Author: Design Incubation

Academic Abstract Writing Program

Thursday, June 19, 2025
10:00am – 2:00pm EDT

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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-11:15amPresentation on Abstracts.
Dan Wong, Jess Barness.
Abstracts Reviewed. Breakout rooms with Mentors.
Atzmon, Barness, Wong.
11:15am-12:15pmFellows Abstract Workshop
12:15-1:00pmLunch Break
1:00pm- 2:00pmAbstracts—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

Resonant Pages: Artist Books, Natural Rhythms, and Digital Interactivity

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.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 11.3: Virtual Summer on Friday, June 20, 2025.

Design Incubation Colloquium 11.3: Virtual Summer

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

Moderator

Cat Normoyle
East Carolina University

PRESENTATIONS

Resonant Pages: Artist Books, Natural Rhythms, and Digital Interactivity
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

Typography of the Transreal: N.H. Pritchard’s The Mundus
Andrew Shurtz
Assistant Professor 
Louisiana State University

Creative Computation in the Age of AI: Reimagining the Boundary of Human Creativity
Bei Hu 
Assistant Professor 
Washington University in St. Louis

From Designer to Design Facilitator: Turning Studios into Dewey-Inspired Learning Labs 
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

Tips for Design Scholars Looking to Publish in a Design Research Journal

“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.

Maggie Taft, PhD
Founding Director
Writing Space

CFP: Academic Abstract Writing Program

Application Deadline: May 2, 2025

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

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Submit a short biography (250 words) describing your current position and professional research goals.
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Select all that reflect your challenges.
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Please list and/or describe the publications, conferences, grants, organizations, venues, or types of places where you would like to submit your abstract(s).
Submit a draft of an existing abstract, or a summary proposal of the work you are doing, challenges you encounter, and goals you aim to attain.
Accepted file types: pdf, docx, doc, rtf, txt, Max. file size: 5 MB.

Submit a cv or resume.

This will help us to understand your experiences and interests and to develop the program that best suits your needs.

Accepted file types: docx, doc, pdf, txt, rtf, Max. file size: 5 MB.

Colloquium 11.3: Virtual Summer

Call for design research abstracts. Deadline: Fri, April 25, 2025.

Submission Deadline: Friday, April 25, 2025.

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.

Abstract submissions are double-blind peer-reviewed. Accepted abstracts will be published online. Please review the articles, Quick Start Guide for Writing Abstracts and Writing an Academic Research Abstract: For Communication Design Scholars before submitting.

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.

Presentation format is Pecha Kucha. For more details, see the colloquia details and description.

The colloquium is a moderated panel discussion of the research involving the researchers, thought leaders, and Design Incubation members.

Host: Cat Normoyle, Design Incubation Director of Peer Reviews.

Designing Your Research Agenda (DYRA) 4.2

Fulbright Scholar Edition

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.

Fulbright Scholar to the Center for Digital Narrative, University of Bergen in Bergen, Norway.

Natalia Ilyin 

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.

Gender, Transgression, and Ritual Torah Preparation

The highly scripted ritual performances, material processes, and acts of mediation that characterize the Torah scribing process.

Leslie Atzmon
Professor
Eastern Michigan University

According to the editors, Sami Sjöberg, Mikko Keskinen, Arja Karhumaa, the volume The Experimental Book Object considers how “historical and contemporary experimentation… has challenged what books are and could be from the perspectives of materiality [and] mediation.” Separating holy artifacts from mundane objects is one the most crucial mediations within most cultures—and it typically involves design. This mediation of materials commonly takes place through an elaborate series of ritual performances, some of which end up with a freshly designed sacred object.

In my chapter for The Experimental Book Object, “Gender, Transgression, and Ritual Torah Preparation,” I focus on the creation of a kosher Torah scroll. I am particularly interested in the highly scripted ritual performances, material processes, and acts of mediation that characterize the Torah scribing process.

This rule-bound undertaking—which involves interactions among the mundane materials used to make a kosher Torah scroll, the bodily and cognitive actions of its scribe, and the environment in which it is created—transforms a set of quotidian materials into a singular holy book object. Because the creating parameters are so strict, one could argue that a kosher Torah is not an experimental book. But I maintain that it is.

Making a kosher Torah scroll that is fit for ritual use is traditionally believed to be prohibited for women. I argue that this is due to women being considered contaminated two weeks out of every month due to menstruation. In this chapter, I use The Women’s Torah Project (2010)—which produced the first Torah written and embellished by an international community of women—as a test case for the role that gender or the gendered body might play in creating an experimental book.

I have long been fascinated by how designers use embodied thinking and making processes to transform raw materials into functioning objects. I have also been fascinated by the processes for making objects that are ostensibly imbued with holiness, such as a kosher Torah scroll. Exploring the relationship between these parallel processes taught me something about design and embodiment. Considering the role that bodily contamination plays in the Jewish bias against female Torah scribes, and realizing that the Torah scribing script is inherently ungendered, gave me new insights into how critical embodiment is to making processes. It also revealed that embodied making or ritual can be exclusive—or inclusive.

Writing this chapter also tested my response to the question “what makes an experimental book?” In The Open Book Project (2014) (https://infinitemiledetroit.com/The_Open_Book_Project.html), Ryan Molloy and I argue that experimental books challenge the definition of what a book can be, and that those who make experimental books interrogate aspects of book-ness. By this definition a Torah scroll is not an experimental book. In her Afterword for The Experimental Book Object, Johanna Drucker writes: “Leslie Atzmon’s discussion of the Women’s Torah Project…offers a significant insight into the way an act as basic as participation in the scribal production of a sacred text can be profoundly transgressive” (Drucker 2024, 306). By understanding making as an embodied process that involves the interplay of the scribe, materials, and environment, I argue that the transgressive act of a female Torah scribe challenges the making process and does interrogate book-ness. In this way, a Torah scribed by one woman or a group of women is indeed an experimental book.

Excerpt

Leslie Atzmon, “Gender, Transgression, and Ritual Torah Preparation” in The Experimental Book Object: Materiality, Media, Design, Sami Sjöberg, Mikko Keskinen, Arja Karhumaa, eds., London: Routledge, Copyright (2024), 216-217. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Group. 

The guidelines for the Hebrew letter beit … illustrate the meticulous process to be used for drawing each letter, as well as the critical traditional relationships between each letterform and the other letters (Hebrew letter names are in italic):

Beit: One should take care that the part which protrudes behind is square, so that it will not resemble khaf. If it resembles khaf, it is invalid, and if it is unclear, one shows it to a child (as explained in siman 6). Ideally the right-hand side of the roof has a little prickle pointing to the right and the left-hand side has a little prickle pointing upwards. According to the kabbalah [mysticism, or tradition] it has a thick heel at the bottom so that it resembles a dalet in the throat of a vav; if so, it must be squared at the top to resemble dalet, and have a substantial heel at the bottom which would be the head of the vav. Its height and width should both be three nib-widths, and the gap in the middle should be one nib-width wide (Darkhei Moshe) (Keset Ha Sofer as quoted in Taylor Friedman).

Each letter has specific detailed scribing rules like these ones for beit. Each letter must also have a certain amount of white parchment showing around it. The white spaces within and between letters are analogous to the white fire of the primordial Torah discussed in the previous section, and this letterspacing is integral to a Torah being considered kosher.

This project was the 2024 Design Incubation Educators Awards winning recipient in the category of Scholarship: Publication.

Biography

A designer and design historian, Leslie Atzmon writes on both experimental books and design and science.

In 2014, she edited The Open Book Project book, featuring a critical Introduction by Atzmon, a related exhibition catalogue, essays on the book, and an experimental book design workshop section. Currently she investigates the intersections between design and science.

In 2016, Atzmon was in the UK on a Fulbright fellowship at Central Saint Martins, UAL doing research on Darwin and design thinking.

In 2019/2020, she curated the exhibition Design and Science, which ran at Eastern Michigan’s University Gallery and The Esther Klein Gallery/Science Center in Philadelphia. Atzmon also edited a collection entitled Design and Science (Bloomsbury 2023). This collection examines overlap between design and science through visual metaphor and modeling; biomimicry and biodesign; makers and users; and data manifestation. Atzmon is working on a biodesign textbook with Professor Diana Nicholas of Drexel University.

Mashq Conference 2022 on Arabic Type and Typography 

Seasoned pioneers in Arabic typography to emerging younger practitioners and academicians.

Yara Khoury Nammour
Assistant Professor
American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Khajag Apelian
Lecturer
American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Mashq 2022 conference was held on October 20–21, 2022 at the American University of Beirut [AUB]. It was the first event dedicated entirely to Arabic type and typography. Organized by AUB’s Arabic Type Unit, a research body committed to advancing Arabic type and typography, the conference marked a groundbreaking milestone in the Arab region.

AUB has long been at the forefront of design education. More than thirty years ago, it pioneered the first graphic design program in the Arab world and was the first to integrate the graphic use of Arabic script into its core curriculum. Building on this legacy, the Arabic Type Unit was established in 2018. Naturally, Mashq 2022 served as an extension of these efforts that provides a platform to explore the historical evolution, current practices, and future directions of Arabic typography in the region.

The organizers made sure that the event spotlighted regional expertise that has long been overlooked, with more than 80% of the speakers being of Arab origin while talks by non-Arab speakers were curated to focus exclusively on Arabic type and typography. The team also made sure to design and develop a dedicated conference bilingual website [www.mashqconference.org], with a strong emphasis on Arabic, further reflected the conference’s dedication to its cultural and linguistic roots. All conference talks were made freely available on the Arabic Type Unit’s dedicated YouTube channel [www.youtube.com/@ATU_org], to extend the event’s reach to a global audience. A summarized video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcNUw5HOgH4&t=17s

Attendees and Participating Institutions

Mashq 2022 succeeded in attracting over 400 attendees, including students (62%), professionals (38%), and professors (13%). Participants mostly came from Lebanese universities such as the Lebanese American University, Notre Dame University, Middle East University, Lebanese University, and Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts. International attendees included those from Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates.

Speakers and Sessions

The conference featured presentations from 15 distinguished speakers, with a diverse spectrum, from seasoned pioneers in Arabic typography to emerging younger practitioners and academicians. This mix fostered a rich exchange of perspectives, blending deep-rooted expertise with fresh, innovative approaches to Arabic type design and visual communication.

Among the speakers, Kameel Hawa’s presentation, “The Spring of Arabic Type,” showcased his innovative efforts to rejuvenate Arabic script through type design and calligraphy, reflecting on its potential for both tradition and modernity. Lara Assouad discussed the graphic visual expression of language and its alphabet, offering insights into how typographic design can shape visual communication. Hatem Imam analyzed the relationship between cultural production and graphic arts, proposing methods to bridge the gap between these two domains. While Onür Yazıcıgil explored the history of Ottoman naskh and its spread beyond the borders of Istanbul in order to contextualize the influence of these typefaces on Turkish and Arabic printing and publishing in Beirut and Cairo. Naïma Ben Ayed also presented collaborative new research that aims to expand Arabic type design pedagogy, emphasizing the importance of ‘self-organized knowledge’ under the School of Commons.

Exhibitions and Workshops

The conference hosted two exhibitions: 100 Best Arabic Posters which celebrated contemporary Arabic poster design of 2021-2022, while the Granshan Type Design Competition Winners exhibition highlighted award-winning Arabic typefaces from 2019 and 2021/2022.

Complementing the exhibitions, workshops were also planned to provide participants with hands-on learning opportunities. Azza Alameddine guided attendees through the complexities of harmonizing Arabic and Latin scripts in logo design during her workshop, “Arabic/Latin Logo Matchmaking.” Georg Seifert introduced participants to the creation of Arabic fonts using Glyphs software in his workshop, “Introduction to Glyphs.”

Diversity and Inclusion

The organizers made it a priority to amplify diverse voices within the Arabic typography community. They took special care to give a platform to the older generation of Arabic typographers and designers, many of whom had not previously been afforded the opportunity to share their work on such a prominent stage. This effort ensured their invaluable contributions and experiences were recognized, preserving their legacy while inspiring a new generation of practitioners.

Additionally, the speaker lineup reflected a wide range of experiences and expertise, spanning seasoned pioneers to emerging practitioners and academicians. This intentional curation fostered an inclusive dialogue that bridged generations and enriched the discussions with diverse perspectives.

Sponsors and Support

Sponsors contributed a total of $12,000 from different entities in the profession and the educational sector. Their contributions were essential to the success of the event. Key sponsors included:

  • Gold Sponsor: Commercial Type
  • Silver Sponsors: Glyphs and TypeTogether
  • Brass Sponsors: Rosetta Type, ISType, Koein, and Morcos Key

Impact and Reflection

Mashq 2022 challenged the dominance of Eurocentric design paradigms by fostering a space where Arabic typography and regional practices took center stage. It offered a compelling alternative to the often homogenized global design landscape. The conference highlighted the possibilities of moving beyond standardized, Westernized approaches in design education and practice, encouraging attendees to rethink the role of cultural identity as an intrinsic element in the creative process rather than a background influence.
Through it all, Mashq demonstrated how design can transcend corporate functionality to serve as a medium for personal narratives, cultural preservation, and regional storytelling. It explored the potential for a design philosophy rooted in local visual culture.

Mashq2022-241211Download

This project was the 2024 Design Incubation Educators Awards runner up recipient in the category of Service.

Biography

Yara Khoury Nammour — Assistant Professor of Graphic Design, Arabic Type Unit, AUB

Yara is a graphic and type designer, author and educator. She is an assistant professor of graphic design at the American University of Beirut and an independent designer since 2017 after a long-standing career of 20 years as design director at Al Mohtaraf design house. Her work is published in several international books and has authored a book titled ‘Nasri Khattar: A Modernist Typotect’ from Khatt Books. She heads the Arabic Type Research Unit and co-organizes the biennial Mashq conference on Arabic typography at AUB.

Khajag Apelian — Part-time Lecturer of Graphic Design, AUB

Khajag is a lettering artist, type and graphic designer. Khajag has developed typefaces in various scripts, including Arabic, Armenian, and Latin. He designed Arek, a typeface that was awarded the Grand Prize at Granshan 2010 Type Design Competition, and was among the winners of Letter.2, the 2nd international type design competition organized by the Association
Typographique Internationale. He currently operates under the name “debakir” Armenian for “printed type”. He …. and co-organizes the biennial Mashq conference on Arabic typography at AUB.

Chicago Designs: Teaching Community-Based Histories 

A workshop that promotes the teaching of local design archives.

Dr. Christopher Dingwall
Assistant Professor
Washington University in St. Louis

Dr. Bess Williamson
Professor
North Carolina State University in Raleigh

Dr. J. Dakota Brown
Visiting Associate Professor
University of Illinois, Chicago

Amira Hegazy
Adjunct Assistant Professor
University of Illinois Chicago

Chicago Designs: Teaching Community-Based Histories is a workshop that promotes the teaching of local design archives in studio and classroom instruction at the college level. First held in June 2022, the workshop provides a dynamic forum for university teachers to develop more inclusive approaches to teaching design history in a variety of pedagogical settings and through a range of disciplinary lenses. For its second iteration in June 2024, we welcomed fifteen participants from around the country to explore methods of archival pedagogy in Chicago. In two virtual meetings afterward, participants developed teaching materials to bring design archives into their own classrooms.

Chicago Designs joins a broader movement of scholars and practitioners who are expanding the definition of design history beyond established canons that emphasize the commercial output of mostly white or European men. Because the teaching of design history is not yet firmly established in either design schools or humanities departments in the United States, we organized the workshop to help teachers gain facility in archive-based pedagogy: the art and craft of using archival materials to make history come alive. Combining hands-on archival exercises, seminar-style reading discussions, and peer mentorship, the workshop provides a rare opportunity for teachers in design and in the humanities to learn from each other while modeling community-based design research.

The interdisciplinary approach is represented by the workshop organizers: two historians who study design (Williamson and Dingwall) and two designers who center historical research in their practices (Hegazy and Brown). Together we led site visits, discussions, and exercises at major museums and libraries as well as community arts organizations. At each site, participants explored the significance of design to Chicago history from its rise as a hub of global consumer capitalism to the level of everyday neighborhood life. Ranging from themes of labor activism in printing trades to the typographic politics of graffiti and commercial sign painting, our five days of activities showed participants design histories from the bottom up while surveying the city’s rich landscape of archival collections and practices.

Our institutional host and base of operations was the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where we met the first morning to discuss readings that set the intellectual and practical agendas for the week. What is design history? What does it mean to make that history inclusive of diverse design cultures? How can archival materials advance those goals in the classroom? In our afternoon session, we visited the Newberry Library — a major repository of Chicago social and cultural history – where J. Dakota Brown and curators Paul Gehl and Jill Gage led a workshop on the labor history of print culture in the city. On Tuesday, we visited the Jane Addams Hull House Museum where Bess Williamson led a discussion on accessible teaching followed by a tour of the museum and critical discussion about historic house museums as an archive for design and immigration histories. On Wednesday, Amira Hegazy led a visit to Pilsen Arts and Community House focused on the history and impact of Chicago gang writing and printing with graffiti writer Sir Charles, followed by an afternoon exercise in neighborhood-based design study. On Thursday, Bess Williamson led a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago for discussion of design and library management with curator Leslie Wilson followed by a gallery teaching exercise with curator Elizabeth McGoey, followed by an afternoon visit to Joan Flasch Artists Book Collection to examine its zine collection. On Friday, Chris Dingwall led a visit to Hyde Park Art Center where textile design and fabric artist Robert Paige and curator Allison Peters Quinn guided us through Paige’s exhibition (The United Colors of Robert Earl Paige), followed by an afternoon visit to the Vivian G. Harsh Collection of African American History where Dingwall and archivist Beth Loch modeled an archival exercise featuring print culture from Chicago’s Black Renaissance.

Building a cohort was one of our major ambitions and accomplishments. Selected from an open application call, our fifteen participants consisted of university teachers in design schools and humanities departments as well as museum educators. After the week in Chicago, we reconvened twice virtually to share and develop curricular projects that connect archival materials with their teaching goals. Projects include:

  • Design history modules based on artifacts that represent diverse racial and ethnic histories
  • Field-based observation exercises connecting with neighborhoods, local media, and non-human species communities
  • Study trips and out-of-class experiences for art and design students in Chicago, Baltimore, Fresno, San Francisco, New York, and Philadelphia
  • Critical theory and research modules on community-based design and artifact interpretation
  • Classroom and public engagement projects in identity design, interactive exhibition design, and accessible media

We envision the workshop as a living resource. The teaching projects are publicly available as an online resource hosted by the Design Museum of Chicago. It is a resource for educators to understand how to effectively utilize collections and engage in communities where they teach. These projects applied the workshop’s themes to their own teaching environments internationally and in online communities. In addition to the teaching resource, the website features a scholarly bibliography as well as descriptions about each of the sites visited during the workshop with the goal of raising their profile for design history study.

Chicago Designs is an effective model for supporting the teaching of design history by providing educators a space to learn new teaching methods, develop teaching materials, and build professional networks. Thanks to funding from the Terra Foundation of American Art, each participant received a stipend of $250, as well as support for travel up to $600. We prioritized supporting contingent faculty and graduate student participants by providing them with an additional stipend to offset the costs that are generally covered through academic salary research benefits. Our application review process was centered around ensuring a diverse cohort with at least one third of the participants coming from non-tenure track positions to be able to emphasize and build mentorship and professional development opportunities.

Chicago Designs: Teaching Community-Based Histories

This project was the 2023 Design Incubation Educators Awards runner-up recipient in the category of Teaching.

Biography

Dr. Bess Williamson is a historian of design and material culture and Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the NC State University in Raleigh. She is the author of Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design (2019) and co-editor of Making Disability Modern: Design Histories (2020). Her work explores diverse histories and practices of design that extend expertise to users and communities, and challenge designers to address access and power in their work.

Dr. Christopher Dingwall is Assistant Professor of Design History in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. He is a historian of American and African American culture, with interests in material culture, political economy, and race. He is currently working on Black Designers in Chicago (for the University of Chicago Press), a chronicle of African American artists and craftspeople in the American design industry during the twentieth century. This project began as an exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center in 2018 and is supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Dr. J. Dakota Brown teaches and writes on the intertwined histories of design, labor, and capital. After studying graphic design at North Carolina State University, he completed an MA in visual studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2022, he graduated from Northwestern University’s PhD program in Rhetoric and Public Culture. He is currently a visiting associate professor at the UIC School of Design. Dakota’s writing has appeared in Jacobin, Post45, and the edited volume After the Bauhaus, Before the Internet: A History of Graphic Design Pedagogy. A short collection of his essays was recently published in Portuguese translation by Brazil’s Clube do Livro do Design.

Amira Hegazy is an artist and design historian investigating the relationship of design artifacts to memory, belonging, and community identity. Trained as a printmaker and book artist, Amira earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She teaches design practice and theory at the University of Illinois Chicago as an Adjunct Assistant Professor. She is the curator of Letters Beyond Form: Chicago Types at the Design Museum of Chicago supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art. The exhibition centers the typography in Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods to illuminate design legacies and their contemporary echoes, especially alternative modernisms and love as an organizing principle in design. Amira has exhibited her visual work at the International Print Center of New York, The Grolier Club, The William King Museum of Art, Hyde Park Art Center, Bird Show Chicago, and other venues internationally.