Author: Design Incubation

Mitigating Youth Violence: The Futuring Project: Audacious Narratives & Enduring Voices 

An arts enrichment program aimed at addressing youth violence in South Bend, IN.

Neeta Verma
Independent Scholar
Associate Professor (retired)
University of Notre Dame

“The Futuring Project: Audacious Narratives & Enduring Voices” is the design, and implementation of an arts enrichment program aimed at addressing youth violence in South Bend, IN. The program was implemented at a detention facility serving at-risk youth aged 14-22 who had been exposed to violence. It combined art and design instruction with the goal of empowering these youth to take ownership of their stories, inspiring them to be catalysts for change in their communities.

The arts enrichment program provided much-needed engagement, equipping participants with valuable, translatable skills in art, design, and technology. Youth worked with software like Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and GarageBand. The curriculum covered various disciplines, including drawing, painting, music composition, digital design, choreography, collage, and mask-making. This creative process served not only as a skill-building exercise but also as a form of healing and therapy, fostering self-expression, self-reflection, and personal growth.

In collaboration with law enforcement, city agencies, grassroots organizations, and community leaders, the program created structured workshops that sustained creative engagement while promoting articulation, self-expression, and technical skill development. This gave the youth unique tools to help them succeed as they re-enter society with fresh perspectives for a brighter future.

The project on youth violence started in June, 2020 and concluded in June, 2024 of which the arts enrichment program ran for a period of 18 months from January, 2022 through July, 2023.

PROJECT RESEARCH

The design of the arts enrichment program was informed by a combination of data, literature reviews, and field research:

1. Data: A comparative analysis was conducted using statistical data from South Bend, three similar cities, and two larger cities to understand the problem of youth violence.

2. Literature Reviews: Research focused on positive youth development, especially in youth psychology. The potential of creative expression as therapeutic intervention was explored within cognitive and behavioral psychology.

3. Field Research: Interviews and focus groups were conducted to understand perceived causes of youth violence. We also collected data on socio-economic indicators, law enforcement, and geographic/environmental factors.

4. Analysis & Synthesis: Key findings included a lack of structure, predictability, and enrichment among at-risk youth. Additionally, there was a significant correlation between single-parent households and increased exposure to violence. These insights led to the development of the arts enrichment programming titled, “The Futuring Project: Audacious Narratives and Enduring Voices.”

FUNDING

The project was funded by four grants awarded by the Jessie Ball DuPont Fund, Community Foundation of St. Joseph County, City of South Bend, and the Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame.

The project would not have been possible without the support of the following institutions. Collaborators for the project include The Jessie Ball duPont Foundation; the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County; the City of South Bend, and the Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame (UND), Office of Research (UND), Office of Procurement (UND), Arts and Letters Computing Office (UND), the Center for Social Science Research (UND), Department of Development (UND), Robinson Community Learning Center (UND), Notre Dame Psychological Services Center, ND Studios and Teaching & Learning Technologies, DePaul Academy; Venues, Parks, & Arts, City of South Bend; Charles Black Community Center; Goodwill Industries; Office of Innovation & Technology, City of South Bend; South Bend Police Department; Center for the Homeless; Mamas Against Violence; Connect 2 Be the Change; River Bend Quilting Guild, Midwest Photographics.

To my collaborators: Connie Mick, Senior Associate Director Center for Social Concerns; Ike Shipman, Program Director, DePaul Academy; Denise Linn Riedl, Chief Innovation Officer, Office of the Mayor; Maurice Scott, Director of Community Initiatives, Office of the Mayor, Aaron Perri, Executive Director of Venues Parks & Arts; Jordan Gathers, Deputy Director of Venues, Parks, and Arts; Lisa Shaffer, Executive Director, South Bend Museum of Art; Krista Hoefle, Senior Curator, South Bend Museum of Art; Cynthia Taylor, Director, Charles Black Community Center; Laresha Johnson, Manager, Charles Black Community Center.

THE ARTS ENRICHMENT PROGRAM

The arts enrichment program was structured around modules that covered various creative disciplines. These modules included drawing (charcoal, pencil, and pastels), painting, music composition (using GarageBand), digital design (Adobe Photoshop), collage, poster design (Adobe InDesign/Illustrator), and mask-making.

The semester was divided into 12-week units, with each module running for 2-hour sessions. The program served approximately 22 students each week, with attendance ranging from 17 to 24 participants. The first session of each semester was dedicated to introducing the program, getting to know the participants, and setting expectations. As the semester progressed, participants explored their interests and selected modules that aligned with their projects. At the end of each module, participants presented their work to peers.

COMMUNITY AFFILIATIONS & PARTNERSHIPS

The workshop was designed to run within an institution, The DePaul Academy, that is part of the Juvenile Justice Center in South Bend. The institution is a private secure program serving male youth between the ages of 14 and 22 with a history of delinquent behaviors, mild mental health issues, abuse, neglect, and trauma needs, as well as students who did not thrive in less restrictive settings. The institution’s program offers an academy model residential treatment that promotes diverse social and educational interactions essential to the competency development of students. Audacious Narratives and Enduring Voices, was offered as an arts enrichment program to youth at this facility on a semester system basis. The design project was launched in February of 2022 and was completed in May of 2024.

RESPONSE to the ARTS ENRICHMENT PROGRAM

The program achieved high attendance, with over 45 students served throughout its duration. Participants consistently demonstrated deep engagement, often exceeding expectations in their creative outputs. One confidential evaluation noted, “Ms. Neeta has brought something extremely positive into the institution. Watching the young men engage in something they love has been truly inspiring. Her ability to maintain order and her fearlessness are greatly appreciated by both the boys and staff.”

The workshops fostered a safe, creative environment that encouraged self-reflection, self-expression, and critical thinking. This was evident in the vibrant and imaginative work produced by the youth. This expanded their portfolios to include both the work and proficiencies that served as a validation in their capabilities as these students reassimilated in the community and applied for placement opportunities and jobs.

In August 2023, the project was featured in the Audacious Narratives & Enduring Voices exhibit at the South Bend Museum of Art, running from September 22 to November 12, 2023. The youth participated in the opening reception on November 3, where they had the opportunity to discuss their work with the community and share their creative journey.

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

Biography

Neeta Verma situates herself within the porous discipline of Visual Communication Design whose work explores design as a tool for social equity. Her research focuses on systemic social issues examined through the lens of power and privilege. It expands the canon of the discipline to include pluriversal shifts within design discourse. She earned her MFA from Yale University. She served as an Associate Professor of Visual Communication Design at the University of Notre Dame. She is the recipient of the Nehru-Fulbright Fellowship. Awards include the SEGD 2024 Educator Award, 365: AIGA Year in Design Award, Design Incubation Teaching Award, Core77 Award for Social Impact, A’Design Awards, International Design Award, and Rev. William A. Toohey Award for Social Justice. She has presented her research at national and international conferences. She serves on the SEGD Academic Taskforce and is a member of the Pluriversal Working Group of the Future of Design Education.

The People’s Graphic Design Archive

A crowdsourced digital archive of inclusive graphic design history.

Louise Sandhaus
Professor
California Institute of the Arts

Mary Banas
Lecturer
Tufts University

Brockett Horne
Lecturer
Boston University

Alan Caballero Lazare
Assistant Professor
George Mason University

Briar Levit
Associate Professor
Portland State University

Alberto Rigau
Designer
Studio Interlínea

Morgan Searcy
Art Director
Morgan Searcy

Bobby Joe Smith III
Special Faculty
California Institute of the Arts

The People’s Graphic Design Archive is a crowdsourced digital archive of inclusive graphic design history. The project was first realized in 2020 as a prototype built in the off-the-shelf wiki software Notion; in September 2022, the permanent custom platform was launched. The motivation for PGDA was a belief that much of graphic design history was going unrecognized because it didn’t fit into the established canon or understanding of graphic design. Lack of preservation was also due to few archives for preserving graphic design; thus, much material ended up in dumpsters. Offering a virtual graphic design archive provided a means of preserving a record of this material. It allowed anyone interested to contribute, consume, and discuss what they argue is relevant and vital. The outcome reflects a wide range of cultures and interests — an expansive, democratized, decentered reflection of history. Contributions by individuals or teams can be a single image, a link to an existing archive, documents, interviews, essays, a small collection, or an entire research project. Formats include jpegs, pdfs, tiffs, and audio and video formats.

A Growing, Unique Resource

Visibility of the PGDA takes place through social media and participation in educator events and conferences, contributing to the Archive’s steady growth and knowledge of it as a valuable resource. Today, it boasts over 12,000 items in the collection and users from across the globe. Contributed material includes Roshanak Keyghobadi’s extensive research and collection of Iranian graphic design and designers, which includes a special sub-collection of women graphic designers— of particular value and relevancy given the recent Women, Life, Freedom revolutionary movement. The collection also includes extensive activist material, such as Geoff Kaplan’s thousands of hi-resolution images documenting alternative press from archives across the United States; Daneille Aubert’s research on cooperative printing in Detroit; and many short-form research projects by students all over the world, including The University of Florida, Massachusetts College of Art, CalArts, and George Washington University.

Add-a-Thons

Add-a-thons are events that allow groups to work collectively to add material of common interest to the Archive. These gatherings have included themes such as Latinx Design, Indigenous Design, and Southeast Asian design. Anyone can host an online Add-a-Thon event. During these live and lively 90-minute sessions, with the PGDA team on hand, attendees research and upload material to the Archive. One recent example is the Radical Scholarship Add-a-thons held by Jessica Barness and Amy Papaelias resulting in a multitude of materials that show the visual forms that scholarship has taken when trying to reflect alternatives to status quo scholarly journals.

Blog

Contributions to our blog enhance our understanding of the value of PGDA to different communities and offer critical perspectives. Posts range from curating a collection to highlighting a particular contributor to short essays offering critical perspectives on graphic design history. These include the recent posting by Choctaw-Apache designer and educator Sebastian Ebarb, unraveling the thread between typography and Native American beadwork. A post by Tanvi Sharma offered her favorite items from the Archive and a unique story about her family’s collections of stamps from Ghana. Among the reflective essays are Susan Yelavich’s Value(s) Added: Amplifying The PGDA, in which she asks us to contemplate work on what makes something preservation-worthy, inviting the community to share their finds and, most significantly, their reasoning for adding items to PGDA.

Value for Educators

Although many who are curious about design, often looking for inspiration, delight in the PGDA, the largest user group is educators, who use PGDA extensively in the classroom for a variety of purposes. The site encourages students to become producers of historical narratives rather than just consumers of history, gives those teaching design history an expansive repository of examples of work made from different cultures in different periods, and even provides resources for creative projects. Examples of how the Archive is used in the classroom include:

An archive-to-archive project for University of Georgia faculty Julie Spivey, who integrated archive-based learning for teaching typography. Students would identify material from archives in their school library that those interested in graphic design would find of interest, then document these works, giving consideration to the tagging and data that provided relevancy through the work’s graphic form.

Animating The Archive. For a Kinetic Typography course at Boston University, students are asked to animate a favorite item from The Archive. Guided by faculty members Mary Yang and Brockett Horne, students offered an analysis of the grid, typography, and imagery from their selections to create storyboards that were developed into looping animations.

Analyzing Local Graphic Design History with the PGDA. For Christina Singer’s undergraduate Design Research class, students at UNC Charlotte investigated local graphic design history and researched ways of making social movements and graphic design history to contextualize their artifacts in local and graphic design history. Over 185 items, the stories about them were added to the PGDA.

Actively changing the narrative of graphic design history. For Robert Finkel’s Graphic Design History course, students collected artifacts that they thought merited inclusion into the historical canon and added those to the PGDA. At the end of the project, the teams were challenged to identify a unified theme and narrative for their collection.

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

Biography

Mary Banas’s independent creative practice YES IS MORE includes research, teaching, and design. Mary develops conceptual and informed designs for brands, institutions, and people. She collaborates with artist Breanne Trammell as BMTMB where they embody “friendship as practice” and mine archives and contemporary collections to create new ephemera that responds to the existential crisis of contemporary American life. She has been a resident for Design Inquiry and led design workshops at OTIS College of Art & Design (Los Angeles, CA), and the Berkeley Art Museum + Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA). Banas received her BFA from University of Connecticut and her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. She currently teaches TYPE AS IMAGE in the undergraduate program at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and serves as a working board member of the People’s Graphic Design Archive.

Brockett Horne, co director, is a designer, educator, and writer. She serves on the faculty at Boston University, where she teaches studio and theory courses. Her creative work encourages audiences to question their own ways of consuming design. Clients include the Baltimore Museum of Art, Johns Hopkins University, Decentering Whiteness working group, and Harvard University. She has won multiple design awards and presents her work internationally. She is Co-Director of The Peoples Graphic Design Archive, a crowd-sourced online platform that enables new and expanded stories about graphic design history. This experimental project asks each of us to write history instead of reserving narratives for only those with special training or access to exclusive tools. She holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, and an MA from the Bard Graduate Center.

Alan Caballero LaZare is a Colombian American designer, artist, and educator. His work is focused on community engagement and reimagining design history pedagogy to be more inclusive, plural, and empowering for a new generation of design students. Alan is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at George Mason University where he teaches Graphic Design History and Visual Communication Theory + Practice. His essay, “The Road to Flores de María,” was recently published in SHIFT{ED}, Dialogue: Proceedings of the AIGA Design Educators Community Conferences. It illustrates how he used design to collaborate with community leaders in a remote village in Colombia, near where his family has lived for generations, to crowdsource medicine, toys, and clothing for local schoolchildren. Alan began his career as a graphic designer with Michael Graves. He is a recipient of the Writing Space 2024 Design Writing Fellowship and also serves as a board member of the People’s Graphic Design Archive. He received a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Rutgers University.


Briar Levit, co-director, is an Associate Professor of Graphic Design at Portland State University. Levit spent her early career in publishing as Art Director of the magazine, Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, as well as an independent book designer. In 2017, Levit released the feature-length documentary Graphic Means: A History of Graphic Design Production, which follows design production from manual to digital methods and looks at both the social and formal implications this transition had for the graphic design discipline. In 2021, Princeton Architectural Press published Levit’s edited volume of essays, Baseline Shift: Untold Stories of Women in Design History. In 2018, Levit joined Louise Sandhaus’ journey to realize The People’s Graphic Design Archive. The Archive is a crowd-sourced virtual archive that aims to allow for new and expanded stories about graphic design history.

Louise Sandhaus, co-director emerita, is the founder and Co-Director Emerita of The People’s Graphic Design Archive, a pioneering crowd-sourced platform dedicated to diversifying and preserving graphic design history, and is faculty at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). She penned and designed the lauded book Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires, and Riots: California and Graphic Design 1936-1986 (2014), which won the Palm d’Argent at the International Art Book and Film Festival (FILAF). With Kat Catmur, she co-authored A Colorful Life: Gere Kavanaugh, Designer (2019), published by Princeton Architectural Press. Louise’s contributions to the field extend to her roles as a board member of Letterform Archive and a former board member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), where she also chaired the Design Educators Community steering committee. In 2022, she was honored with the AIGA Medal for her exceptional impact on the design community.

Alberto Rigau was born and raised in Puerto Rico, Alberto is a seasoned designer based in San Juan. With nearly two decades in the field, his versatile practice spans many design projects, including branding, publications, exhibits, wayfinding systems, and environmental graphics. This work enables him to engage with initiatives that seek to advance and impact the design discipline. Alberto is a passionate advocate for design education and community involvement. As a Board Member of Puerto Rico’s Casa del Libro, he promoted the collection’s use for academic research. As Co-Chair of AIGA’s Design Educators Community, he collaborated with educators nationwide to create programs and resources supporting academic research and design teaching. Locally, he serves on the steering committee of the Design Dinners community, where he works to strengthen Puerto Rico’s design scene by fostering new connections. Recently, he joined the core team of the People’s Graphic Design Archive, where he aims to support and build specialized design communities. Beyond his studio practice and volunteer endeavors, Alberto has taught graphic design at several universities in both Puerto Rico and the United States.

Morgan Searcy, co-director, is a creative lead, researcher, and strategist with a background in graphic design and progressive politics. Morgan’s work balances nonprofit and commercial sectors. Her creative practice focuses on finding sustainable and practical solutions that center design. She supported design and creative strategy for the NY State Democrats and the DNC in 2024; political campaigns: Warren for President and Jon Ossoff for Senate in 2020; and has served as Brand and Creative Director at Rock the Vote. In 2023, she launched The Politics Project, an initiative supporting research that uplifts Gen Z and bipoc voices in progressive politics. Morgan has recently led creatives with Instrument and collaborated with Wieden+Kennedy. She is a Co-Director of The People’s Graphic Design Archive, where she collaborates to promote equitable collection of histories.

Bobby Joe Smith III is a Black and Indigenous graphic designer and media artist living on the unceded ancestral lands of the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh, and Chumash peoples in Los Angeles, California. His creative practice is a poetic discourse on the utilization of art and design to further anti-colonial movements and achieve decolonial outcomes. He studied graphic design at the Maryland Institute College of Art (Post-Bacc) and the Rhode Island School of Design (MFA), and received an MFA in Media Art from the University of California—Los Angeles.

Variable

The course uses the metaphor of building cars (fonts) to drive/cruise to unexpected and new (typographic) destinations.

Kelsey Elder
Assistant Professor
Carnegie Mellon University

Variable is an elective that is the pedagogical manifestation of my research and creative practice surrounding typographic technologies, from the historical precedent to socio-cultural impact to the prosodic and practical potentials of formats today. It is part critical seminar and part experimental form laboratory. The course uses the metaphor of building cars (fonts) to drive/cruise to unexpected and new (typographic) destinations. Variable is divided into five mini-projects culminating in a final 5-week self-directed study project. Students investigate the socio-cultural impact of typographic technologies through embodied experiences and social activities. Talks and readings support by providing contextual history and future speculation to the world of typographic technologies. The projects allow students to learn and practice conventional techniques (letterpress) and novel techniques (variable fonts plus scripting) to design, render, and document glyphic forms. The course began as a graduate-level elective at the Rhode Island School of Design. It most recently ran as an undergraduate elective open to all majors at Carnegie Mellon University.

In the first project, Balance Bike, students learn about foundry type, printing, and type design foundational skills in Glyphs 3 through a collaborative alphabet prompt. This component-driven digital lettering exercise is then translated ‘type-high’ to letterpress by using a custom 3/4″ MDF and Lego Kit set up inspired by Pedro Neves’ “LegoType” letterpress printing course at UIC. In the second project, Kit Car, students practice drafting and basic type design practices (drawing, spacing, testing) through a component-driven workflow. Students are encouraged to observe the world around them and distill a kit of shapes from their insights. These sketches are turned into a digital set of parts (components) used to create a font; letters, icons, and/or patterns. This project picks up metaphorical and generative speed in project three, Gravity Racer, which introduces variable fonts and the generative potential of variable font workflows. Students expand their Kit Cars by adding one, two, and three axes through a series of workshops. They are also introduced to troubleshooting in font workflows, including scripting. Project four, Paint Booth, introduces color. The project introduces color font formats, including SVG, COLR/CPAL, color variable fonts, and layered font workflows. Students explore using these complex formats on the web, in print, and in interactive mediums they are already familiar with, illuminating each format’s opportunities and challenges. The final low-stakes project is titled Dune Buggy. In it, students remix, hack, and/or alter an existing open-source font through OpenType Feature writing, scripting, and developing programs/tools that can render their fonts. Students explore writing positional features, substitution features, and scripts that can manipulate vector data both in Glyphs 3 and outside of it (web, Processing, P5.js, Python). For the final 5-weeks, students can expand/revise/combine prior explorations into a culminating final self-directed study project titled Grand Prix.

While there have been necessary updates to the prompts due to the advancing nature of font technologies, the overall pedagogical methodology remains the same. The methodology is designed to reduce barriers related to typeface design, variable/color fonts, and programming. One significant barrier to learning typeface design is drafting. This is even more significant in variable fonts, where compatibility across drawings (masters) is a technical requirement. Another barrier is the need to craft/make rendering environments that allow these complex formats to flourish, often requiring a bit of ‘off-roading’ (code). The combination of these barriers commonly dissuades design students from engaging with typeface design and tool-making because there is a prevailing notion that it is ‘too technically difficult.’ Stemming from my research into patterning principles found across typographic technologies, I began exploring how to leverage the modular affordances of typeface design software today to reduce the barriers of access to the design sub-discipline. In foundry type, type founders used modular methods to reduce engraving (drawing) time via counterpunches. This allowed forms to be replicated easily; the same ‘counter’ of a /n/ could be used for /h/m/n/ and flipped to make the /u/. Digitally, ‘components’ do the same. Components are commonly used by type designers today not for counter-shapes but for language support—combining letters with marks via anchors. A liberal use of components to instead build letters from, akin to a pixel, when teaching variable fonts minimizes the complexity associated with drawing for master compatibility. One change in the component shape is immediately cascaded across all glyphs that use it. Instead of spending the majority of time resolving incompatible masters across hundreds of glyphs, students could more easily focus on developing their conceptual ideas and engaging the expansive design space of variable fonts and their generative possibilities when combined with computation. Scripting and programming custom tools are similarly broken into bits that successfully combine. Students begin by learning simple Python commands to troubleshoot their font. Then, OpenType Features, scripting, and basic custom program/tool making. Finally, they can combine and expand these skills towards their final project idea.

While access to type design technologies has perhaps never been easier, there remains a significant gap between the rate at which font technologies are developing in the field and the access to these emergent workflows in design education. Young designers must be given the ‘right to repair’ the linguistic tools of today and should be empowered through their education and lived experiences to create the ones of tomorrow. After all, type designers are responsible for stewarding the language traditions of our elders past, present, and future… and innovating new forms of communication. One of the most potent and effective ways of making the future of text-based communication more equitable is to have more type designers–or at least designers who have some typeface design experience and skill. This elective seeks to contribute to this future by providing access to conventionally exclusive design subdisciplines of typeface design and programming. The course offers a way of teaching at the intersections of typographic technologies, computation, and language to be more elastic to meet the needs of the languages of our lands where they are. Its materials are open for all to use, remix, and share.

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This project was the 2024 Design Incubation Educators Awards winner recipient in the category of Teaching.

Biography

Kelsey Elder is an educator, typographer, and type-technology enthusiast based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, teaching communication design, typeface design, and critical studies. He has previously taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, Purchase College (SUNY), and Virginia Commonwealth University. Elder holds a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, with additional studies at the University of Reading and the Plantin Institute of Typography. His research on typographic technology’s socio-cultural impact and pedagogical practices has been presented at conferences like TypeCon, and by invitation for institutions including the Herb Lubalin Center, Museum Plantin-Moretus, and LAABF. His workshops on type design, including variable/color fonts, have been held at ATypI Brisbane and other venues. When he’s not teaching, crafting letters, or tinkering on a press, you’ll find him hanging out with his cats.

Working with Design Clients: Tools and Advice for Successful Partnerships

A practical guide to working on client and community work in the design studio.

Meaghan Dee
Associate Professor
Virginia Tech

Jessica Meharry
Visiting Assistant Professor
Institute of Design at Illinois Tech

Working with Design Clients: Tools and Advice for Successful Partnerships is a book for design students and educators seeking to integrate real-world client projects into their curriculum. Born from extensive research, interviews, and the authors’ years of experience running a successful student-run design studio, this book offers practical advice, tools, and frameworks for navigating the complexities of client-based learning.

The studio is a core strand of design education, and working with real clients is one of the most valuable ways for students to develop their professional design practice skills.

The book is a practical guide to working on client and community work in the design studio – how to collaborate with and connect to communities, find and retain clients, and manage real-world design problems.

The book is structured in four parts:

  1. Why: Establishes the pedagogical value of client projects, emphasizing their role in fostering industry connections, experiential learning, and student empowerment.
  2. What: Focuses on the practicalities of community engagement, client selection, and structuring studio experiences to achieve learning goals.
  3. Who: Examines the roles and responsibilities of students, faculty, and clients, highlighting the importance of effective communication, collaboration, and articulating value.
  4. How: Offers guidance on launching and managing a student-run design studio, including financial management, operational logistics, and planning for long-term sustainability.

This is the book Jessica and Meaghan wish existed when they were thinking about starting a design studio and took over a design studio (respectively). This book addresses a critical gap in design pedagogy literature by providing a comprehensive resource for educators seeking to bridge the gap between academia and professional practice.

Key contributions include:

  • Practical Guidance: Offers concrete advice and actionable strategies for implementing client-based projects, from finding clients to managing budgets to assessing student learning.
  • Diverse Perspectives: Incorporates insights from numerous interviews with design educators, students, and industry professionals, representing a range of institutional contexts and pedagogical approaches.
  • Emphasis on Ethics and Community Engagement: Provides a framework for ethical client interactions, emphasizing the importance of designing with communities rather than for them.
  • Focus on Student Empowerment: Highlights the role of client projects in fostering student agency, leadership, and professional development. (Chapter 3 of this book also features Najla Mouchrek’s Model for Empowerment in the Transition to Adulthood)
  • Support for Student-Run Studios: Offers dedicated chapters on launching, managing, and sustaining student-led design studios.

This book aims for design educators to:

  • Integrate client-based projects into their courses.
  • Develop effective strategies for finding and managing clients.
  • Create meaningful learning experiences that foster student growth and professional preparedness.
  • Build and sustain successful student-run design studios.
  • Promote ethical and socially responsible design practice.

The book also hopes to empower design students to:

  • Confidently work with “real world” clients and community partners.
  • Be more prepared to graduate and enter industry.
  • Understand dynamics of client interactions.

By providing students and educators with the necessary tools and knowledge, this book will contribute to a more engaged, impactful, and relevant design education that better prepares students for the challenges and opportunities of the professional world.

Methodology

The book used a mixed-methods approach, combining:

  • Literature Review: Synthesized existing research on design pedagogy and experiential learning.
  • Surveys: Gathered quantitative data on client-based practices in design programs across the country and around the world.
  • Interviews: Collected qualitative insights from design educators, students, and industry professionals.
  • Case Studies: Via interview, examined successful examples of client projects and student-run studios.
  • Authors’ Expertise: Leveraged the authors’ years of experience in design education and running a student-led studio.

Overall, this book represents a culmination of the authors’ passion for design education and their commitment to preparing students for successful and meaningful careers. It is a resource they wish they had when they first embarked on their journey. They hope it will serve as a valuable guide for fellow educators and their students and contribute to a more vibrant and impactful design education landscape.

Chapter 1Download

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

Biography

Meaghan A. Dee is an Associate Professor and Chair of Graphic Design at Virginia Tech, where she also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Creativity, Arts, and Technology. Her work centers on connecting communities through storytelling and immersive design experiences and by fostering collaboration between students, faculty, and industry professionals. Meaghan sees design as a tool for engagement, communication, and innovation.
In addition to her role at Virginia Tech, Meaghan is a docent emeritus for the Letterform Archive in San Francisco and served as co-chair for the AIGA Design Educators Community (AIGA DEC) Executive Board—a group dedicated to supporting and connecting design educators across the world. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Communication Design from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Jessica Meharry is a designer, researcher, and educator who develops justice-oriented design methodologies for professional practice. She teaches courses in the politics of design, critical contexts of design, and the philosophical context of design research. Jessica received a PhD from the Institute of Design (ID), an MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design, and a bachelor of science from Northwestern University. Jessica’s cross-disciplinary research interests focused on designing for equitable economies, strategizing processes that frame equity as an innovation driver, and developing inclusive design management pedagogy. Jessica’s current research projects include the development and testing of an anti-oppressive design framework focused on information and communication technologies. She is also a collaborator on a research project led by Hillary Carey, PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon University, in which they’re using design methods to explore anti-racist futures in organizational contexts.

Riveted in the Word 

The true story of a writer/historian’s hard-fought battle to regain language after a devastating stroke.

Warren Lehrer 
School of Visual Arts (SVA);
Purchase College 
SUNY (Professor Emeritus) 

Riveted in the Word is an electronic book inspired by the true story of a writer/historian’s hard-fought battle to regain language after a devastating stroke. Written and designed by author/designer Warren Lehrer, the multimodal book app uses writing, a custom interface, kinetic typography, and an original soundtrack to place the reader inside the mind of a retired American history professor as she recalls her journey with Broca’s aphasia. The interface toggles between columns of text that readers navigate at their own pace, and animated sections that evoke gaps between perceptions (thoughts, memories, desires) and the words needed to communicate.

Most of the inner monologue takes place while the fictionalized protagonist, Norah Hanson, PhD, is lying in bed thinking about her 20+ year rehabilitation, hopeful for the day ahead, which turns out to be a breakthrough day for her. The interface is often bifurcated down the middle, in a way that mirrors the two hemispheres of the brain, which get affected differently by a stroke. The reader witnesses Norah’s sense of humor, determined spirit, and seemingly fragmented-but-intelligible thoughts as they shift from present to past, and toward her upcoming public lecture, the first she’s given since the stroke.

BACKGROUND/METHODOLOGY

I first met and interviewed Willie Lee Rose, a historian of the American Reconstruction period, two decades after she suffered a massive stroke. She was 71-years-old at the time. Willie’s stroke affected the left hemisphere of her brain, which gave her the kind of aphasia that affects the use of language. Like many cases of Broca’s aphasia, she retained the memories and intelligence that she had before, but she suddenly didn’t have the language to communicate. Willie’s difficult but triumphant rehabilitation inspired me to write a fictionalized interior narrative of a scholar and stroke survivor—that takes place over the course of a few hours of one day.

The first iteration of Riveted in the Word was published in my 2013 illuminated novel, “A LIFE IN BOOKS: The Rise and Fall of Bleu Mobley,” as an excerpt of one of my author-protagonist’s 101 books. In 2018, Willie Lee Rose died, at the age of 91, and a few years after that I decided to adapt Riveted into an electronic book, and dedicate it to Willie.

For the past twenty years, I’ve been enhancing my solo and collaborative printed books (non-fiction, fiction, and poetry) with animations, short films, and interactive media. I’ve also been focusing more and more on making work that helps create greater understanding of and empathy for neurodivergent and other human conditions such as Dyslexia, Alzheimer’s disease, displacement, trauma, and loss. So, I had the idea of developing Riveted in the Word as my first fully electronic book as a way of creating an immersive experience that could help readers have more awareness of the interior experience of this little understood condition.

In 2019, I had the good fortune of meeting Artemio Morales, a web developer with a literature background and passion for multimedia books. After deciding to work together on the Riveted in the Word ebook, we brainstormed about creating an interface that would in some ways split the difference between watching a movie and reading a book. Several months later, I sent him a 1,200 page storyboard, which he began translating into code using Unity. I also brought composer/multi-instrumentalist Andrew Griffin into the project because of the phenomenal job he did creating soundtracks for the animations of my and Dennis Bernstein’s “Five Oceans in Teaspoon” project. The three of us worked on “Riveted in the Word” for five years while juggling other projects.

OUTCOMES

Riveted in the Word launched in June, 2024 as a book app made for iPads, iPhones, and Mac computers, available for sale on the Apple App store, for $4.99. We are currently adapting it to work on Android and Windows devices and online through web browsers. The book app is co-produced and co-published by my non-profit arts organization EarSay, dedicated to nurturing and portraying stories of uncelebrated individuals and communities, and Artemio’s production lab, AltSalt, dedicated to publishing and promoting innovative works of electronic literature.

So far, we’ve had two official book launches to over-capacity audiences, one at the Center for Book Arts in NYC, one in Blue Hill Maine, in conjunction with the Maine Writers and Publishers Association’s “Word Festival.” Launches included real-time projection of the app with reading/performances by actress/author and my EarSay partner Judith Sloan, and Q&A with collaborators Andrew Griffin, Artemio Morales, medical professionals, and stroke survivors.

Over the past several months, we also presented performance/readings of Riveted at Torn Page, Art New York Studios, Topaz Arts, NYU Tish, Pratt Institute, the University of Wisconsin/Madison, and as part of the Contemporary Artists’ Book Conference/NY Art Book Fair, and the Electronic Literature Organization National Conference in Orlando, Florida/online.

Riveted was a featured title of the May, 2024 Print (Magazine) Book Club, along with another book that I wrote and designed, “Jericho’s Daughter.” That hour-long conversation was hosted by Debbie Millman and Steven Heller.

Riveted was the subject of a segment on New York Public Radio with me and Dr. Laura Boylan, a neurologist at Bellevue Hospital and faculty at NYU School of Medicine.

I also discussed Riveted in an hour+ interview with Carson Grubaugh on the Living the Line video podcast which features makers of graphic novels and visual literature.

In addition to receiving positive receptions from the design and electronic literature communities, I’m most hearted by the reception Riveted is receiving from health care professionals and stroke/aphasia survivors.

The National Aphasia Association (NAA) has endorsed Riveted and is featuring it on their Recommended Reading list.

Upcoming presentations include performance/readings at two New York medical schools and I’ve been invited to be a keynote speaker at an Art & Health Symposium in Tennessee.

In the attached Evidence of Outcomes doc, I’ve enclosed press quotes and other testimonials that attest to ways Riveted in the Word is innovative and contributes to the field(s) of design, electronic literature, and narrative medicine.

Riveted-in-the-word-OPTDownload

This project was the 2024 Design Incubation Educators Awards winner recipient in the category of Scholarship: Creative Works.

Biography

Warren Lehrer is a designer and writer known internationally as a pioneer of visual literature and design authorship. His work is acclaimed for its marriage of writing and typography, capturing the shape of thought and speech, and reuniting oral and pictorial traditions of storytelling in books, animations, and performance. Honors include: Ladislav Sutnar Laureate, Center for Book Arts Honoree, Brendan Gill Prize, Innovative Use of Archives Award, International Book Award for Best New Fiction, three AIGA Book Awards, and fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Rockefeller, Ford, and Greenwall Foundations. His books are in many collections including MoMA, Getty Museum, Georges Pompidou Centre, Tate Gallery. Lehrer is a founding faculty member of the Designer As Author/Entrepreneur MFA program at the School of Visual Arts, Professor Emeritus at SUNY Purchase, and co-founder of EarSay, a non-profit arts organization in Queens, NY. https://warrenlehrer.com/

2024 Design Incubation Communication Design Educators Awards

2024 Design Incubation Educators Awards competition in 4 categories: Creative Work, Published Research, Teaching, Service

Congratulations to the recipients of the 2024 Communication Design Educators Awards!

Scholarship: Publications

Winner

Gender, Transgression, and Ritual Torah Preparation
Leslie Atzmon
Professor
Eastern Michigan University

Runner-up

Working with Design Clients: Tools and Advice for Successful Partnerships
Meaghan Dee
Associate Professor
Virginia Tech

Jessica Meharry
Visiting Assistant Professor
Institute of Design at Illinois Tech

Scholarship: Creative Work

Winner

Riveted in the Word 
Warren Lehrer 
School of Visual Arts (SVA);
Purchase College 
SUNY (Professor Emeritus) 

Teaching

Winner

Variable 
Kelsey Elder
Assistant Professor
Carnegie Mellon University 

Runner-up

Chicago Designs: Teaching Community-Based Histories 
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

Service

Winner

The People’s Graphic Design Archive
Louise Sandhaus
Professor
California Institute of the Arts

Mary Banas
Lecturer
Tufts University

Brockett Horne
Lecturer
Boston University

Alan Caballero Lazare
Assistant Professor
George Mason University

Briar Levit
Associate Professor
Portland State University

Alberto Rigau
Studio Interlínea

Morgan Searcy
Art Director

Bobby Joe Smith III
Special Faculty
California Institute of the Arts

Runner-up

Mitigating Youth Violence: The Futuring Project: Audacious Narratives & Enduring Voices 
Neeta Verma
Independent Scholar
Associate Professor (retired)
University of Notre Dame

Runner-up

Mashq Conference 2022 on Arabic Type and Typography 
Yara Khoury Nammour
Assistant Professor
American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Khajag Apelian
Lecturer
American University of Beirut, Lebanon

2024 JURY

Steven McCarthy (Chair)
University of Minnesota

Douglas Kearney
University of Minnesota

Doug Barrett
University of Alabama at Birmingham

Basma Hamdy
Virginia Commonweath University—Qatar

Kali Nikitas
University of Southern California in Los Angeles

The Bayou at y.our Doorstep: Integrating Environmental Education in Graphic Design

The role Houston’s waterways play in the community

Natacha Poggio
Associate Professor
University of Houston Downtown

Houston’s vast network of 22 bayous and river systems is central to the city’s identity, influencing both its geography and culture. The University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) sits at the intersection of two key waterways, White Oak and Buffalo Bayous, offering students a direct connection to the natural environment that shapes their urban experience. These bayous, which embody both tranquility and the destructive potential of floods, also highlight the impact of human activity on Houston’s green spaces.

In an introductory graphic design course, students were tasked with visualizing the environmental, emotional, and developmental importance of Houston’s bayous for community well-being. Through this service-learning project, they collected observations and interviewed community members to apply their storytelling and visual design skills to create illustrations that reflect the role Houston’s waterways play in the community, while also addressing the negative effects of pollution.

The project culminated in a public exhibition at Earth Day Houston, in partnership with Discovery Green. With over 31,000 attendees, the displays aimed to raise awareness and educate about the importance of reducing pollution, particularly single-use plastics, as part of a larger goal to achieve a waste-free celebration. UHD Recycling Ambassadors played a significant role in this effort, collecting and sorting 3,800 pounds of garbage, with less than 9% ending up in a landfill.

This case study demonstrates the power of integrating environmental education into design curricula, engaging students in creating relevant real-world solutions through service-learning and empowering community members alongside the students’ learning experience.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 11.2: Annual CAA Conference 2025 (Hybrid) on Friday, February 14, 2025.

Workshop on Writing an Academic Abstract

An Affiliated Society Meeting at the CAA 113th Annual Conference

Affiliated Society Meeting at the CAA 113th Annual Conference, New York City

Friday, February 14, 2025
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
New York Hilton Midtown – 2nd Floor – Murray Hill West

This is a hybrid event. Attendance is free to anyone in person. (No conference fee is required.) To attend virtually, complete the form below to receive details for the virtual login.

Join Design Incubation for a workshop on Writing an Academic Abstract. We will provide examples, recommendations, best practices, and ideas on crafting a written synopsis of your communication design research for submission to conferences, journals, invited lectures, grant and book proposals.

Please complete the form and let us know how we can facilitate your academic abstract writing efforts. This event is suited for junior faculty new to research and publication. It is also an opportunity for senior faculty to discover community and feedback on their scholarly endeavors.

Form: https://designincubation.com/abstract-writing-workshop/

Enhancing Design Education: Students Skill Development through Technology in Blended Learning Environments

Strong positive correlations between students’ comfort with technology, its perceived importance for skill development, and overall satisfaction with the learning environment.

Danilo Bojić
Associate Professor
Winona State University

This proposal examines the effects of technology integration on skill development and student satisfaction in undergraduate design education, guided by the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Diffusion of Innovation Theory (DoIT). It aims to clarify how digital tools enhance design competencies and learning experiences.

Two primary research questions were explored:

1) How does comfort with technology correlate with its perceived importance among design students in blended environments?

2) How does technology integration affect students’ satisfaction with their learning environment? The study utilized a quantitative, exploratory, correlational design, surveying 288 undergraduate design students from public liberal arts colleges in [name anonymized for peer-review] using a structured Qualtrics questionnaire.

The analysis found strong positive correlations between students’ comfort with technology, its perceived importance for skill development, and overall satisfaction with the learning environment. These results emphasize the essential role of technology in design education and highlight the need for strategies that enhance technological proficiency and effectively integrate digital tools.

The findings are significant for educators, curriculum developers, and educational policymakers, stressing the importance of innovative pedagogical approaches that leverage technology to meet the evolving needs of the design profession. This research contributes valuable insights into the integration of technology in design education, enhancing both theoretical discussions and practical teaching approaches.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 11.2: Annual CAA Conference 2025 (Hybrid) on Friday, February 14, 2025.

Service Design for Digital Tours: The Rixing Type Foundry Case

A traditional Chinese lead type manufacturer turned museum.

Ting Han Chen
Adjunct Associate Professor
Yuan-Ze University, Taiwan
Play Design Lab

Traditional manufacturing factories transitioning into cultural attractions often face difficulties in providing consistent, high-quality guided tours, as these tours are labor-intensive and challenging to standardize. Digital technology presents a compelling solution through self-guided tours, yet many existing systems focus solely on website or information system design, failing to seamlessly integrate physical and digital experiences.

This study proposes a service design approach for a more user-centric digital tour system, exemplified by the author’s design for Rixing Type Foundry, a traditional Chinese lead type manufacturer turned museum. The system enhances visitor engagement by combining digital content—such as visual aids, audio guides, and contextual information—with physical exhibits, allowing visitors to use their mobile devices for self-guided tours.

Rather than replacing human guides, the project enhances their roles by integrating digital tools, allowing them to focus on more meaningful in-person interactions. By shifting detailed content delivery to digital videos, the system achieves a balance between automation and human engagement, preserving the educational and cultural value of the tours while enriching the visitor experience.

The system also tackles operational challenges such as inconsistent guide quality and managing visitor flow. By standardizing content through digital means, it reduces reliance on human resources for repetitive tasks, boosting operational efficiency while maintaining the cultural essence of traditional craftsmanship. This model offers a scalable solution for other manufacturing sites transitioning into cultural attractions, aligning with the broader trends of tourism and digital innovation.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 11.2: Annual CAA Conference 2025 (Hybrid) on Friday, February 14, 2025.