Author: Design Incubation

Basic Web Design as Foundation of Publication Design

Bruno Ribeiro
Assistant Professor of Graphic Design
Department of Art and Design
California Polytechnic State University

When introduced to the design of print publications, students often struggle with type hierarchy and sometimes they lack appreciation for simplicity. Learning HTML and its tagging system, however, can help them in both matters.

After taking their first web class, students tend to have a better understanding of systematic typography and make more conscious decision about typographical design. Through the logical language of HTML and the tagging system, students clearly see the supporting structure of type hierarchy. Pedagogically, it helps educators guide students to make better choices. Because web design is completely new to most of the students, it’s an opportunity to frame its structure as an approach on how to properly treat type hierarchy and consistency. Even the default style for HTML documents, with no formatting of any kind, provides a clear correlation between content hierarchy and visual hierarchy. Therefore, an early web design class improves students’ understanding of systematic formatting a wide range media. Web design can also promote an appreciation for simplicity in design. Every non-designer knows how to (often badly) format a printed page in their text processor of choice. Design students, then, tend to overly design to differentiate their work from what non-designers do. Simple design on the web, however, already brings a sense of accomplishment to the student who is able to make something they built from scratch available online. Even utterly simple designs are more tangible as a learned skill.

Web design should not be seen only as a skill that students need to learn. It is an effective means to teach the principles of systematic typography and visual hierarchy. The earlier students learn these concepts, better are the chances they will have of fully integrating them into their creative practice.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 4.1: San Jose State on Saturday, Sept 30, 2017.

Bridging the Business Design Gap

Martin Dominguez
Adjunct Professor
St. John’s University, Fordham University

Service design is an emerging field that operates at the intersection of human-centered design, user-experience design and business execution. Despite two decades of academic and practical work in the field (see Service Design Network, https://www.service-design-network.org/), service design has only recently emerged as a field of interest in the United States. Catalyzed by firms like IDEO and Fjord and design programs at Stanford and SCAD, interest in the field is gaining momentum among business decision makers.  As a result, new opportunities for graduating design students and experienced designers in related fields are emerging in both the public and private sectors. Growing the service design industry in the US and abroad, however, requires more than simply preparing the next generation of designers. Bridging the gap between designers/design thinking and the business community is also necessary in order to improve communication between designers and those who employ them.

The purpose of this presentation is to examine how engaging business students in the fundamentals of design might benefit design students and practitioners. Specifically, we explore how helping business see how design can be used to innovate and address complex market and organizational challenges might open new opportunities for designers in the future. Two service design-centered business courses (graduate and undergraduate) at two Universities in New York City provide a framework for understanding how best to educate business students in the fundamentals of design thinking and service design. Insights for design educators and practitioners including three fundamental principles that have emerged from this participatory action research. Areas for future research and pedagogy are also discussed.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 4.0: SUNY New Paltz on September 9, 2017.

When the Process is the Product: Pollock, Gehry and the Illusion of Randomness

Craig Konyk, AIA
Assistant Professor
School of Public Architecture
Michael Graves College
Kean University

This paper explores the role of randomness in the design process using two examples for the field of art and architecture as illustrative examples: Jackson Pollock and Frank Gehry.  Both Pollock’s and Gehry’s work rely on the revelation of the process as the product.

Jackson Pollock is one of those art world figures that is frequently derided by the average person with a dismissive, “My kid could paint that.” Abstract Expressionism (the combination of the term “abstract” with “expressionism”, two vastly different artistic movements of the 20th century) defined a certain “automatism” of the process of the paint’s actual application, even defining Pollock in a certain sense as the “idiot savant” of the post-war American art scene; child’s play indeed.

Frank Gehry’s study models of torn paper and crumpled foil elicit similar decrees of child-like facileness from the same quarters.  But for all their apparent improvisation, a closer study reveals quite a different narrative.  Contemporary critics of the time, when not dismissing the work outright, were compelled to suggest edits and/or additions, the implication being that the works were somehow “disharmonious” in their present state and in need of adjustment.  But when the process is one that defies easy visual “completed-ness” in the traditional sense, the artist/architect maintains the final arbitration of that “completed-ness”.

The acknowledged acceptance of Polock’s and Gehry’s work as serious endeavors allows a certain liberation for experiment in design, outside of the pragmatics of functionality.  It is not to say that we now all have to “do a Gehry” in order to be “artists”, but we are now in a position to argue for more difference in approach, rather than any narrowly focused expectation of what a design project should look like.  In that respect, as designers, we now have the freedom to allow the process to be revealed and use randomness as a strategy, which enhance and elevate all design investigations.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 4.1: San Jose State on Saturday, Sept 30, 2017.

Towards an Understanding of Cinema’s Impact on Design Education

Jason Tselentis
Associate Professor Of Design
College Of Visual And Performing Arts
Winthrop University

In the classroom, design students who view documentary films such as Gary Hustwit’s “Helvetica” (2007), Douglas Wilson’s “Linotype” (2012), and Briar Levit’s “Graphic Means” learn about designers, the tools they use (or used), and the meaning behind their creations. Film viewings and class discussions offer perspectives for students to recognize the significance (or lack of significance) a designer and/or their design has in yesterday’s and today’s culture.

To understand and appreciate designers and their work in those films and others has merit, exposing students to relevant issues and influences. But what can design students learn from not only watching such documentaries, but also investigating the methods and principles used for creating them? In cinematic arts and filmmaking degree and certificate programs, film studies deliver a framework to appreciate and understand cinematic creations. It’s visual literacy for cinema, teaching film students to read and analyze movies in preparation for making their own movies.

Film studies and filmmaking could also enhance a design student’s skill set. How would identifying a researchable documentary topic teach students about design history and design research, as well as storytelling? Studying film is also a platform for criticism. What could design students learn from fictional cinematic works, investigating the ways designers have been represented as antagonists, protagonists, or mere set dressing? What would design students say about the stereotypical designer, as (sometimes negatively) represented in movies and on television?

“Towards an Understanding of Cinema’s Impact on Design Education” will present a motion picture and film study platform  for design education that includes documentary films and more. It aims to demonstrate how a class (or classes) could shape design students into more well-rounded creatives, perhaps the next generation of filmmakers. And it proposes ways to mold them into capable and responsible critics or historians.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 4.0: SUNY New Paltz on September 9, 2017.

The 45th City: Visualizing and Experiencing Fake News

Jonathan Hanahan
Assistant Professor, Communication Design
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
Washington University in St. Louis

Fake news is a problem created by designers. It is a problem of aesthetics, not simply content or substance. Attempts to clarify the way information from any source is rendered in the walled gardens of our social media platforms—where reportedly 62% of American adults get news information—have homogenized the visual representation of all content, reliable or not.

This presentation discusses an ongoing research project—titled The 45th City—which investigates the role that design plays in the current fake news epidemic, epitomized by the recent election of the 45th President of the United States. The project explores speculative ways of visualizing both reliable and unreliable news websites through the physicalization of code into 3D artifacts. It inquires on a real world implication of the legitimization of such entities and encourages audiences to occupy, investigate, and contemplate their relationship to digital infrastructure beyond the thin veneer of their devices.

This series of large scale 3D artifacts along with corresponding digital renderings will be on view at The Luminary in St. Louis, MO in September 2017 and the pinkcomma gallery in Boston, MA in early 2018.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 4.1: San Jose State on Saturday, Sept 30, 2017.

Rethinking the Capstone in a Graphic Design BFA Program

Regina Gardner Milan
Lecturer
Department of Art & Design
University of Massachusetts Lowell

Evolving the BFA capstone project to develop professional competencies for emerging designers.

Encouraging students to develop projects that address their competencies and those that they need to develop. A year-long course sequence encouraging extensive creative exploration while working within developed constraints that are specific to each student. These constraints are developed through a reflective process of research and critical analysis of their skill sets and portfolio. They then apply these skills and making to a defined set of projects.

Projects are developed across complex design systems encouraging personal design thinking and and challenging student’s skillsets. Projects include both analog and digital solutions including app design, web design, interactive installations and motion graphics.  Faculty encourage growth mind-set and conceptual development of projects that help define a student’s aesthetic and aspirations for their post-college practice.

Developed two years ago, this new capstone has proven successful in encouraging critical design thinking, content development, and putting students in the strongest possible position for entering their professional design practice. Students graduate with a strong social media presence, robust resumes and expanded portfolios.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 4.0: SUNY New Paltz on September 9, 2017.

Designfulness: Teaching Designers to Mindfully Create a Sustainable Future

Rachel Beth Egenhoefer
Chair, Department of Art + Architecture 
Program Director & Associate Professor, Design
University of San Francisco

In today’s culture technology is speeding up our lives, creating the perceived need for everything to be faster, newer, better, sleeker, now!  As we train the next wave of designers, they are faced with these challenges both as students, and in the professional world they will enter.

Simultaneously, the world is faced with the climate change crisis.  On global and local levels the impacts of environmental degradation are real and impacting our communities.  The need for designers to think and work sustainably has never been greater.

One of the greatest challenges in teaching sustainable design (either to students or consumers for that matter) is doing so within a culture that values speed.   So much of our daily habits and lifestyles rely on quick, convenient decisions that   ultimately lead to unsustainable patterns.

To truly tackle issues in sustainability we, as designers and consumers, need to slow down.  Slowing down allows us to understand the complicated impacts of spilt second decisions so that we can redesign a better solution.  Slowing down allows us to understand community and those around us.  Slowing down allows us to question how we live, and how we want to live.  Mindfulness based practices is one way to slow down and reflect on these questions.

Integrating mindfulness into design education better prepares students to be more conscious designers in the future.  As a result, not only are they conscious designers, they are also more conscious citizens.  As such, one might hope, that future generations can combat fast moving lifestyles and create a more sustainable future.

This Design Incubator talk shares ideas in integrating mindfulness into design education to empower future designers to conscious designers and citizens for a better world.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 4.1: San Jose State on Saturday, Sept 30, 2017.

Theorizing Fashiontech as an Emerging Design Practice

Anne Galperin
Associate Professor
Graphic Design
SUNY New Paltz

Like so many other endeavors contemporary designers find themselves involved in, fashiontech (a marriage of conventional apparel and electronic/digital technology for fun and/or function) unites a variety of professionals in collaboration. Experience and interaction designers, industrial and fashion designers, engineers, programmers and users all have a role to play in the conceptualization and creation of fabrics, garments, hardware, and programming.

Hybrid practices such as this one require new theoretical frameworks in order to describe, understand and innovate in emerging fields.

As an initial step toward the creation of a such a framework for fashiontech, selected concepts originating in areas as diverse as tangible computing, fashion, semiotics, sociology, women’s studies, craft and maker culture will be described, compared and contrasted. (This will not exclude issues of concern in the apparel, technology and design industries including unsustainable or ethically compromised resource production, labor, and manufacturing, and the planned obsolescence typical of both fashion and technology.)

This synthetic construction is intended to be useful to students, educators and makers in fashiontech-related fields as they envision, create and theorize about such garments. As a demonstration the framework will be used to analyze and position pivotal fashiontech garments, one possible example being the Cute Circuit-designed dress Katy Perry wore to the 2010 Met Costume Institute Gala.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 4.0: SUNY New Paltz on September 9, 2017.

Teaching Inclusive Design: Design with Everyone in Mind

Ziddi Msangi
Associate Professor
Graphic Design
UMass Dartmouth

The World Health Organization defines disability as “a contextual variable”. One is more or less disabled by their interaction with a physical environment, social environment, or institutional environment. Inclusive Design aims to “reduce the experience of disability and enhance everyone’s experience and performance.

Universal design standards were developed to guide Designers in addressing disabling environments. The goal is to create accessible spaces for people with functional limitations.

Graphic design educators can integrate these principles in the design studio, providing a generation of students with the tools to improve the quality of life for all citizens.

“A User Expert is a person who has developed expertise by means of their lived experience in dealing with the challenges of the environment. due to a physical, sensory, and/or cognitive functional limitation. User/Experts include, older people with changing vision or stamina, people of short stature, limited grasp, or who use wheelchairs.”-Institute for Human Centered Design

In this model, we move beyond personas, as a way of identifying a users needs when developing a brand. User experts with functional limitations share their lived experience with students. The insight students gain from a User Expert helps guide the design process.

This presentation will share the visual outcome of junior level branding and identity projects, and the impact on student understanding. Over the course of the semester, students were in conversation with four User Experts who helped guide the development of the projects.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 4.0: SUNY New Paltz on September 9, 2017.

Design Incubation Colloquium 4.0: SUNY New Paltz

Design Incubation Colloquium 4.0 (#DI2017sep) will be held at SUNY New Paltz on Saturday, September 9, 2017.

Hosted by Amy Papaelias and Dimitry Tetin

We are launching our 4th year with the Design Incubation Colloquium 4.0 (#DI2017feb) hosted by the Graphic Design Program at the State University of New York at New Paltz. This event is open to all interested in Communication Design research.

Saturday, September 9, 2017
Time: 10:00am–4:30pm
Old Main Building
Room B125
Tricor Ave
New Paltz, NY 12561

Abstract submission for presentations deadline July 15, 2017.  For details visit the Call for Submissions, and Submission Process description.

Venue

Old Main Building B125, SUNY New Paltz

Travel to SUNY New Paltz

Driving directions

If coming from NYC there is a very convenient Trailways bus that leaves Port Authority on the hour and stops 10 minutes walk to the SUNY New Paltz campus. It takes about 90mins and costs $43.50 roundtrip.

Parking

Parking is permitted in university lots without a permit on a weekend. There is Accessible Parking in the loop right next to the Old Main building.

Detailed Campus Map pdf

Coffee, Restaurants in New Paltz (details here.)

Agenda

Morning Session 10:00-12:30

Curriculum and Program Development

Reconstructing a BA Graphic Design Program: Scalpel or Sledgehammer?
Nancy Wynn
Associate Professor
Merrimack College

Rethinking the Capstone in a Graphic Design BFA Program
Regina Gardner Milan
Lecturer
Department of Art & Design
University of Massachusetts Lowell

Facilitating a Culture that Celebrates Experimentation and Addresses the Fear of Failure Through Assessment
Alex Girard
Assistant Professor
Graphic Design
Art Department
Southern Connecticut State University

Bridging the Business Design Gap
Martin Dominguez
Adjunct Professor
St. John’s University, Fordham University

Exploring Innovative Technologies

Augmented Reality Overcoming Learning Disabilities
Renée Stevens
Assistant Professor
Multimedia Photography & Design Department
S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications
Syracuse University

Making the Machine Human: Embracing Printing Technologies in Crafting a Present-Day Moveable Typeface
Peter P. Bella, Jr
Assistant Professor
Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne

Designing for Autonomous Machines
Alex Liebergesell
Associate Professor
Graduate Communications Design
Pratt Institute

Facets of Design Practice

Experiments in Building Empathy and Revealing Bias
Rebecca Mushtare
Associate Professor Of Web Design & Multimedia
State University Of New York At Oswego

An Archive: The National Museum of African American History and Culture
Kelly Walters
Assistant Professor of Design
Art + Art History Department
University of Connecticut

Lunch 12:30-1:45

Afternoon Session 1:45-4:30

Facets of Design Practice

Towards an Understanding of Cinema’s Impact on Design Education
Jason Tselentis
Associate Professor Of Design
College Of Visual And Performing Arts
Winthrop University

Theorizing Fashiontech as an Emerging Design Practice
Anne Galperin
Associate Professor
Graphic Design
SUNY New Paltz

Visualizing Mental Models
Joshua Korenblat
Assistant Professor
State University of New York at New Paltz

Unforeseen Structures: Chaos, Materials, and Emergent Process
Mitch Goldstein
Assistant Professor
School of Design
Rochester Institute of Technology

Drawing Type, Drawing Connections
Joel Mason
Professor Emeritus
Department of Communication Design
New York City College of Technology, CUNY

Looking Outward to a World View

COIL & Preparing Global Designers
Sean Nixon
Associate Professor of Art
Program Coordinator, Design Program
Art, Design, Fashion, Music, Theater & Communication Dept.
SUNY Ulster

Graphic Design for Science
Gokhan Ersan
Assistant Professor
Department of Art & Design
SUNY Binghamton

Thinking like a Forest / Ecological Empathy
Jason Dilworth
Associate Professor
Visual Arts + New Media
SUNY at Fredonia

Zika and Public Health Guidelines: Prototyping Models for Different Personas

Courtney Marchese
Assistant Professor of Interactive Media + Design
School of Communications
Quinnipiac University

Teaching Inclusive Design: Design with Everyone in Mind

Ziddi Msangi
Associate Professor
Graphic Design
UMass Dartmouth

5-7pm Informal mixer following presentations at Huckleberry, 21 Church Street New Paltz, NY, 12561