas College

Disrupting Genius: A Dialogical Approach to Design Pedagogy
Bree McMahon
Assistant Professor
University of Arkansas

Rachael L. Paine
Adjunct Professor
North Carolina State University

Abstract submission of presentations deadline Monday, December 31, 2018. For details visit the Colloquia Overview and Online Submission Form.

Please join us, following the Colloquia, for a reception at 6 p.m. in the Rogers Center for the Arts. Drinks and appetizers will be served.

During the reception, artist Luba Lukova, will give an artist talk on her exhibition Designing Justice, which is located in the McCoy Gallery.

Venue

Crowe Hall Room 107

Directions on how to get to Merrimack College and Campus Map

Parking: Please park in designated areas for the Colloquia. [tbd.]

Where to Stay

Andover Inn 978-775-4902
4 Chapel Ave., Andover, MA

Courtyard by Marriott 978-794-0700
10 Campanelli Drive, Andover, Ma

Sonesta Suites 978-686-2000
4 Tech Drive, Andover, Ma

All of these hotels have a special Merrimack College Discount. Request the Merrimack Rate when booking.

Coffee Shops and Lunch options on campus

Restaurants in Downtown Andover, MA (2 miles away)

Arabic Lettering Workshop at the Type Directors Club

An exciting series of workshops about Arabic lettering is being offered at the Type Directors Club. This latest episode, participants will select important public signs from New York and will proceed to create the Arabic counterpart.

Kristyan Sarkis and Wael Morcos will be sharing their skills as type designers and graphic designers, teaching the main parameters that define the Arabic script and letterforms.

Where Industry Meets Academia: Who Is Leading the Pack in Design Research and Why?

A panel discussion will look at various aspects of design research and how the commercial industry and academic research is each providing value to the advancement of design.

A panel discussion at the upcoming 107th Annual CAA Conference 2019 in New York City.

Sponsored by the CAA Committee on Design. Chaired by Dan Wong, New York City College of Technology, CUNY.

Date: Thursday, February 14, 2019
Time: 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Place: New York Hilton Midtown – 2nd Floor – Regent

Papers/Projects

An Investigative Inquiry into Graphic Design Industry Research Practices
Rebecca Tegtmeyer
Michigan State University

Feedback Loop: From the Classroom to Industry to the Classroom
Lilian Crum
Lawrence Technological University

A Multi-Modal Approach to Design Research
Heather Snyder Quinn
DePaul University

Cultivating Empathetic Engagement through Participatory Design
Heidi Boisvert
New York City College of Technology, CUNY

Our “Zone of Occlusion” and the Role of Design History in Design Research: New Discoveries about Bell Telephone Laboratories
Russell A. Flinchum
North Carolina State University

Cultural Competence for Designers

Colette Gaiter
Professor
University of Delaware

As the US cultural and demographic landscape changes, students of design will need advanced cultural competence skills in visual communication. The Cross Model of Cultural Competence, developed for health practitioners in 1988, describes a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes and policies that enable a professional to function effectively across cultural difference.¹ Younger Americans are more culturally diverse than previous generations, whose imprint remains on iconic US visual media. What people see and what is visually described to them has an emotional effect. Reality is changing faster than visual representation because people have to emotionally embrace a challenging idea before changing their own behavior, perceptions, and representations.²

It is commercially advantageous as well as socially responsible to design for inclusion. Design educators can help students develop theoretical frameworks for creating believable and identifiable diverse representations. Students can learn to apply specific theory and practices that incorporate research from related disciplines such as social science and communications.³ Socially engaged visual practices are evolving and expanding, transcending methods like raising awareness, which can become ineffective simply from overuse. Design audiences can be motivated to change perceptions and behavior through an emotional connection to their own lives and experience. Using theory and methods, designers can develop empathy with their audiences’ perspectives to encourage positive emotional responses to diverse representations.

“Definitions of Cultural Competence” https://nccc.georgetown.edu/curricula/culturalcompetence.html
Christiano, Ann; Neimand, Annie. “The Science of What Makes People Care” Stanford Social Innovation Review; Stanford. Vol. 16, Issue 4, (Fall 2018): 26-33.
For example, Theory of Change (ToC) is a methodology used in the non-profit world to develop and evaluate community and social change initiatives for maximum effectiveness.

Questioning the Canon: Discussing Diversity and Inclusion in the Classroom

Sherry Freyermuth
Assistant Professor
Lamar University

Although Meggs’ History of Graphic Design is a well-regarded and extensive textbook on the topic of graphic design history, it has been criticized for its lack of diversity in the designers and artists featured in the textbook. This short form presentation will outline the results of a History of Graphic Design project where students are tasked with analyzing the topic of diversity and inclusion in graphic design. Students must select a designer that is part of an underrepresented group and put together a persuasive presentation about why this designer must be included in the next edition of the textbook. Questions students must research and address include: What is diversity and inclusion? How does diversity and inclusion impact graphic design? How is diversity and inclusion being addressed today? How is the selected designer impacting (or has impacted) graphic design? What other steps do you think are needed to improve diversity and inclusion in graphic design?

The final student presentation outcome builds on the student’s skills in research, persuasive strategy, critical thinking, visual, written and verbal communication, as well as soft skills in empathy and team building as students are put in groups to discuss topics and assess one another’s work. The assignment helps foster discussions about the importance of inclusiveness and how it directly impacts their own professional career and has provided an opening conversation for other ways to explore this topic in the classroom and beyond.

Pitch & Roll: Exploring Low-Risk Entrepreneurship for Student Designers

Jennifer Kowalski
Professor of Instruction
Graphic Arts & Interactive Design
Temple University Tyler School of Art

Today’s college students are under increasing pressure to have a side hustle—a part-time job that is often related to entrepreneurship. Over the course of the next decade, half of millennials intend to start a new business or be self-employed. Students today are six times more likely to start a business while in school than they were in the 1960s and 1970s. Design students can leverage passion projects for income, practical portfolio work, and opportunities for professional networking. How can design academics foster this entrepreneurship and set their students up for success?

This presentation explores potential projects and existing platforms for design entrepreneurship that fit students’ limited budgets and time constraints. The presentation looks at ways existing student work can be repurposed for entrepreneurship and offers example projects that students can complete independently or as part of a curriculum. Pros and cons of sales platforms are reviewed—from self-hosted ecommerce through sites like Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify to print-on-demand services like Society6, Printful, and Spoonflower to design-minded virtual marketplaces like Etsy and CreativeMarket. The emphasis is on finding methods for students to engage in creative risks without taking financial ones. With proper support, students can gain valuable experience facing real-world challenges with real-world results well before graduation.

Form, Focus and Impact: Pedagogy of a 21st-Century Design Portfolio

Peter Lusch
Professor of Practice
Lehigh University, Bethlehem PA

Befitting careers of the industrial era—in which graphic design was focused on the creation of static artifacts and one-direction communication streams—the traditional format used to demonstrate professional credentials of designers and students has been a physical or electronic portfolio, generally showcasing five to twenty discrete artifacts with short descriptions.

Technologically, the tools and outputs designers now use have altered how design is distributed and consumed, which in turn has created new forms of practice. Moreover, the proliferation of social design and social innovation practices—work without familiar ends of products and services—have further altered the discipline. These changes suggest the traditional approach to teaching design portfolios is outdated.

If the portfolio continues to hold important relevance for employers, what form, format, and focus should it take? How might we best prepare our students to showcase their skills and start their design careers in this shifting design and media landscape?

In this presentation, we will introduce our research studying the pedagogy of the undergraduate design portfolio. We will share qualitative findings from our initial data-set, collected from interviews with design educators and practitioners. Gathered from the perspectives of different types of design programs set in different regions across the country, we share viewpoints between pedagogy and practice to fill gaps in the literature about the preparation of students for professional practice.

This research is vital as a new generation of design educators takes the lead in teaching future designers how to navigate the complexity of the design landscape.

Art, Interaction and Narrative in Virtual Reality

Slavica Ceperkovic
Professor
Seneca College

This artist presentation will present a case study on how different user models of interaction shape narrative experiences in virtual reality landscape environments. The three models that will be explored are guided experiences, embodied task interaction, and companion based virtual reality interactions.

Author: Research in Communication Design

Colloquium 6.1: Quinnipiac University, Call for Submissions

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