Research in Communication Design
A webinar discussing design scholarship with an emphasis on the intersection of professional practice and writing.
A webinar discussing design scholarship with an emphasis on the intersection of professional practice and writing. Information about discipline specific journals and book publishers.
As design educators we are increasingly asked to do it all. We need to excel in the classroom, provide service to our institution, maintain a professional practice and publish and engage in design-related scholarship.
See more at: http://www.rgd.ca/events-and-programs/rgd-events/events/
Mitch Goldstein
Assistant Professor
School of Design
Rochester Institute of Technology
As the bar for entry to art and design becomes lower, it is easier than ever for anyone to call themselves a “creative.” One way to separate ourselves from the dilettantes is by creating a sense of agency as makers and thinkers — understanding who we are, how and why we act within our chosen fields, and what our criticisms of art and design are. Art and design school is an intense experience, where students are exposed to dramatic shifts in social, environmental, and intellectual contexts. Educators must help our students navigate these new realities, while also assisting in their development into future artists and designers. We must educate our students to move past trends and superficial technical acumen, into a more inquisitive, exploratory, and critical approach to creative practice. Developing agency informs how a student can approach creative inquiry, and how they can process and manifest work within their creative practice. This presentation will examine projects, outcomes, and critical frameworks used to teach agency.
This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.0: Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) on Saturday, Sept 24, 2016.Design Incubation Colloquia 3.1 (#DI2016oct) will be held at the Kean University in Union, New Jersey on Saturday, Oct 22, 2016. This event is open to all interested in Communication Design research.
Hosted by Robin Landa
Saturday, Oct 22, 2016
Time: Starts 12:30pm
Kean University
Green Lane Academic Building 6th Floor
1000 Morris Avenue
Union, NJ
Design Incubation Colloquia 3.1 (#DI2016oct) will be held at the Kean University in Union, New Jersey. This event is open to all interested in Communication Design research. RSVP with name and affiliations if you plan on attending.
Abstract submission for presentations deadline Oct 1, 2016. For details visit the Call for Submissions, and Submission Process description.
From Union Station: Located at 900 Green Lane in Union, N.J., the station is directly across the street from Kean’s main campus. Union Station is on NJ Transit’s Raritan Valley line, which runs northeast to Newark Penn Station, and southwest to High Bridge in Hunterdon County.For a Raritan Valley line train schedule, click here.
Look Closer: Interaction, Interpretation, Environmental Storytelling
John Delacruz
Professor of Advertising
School of Journalism and Mass Communications
San Jose State University
The Rise of the Design Entrepreneur
Denise Anderson
Assistant Professor
Michael Graves College
Kean University
Fashioning The Brand
Summer Doll-Myers
Graphic Design
Kutztown University
Ann Lemon
Advertising
Kutztown University
Eat Your Vegetables: Sneaking in Conceptual: Thinking during Technical Instruction
Suzanne Dell’Orto
Adjunct Lecturer
Fine & Performing Arts
Baruch College, CUNY
Designing Immersive Experiences with Empathy
Ed Johnston
Assistant Professor
Michael Graves College
Robert Busch School of Design
Kean University
BREAK (2:00PM)
The City of You
Robert J. Thompson
Assistant Professor, Graphic & Interactive Design
Department of Art, College of Creative Arts & Communications
Youngstown State University
How Hard Is It To Navigate A Rectangle? Harder Than You Think
Neil Ward
Assistant Professor of Graphic Design
Drake University
A Selfish Communication
Brian Dougan
Associate Professor of Architecture
American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Idea Incubator: The Architectural Design Studio Experience and the Nurturing of Creativity
Craig Konyk AIA
Assistant Professor of Architecture
School of Public Architecture, Michael Graves College
Kean University
A Start Up Simulator: Collaborative Design Studio
Efecem Kutuk
Program Coordinator Industrial Design, University Lecturer
Robert Busch School of Design
Michael Graves College
Kean University
Trianimals
Ned Drew
Professor
Department of Arts, Culture and Media
Rutgers University
Brenda McManus
Assistant Professor Graphic Design
Dyson College of Arts & Sciences
Pace University
Pattie Belle Hastings
Chair of Interactive Media + Design
School of Communications
Quinnipiac University
The research and ideation phases of the Design Thinking process typically incorporate forms of drawing, which can include thumbnails, sketches, comprehensives, wire frames, mind maps, storyboards, paper prototypes, and collaborative methods. It is from this collection of visualized ideas that a design project moves forward toward implementation. The basic purposes of design drawing can be summarized as generating, visualizing, documenting, collaborating, and analyzing. I’ve broken this down into three main drawing and thinking practices:
This includes visualizing and recording ideas to externalize and convey the process of thinking. The goal for this kind of drawing is for idea generation and exploration. The best approach is to start with deep research and then freeform brainstorming of ideas on paper in which quantity is pursued in order to reach quality.
Once the flow of ideas begins to form on the page, the processes of analysis, comparison, iteration, elaboration, reflection, and development can begin. Sometimes generation and analysis occurs simultaneously and sometimes it is successive. Reflection on the drawings reveals relationships, strengths and weaknesses that allow for refinement, reduction, and reiteration.
Design drawings are often created for the purpose of collaboration, communication, and conversation. They are used to explain ideas to others and to engage discussion around the project or problem. Through their ephemeral nature, design drawings convey an idea that is in process not completion, which invites reflection, responses, criticisms, and alternatives.
This framing of “design drawing,” grounded in ideation, iteration and development, will be the foundation used to gather case studies, best practices, in addition to visual libraries of examples and methods. Another broad and hopeful goal of this research is the creation of a drawing curriculum and handbook for introducing and integrating “design drawing” methods into interaction design programs.
This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.0: Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) on Saturday, Sept 24, 2016.Whether exploring meditations on a single theme, embracing new materials or studying the affects of repetition and reproduction, designer Chris St. Cyr’s work exploits both the familiar and the unknown.
Chris St.Cyr
Assistant Professor of Graphic Design
The College of Saint Rose
Make some thing. Somewhere between morning routines, client projects and preparing for a class there is time to create something… a small something. Over time, these creations may evolve into larger projects or they can remain a collection of random ideas waiting for connections to given them form. The trick is to think small— a two-minute sketch, a single bullet item, one typeface, one principle, two constraints, no command z, a page, or one post.
Over the past five years I’ve developed a series of small personal projects that continue to evolve and grow. Social media is part of the production process. It is used to start conversations and provides a place for my creations to exist on their own and to engage with a globally networked community. One project, an investigation of the efficiency of modular design systems and has evolved from building 3D Lego structures to using Lego block printing to create a system of robot symbols for use on T-shirts, stickers, and in augmented reality. In another project (perhaps a reaction against the Lego project) old rub down press type is used as a catalyst for the investigation of randomness, reaction, and flow. Here there is very little control and rubbing cracked letterforms onto sketchbook paper gives form to the compositions which are then scanned, manipulated and printed, all of which adds another layer of uncertainty to the outcome. 
A third, and more recent project, is a meditation on the mobile menu symbol—affectionately known as the “Hamburger Menu.” More specifically it involves a series of motion design experiments that explore how three horizontal lines can transition into the shape of an “X.” As the projects have changed over time one thing remains consistent—they all started as a single small exploration of a design principle, material, tool or technique.
By examining the role of the Olympics in different geographical and political contexts, I focus on how communication design becomes a vehicle for the promotion of new national identities and even new forms of citizenship.
As a scholar interested in understanding space, I see acts of spatial representation as primary means of creating the realm of “spatial conception”—where communication design plays a key role expanding from place-marketing campaigns to unofficial and often subversive spatial imaginaries.
By examining the role of the Olympics in different geographical and political contexts, I focus on how communication design becomes a vehicle for the promotion of new national identities and even new forms of citizenship. My research proposes the term “Olympic design milieu” as a way of understanding the multiplicity of design generated by the Olympics—this includes officially created symbols and constructions that aim to facilitate the Olympics and induce civic pride, but it also incorporates unauthorized acts by political or civil society groups that question or oppose the Olympics.
“Graphic Design Histories of the Olympics” includes chapters of my recently published book Designing the Olympics: Representation, Participation, Contestation as well as a film I produced with director Marija Stojnic titled Olympic Design: Mexico 1968: Visual Identity: Lance Wyman (2014).
The three chapters featured focus on three elements of the Olympic design milieu. Chapter 1, “Through the Lens of Graphic Design: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Universalism in the Tokyo 1964 Design Program,” reveals how the Tokyo 1964 graphic design program played an important role in re-articulating Japan’s postwar identity. The next chapter, “Not for a Nation, but for the People: London 2012 Brand Design as a New Paradigm of Olympic Design,” looks at Wolff Olins’ design as the first conscious effort of Olympic designers to induce public participation in the design process. This marked the expansion of the Olympic design operation from an exclusive affair (a sponsors-only right to Olympic properties) to a matter of engagement across society. Finally, the chapter titled “Opposing the Olympic City: Designerly Ways of Dissenting” demonstrates the potential of design to induce alternative forms of participatory citizenship by looking at materialized practices of Olympic opposition.
The accompanying film features Lance Wyman describing how his official Mexico 1968 Olympic designs convey a “sense of place.” Appropriating these official symbols, powerful subversions by the student movement of the same era show the blurring of the official and the unofficial, the authoritative and the subversive in the Mexico 1968 Olympic milieu.
Jilly Traganou was born in Athens and studied architecture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. A scholarship from Japan’s Ministry of Education brought her to Japan in the early ‘90s and inspired her PhD work (University of Westminster) on the representation of space through travelling, resulting in the book The Tokaido Road: Traveling and Representation in Edo and Meiji Japan (Routledge 2003). Her interest in theorizing travel led to a co-edited volume with Miodrag Mitrasinovic titled Travel, Space, Architecture (Ashgate 2009).
Living in Athens in 2003-2004, Jilly experienced the making of an Olympic City and began new research into Olympic design. Her new book Designing the Olympics: Representation, Participation, Contestation was published this year. This summer, she continued her research in the Olympics as a Fulbright scholar in Brazil during the 2016 Games. Her work has been supported by the Bard Graduate Center, The Japan Foundation, The Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton, Design History Society, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts among others. She is an associate professor of spatial studies at Parsons School of Design, The New School.
Recipient of recognition in the Design Incubation Communication Design Awards 2016.
the drive to teach visual literacy, which is based on the idea that pictures, in the broadest sense, can be read and communicate meaning through the process of reading.
Pascal Glissmann (Parsons School for Design), Olivier Arcioli and Andreas Henrich (Academy of Media Arts, Cologne) initiated the The Phaistos Project, an exploration of visual language that unites students, teachers, scholars, and ideas from across the world. All participating academic partners share the drive to teach visual literacy, which is based on the idea that pictures, in the broadest sense, can be read and communicate meaning through the process of reading. Students must learn to excel in finding and applying their own visual language, embrace diversity, and propel their identity in order to vigorously influence their own creative practice. This can be achieved through using open environments to better invite students to explore ethnographic backgrounds, and to initiate critical thinking through encountering the unknown, which can range from utopian visions of our future living to the unanswered phenomena of our past.
A prominent example of unresolved visual code—and a milestone in the history of visual language and typography—is the Phaistos Disc. Even though its purpose and authenticity is still discussed it is considered to potentially be an early, if not the earliest, document of movable type printing. The clay-impressed notation is assumed to be a textual representation and comprises 45 unique and recurrent symbols. Participating students explored this ancient disc, its visual principles and symbolic forms. Inspired by its cryptic yet powerful character, they developed collections of 45 unique symbols to represent the essence of their identity, the spirit of a culture or social change.
Their mission is not to create additions to the endless repertoire of functional pictograms. Instead, they are driven by personal storytelling and creating ethnographic visual anecdotes that are subjective, stimulating and inviting.
The Phaistos Project now is accepting new entries: Deadline is December 15, 2016. This international call is open to → art & design faculty interested in integrating the project into their teaching and → currently enrolled undergraduate or graduate students in visual communication, visual arts, design, typography, and related areas.
www.45symbols.com
Pascal Glissmann is a media designer, artist, scholar and founder of the studio subcologne. He is currently Assistant Professor of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design. He holds an MFA in Media Arts/Media Design from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and a BFA in Communication Design from the University of Applied Sciences Duesseldorf. He joined the Academy of Media Arts Cologne as a full-time faculty in 2001 and focused on creative approaches to new media and technology within applied design projects and emerging installations. He became Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Baptist University, Academy of Visual Arts, in 2007 where he set up the curriculum and infrastructure for the areas of media design and media arts. In 2010 and 2011 he was Visiting Assistant Professor at the Lebanese-American University, School of Architecture and Design, in Beirut.
Olivier Arcioli is a book designer, editorial designer and founder of the studio ateliergrün. He holds an MFA in Media Arts/Media Design from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and a BFA in Communication Design from the University of Applied Sciences Duesseldorf and the Ecole Cantonal d’art de Lausann. Olivier is currently Assistant, Lecturer and Researcher of Media Design at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne as a full-time faculty with the main focus on book design, print media and typography.
Andreas Henrich is professor emeritus of graphics and media design and retired from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne in 2015. The curriculum of the Academy covers all artistic disciplines including new and traditional media, the different areas of film and moving image, as well as the arts and media sciences. The course is taught at different levels and even offers a PhD. He has been in leading positions at this school and was the president for several years.
Recipient of recognition in the Design Incubation Communication Design Awards 2016.
The Design Edu Today podcast is a biweekly interview with design professionals discussing topics concerning the state of interactive design education at institutions of higher learning.
The Design Edu Today podcast is a biweekly interview with design professionals discussing topics concerning the state of interactive design education at institutions of higher learning. In order to help define interactive design for classroom instruction, guests are chosen based on their contributions—whether technical or theoretical—and leadership within the interactive design field. With the goal of diversity in experience and perspective, guests range from junior designers, to art/creative directors, studio owners both large and small, in-house or freelance designers, and everything in-between.
Launched in June 2015, the podcast’s initial goal was to discover the balance between instructing visual principles for digital design, such as flexible grids and screen-based typography and iconography, and instructing one of the core mediums of digital design: HTML, CSS and JavaScript. All of this must be accomplished in a limited number of credits within a graphic design program. Since the launch, the scope of the podcast has grown beyond its initial goal of finding this instructional balance to include broader research topics that include the overview of the entire process of interactive design, from the initial client meeting to final site launch. This expanded research also targets in depth discussions about each phase of the interactive design process, including information architecture, content strategy, user research, designing for performance, design workflow, and interactive prototypes.
Now over a year into the research project, the Design Edu Today podcast is a vast resource for design educators that includes over thirty episodes, complete with audio files, transcripts, and links to people, topics, and tools discussed during each episode.
Gary Rozanc is an assistant professor of graphic design at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the Education Director for AIGA Baltimore. Gary received his BA in Graphic Design from Cleveland State University and his MFA in Visual Communications from the University of Arizona. In May 2013, Gary was awarded the AIGA DEC Design Faculty Research Grant to uncover necessary competencies for entry level interactive designers to successfully transition from student to industry professional. As a result of this grant, Gary’s current research includes hosting the bi-weekly Design Edu Today podcast that discusses the current state of interactive design education at institutions of higher learning. Gary’s past research activities include identifying contextual methods of creating solutions through inquiry and problem-based learning, and his findings have been presented at international and national peer-reviewed conferences. Gary’s personal work ranges from responsive web design to letterpress.
Recipient of recognition in the Design Incubation Communication Design Awards 2016.
The book contextualizes the streetart movement of the Egyptian Revolution historically, politically and socially creating a document that contributes to both historiography and activism.
Walls of Freedom: Street Art of the Egyptian Revolution is a project by Don Karl and Basma Hamdy that encompassed three years of intensive research. The book can be considered a hybrid format combining academic research with extensive visual documentation. Its goal is, not only to document, but to contextualize the streetart movement of the Egyptian Revolution historically, politically and socially creating a document that contributes to both historiography and activism. To support the book’s proposed production –260 pages, with over 500 images– a crowd-funding campaign was initiated in 2013 and was supported by 746 funders from 43 countries raising almost double its goal.
The reception of Walls of Freedom has been phenomenal but, unfortunately, in February 2015 a shipment of 500 books was confiscated by Egyptian authorities for ‘instigating revolt’ triggering powerful discussions on freedom of speech and human rights violations in Egypt. Although distributed and sold in many countries it is ironically unavailable and unofficially banned in Egypt. The design component of this project is combinatorial and transcends layout or typography to include participation, curation, authorship, historiography and collaboration. It consists of contributions from 100 photographers, work by 100 artists and essays by 20 specialists approaching the topic from various angles. The ultimate design and research of Walls of Freedom is manifested in its curatorial process where ideas are woven together to present a multifaceted view of the Egyptian Revolution through its street art.
This project was possible because of the contribution and participation of Graphic designer Torge Peters, Artist Ammar Abo Bakr and many others inluding: Caram Kapp, Najwa Sabra, Ganzeer, Hanaa El Degham, Hany Khaled, Magdy El-Shafee, eL Seed, Ahdaf Soueif, Aya Tarek, Yasmin El Shazly, Rana Jarbou, Bahia Shehab, Chad Elias, Basma El Husseiny, Ahmed Aboul Hassan, Sad Panda, El Zeft, Omar Robert Hamilton, Mykala Hyldig Dal, Amber Grünhäuser, Christine Rose, Rachel Sampson as well as the many outstanding photographers and artists who contributed their images and work.
Basma Hamdy (MFA, Maryland Institute College of Art) is an Assistant Professor of graphic design at Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar. She is a research-based designer, author and educator who produces work that bridges historical, political and social issues with archival, documentarian, participatory, and critical mechanisms.
She has been interviewed and featured extensively in prominent international media –such as The New York Times, Fast Company, Jadaliyya, Huck, Der Spiegel and Print– and exhibited and spoke at several art and design festivals and conferences around the world, most recently, Spielart Festival Munich and The Graphic Design Festival Breda.
Recipient of recognition in the Design Incubation Communication Design Awards 2016.
Working remotely as cross-cultural teams, students explore ways design can address sustainable behaviors and lifestyle choices around diverse topics such as food, water, environmental degradation, social justice and cultural preservation.
Kelly Murdoch-Kitt and Denielle Emans work together in an ongoing series of semester-long collaborations with their respective students to make meaningful connections between the concept of sustainability and people’s day-to-day lives. Working remotely as cross-cultural teams, students explore ways design can address sustainable behaviors and lifestyle choices around diverse topics such as food, water, environmental degradation, social justice and cultural preservation. The semester typically culminates in a public exhibition on each campus, enabling students to share their concepts and communications with their local communities. Additionally, the most recent student exhibition, “Co-creating sustainable futures: American and Middle Eastern visual design students explore behavior change” was presented at the 2015 Association for the Advancement for Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Conference in Minneapolis, MN, USA.
gulftogreatlakes.org
restartexhibit.com
Kelly Murdoch-Kitt is Assistant Professor in the Graphic Design program at Rochester Institute of Technology’s College of Imaging Arts and Sciences. She teaches and works primarily in the areas of user experience and service design. Her recent collaborations exploring the socio-cultural benefits of cross-cultural design education and the benefits of integrating sustainability challenges into project-based design courses. Kelly and her collaborator, Denielle Emans, recently presented research at Spaces of Learning: AIGA Design Educators Conference and the 2015 Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Conference and Expo, “Transforming Sustainability Education.” Recent journal publications include “Design Nexus: integrating cross-cultural learning experiences into graphic design education” in Studies in Material Thinking 11: Re/materialising Design Education Futures (co-authored with Prof. Denielle Emans, 2014) and “Sustainability at the forefront: educating students through complex challenges in visual communication and design” in Interdisciplinary Environmental Review (co-authored with Kelly Norris Martin & Denielle Emans, 2015).
Denielle Emans is an Assistant Professor in the Graphic Design Department at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, specializing in the area of experiential design in relation to the conceptualization, development, and execution of visual messages for social change and sustainability. As a designer, she has worked to create print, web, and motion design solutions for clients ranging from software specialists to international institutions. Denielle has published her research in a number of academic journals and presented at numerous conferences across the world. She holds a Master of Graphic Design from North Carolina State University’s College of Design and a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Denielle is currently a Ph.D. Candidate within the Centre for Communication and Social Change at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.
Recipient of recognition in the Design Incubation Communication Design Awards 2016.
