Read the interview with Thomas Jockin of Type Thursday, Liz Deluna and Mark Zurolo.
Author: Design Incubation
From Design as Artifact to Design as Process: Applying an Open Model to Community Engagement in Social Design
Cat Normoyle
Assistant Professor
Memphis College of Art
In recent years, we have seen a significant shift in the field of design, from design as an artifact to design as a process. This shift challenges the designer to think strategically about the entire process, examining the design artifact as a single component within a much larger, more complex system of parts. This presentation introduces the designer as strategist and systems thinker in the context of social design projects, while the community takes on the role of participant and maker through an open model of community engagement. This central idea, inspired by the DIY (do-it-yourself) and open-source mentality of residents creates a workforce of critical makers, especially useful in locale endeavors with limited budgets.
The open model includes the roles and responsibilities for all phases of work including research, strategy, development, engagement, implementation, and management of both designer and community member. Designers serve as strategists, systems thinkers, and activists for social change; community members serve as makers, which empowers them as they find ownership and authorship in the work they produce. Applied to multiple community development projects in Memphis, TN, the model will highlight these case studies, examining how processes, methods, and outcomes were applied in local contexts.
In all the examples provided, the design is process, while the artifact is an artistic intervention in the community. Although each artifact is different in its creation, duration, audience and experience, the process is consistent and methods similar. The results share commonalities such as how to engage the community, recruit stakeholders, and distribute information and scale projects. Challenges face the designer, the most evident being the ability to relinquish control of aesthetics of the final artifacts. Findings reveal key insights and implications that may be applied in global contexts. Conclusions expand on ways to implement this model in different types of communities, integrating it into standard practices.
This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.2: Parsons Integrated Design on Thursday, Feb 16, 2017.The Avant-Garde of Iranian Graphic Design
Pouya Jahanshahi
Assistant Professor of Graphic Design
Department of Art, Graphic Design and Art History
Oklahoma State University
The advent of the Apple Macintosh brought about a rapid flow of technological change which affected almost every part of visual communication arena, in one way or another. Since the start of this digital revolution, most graphic design communities around the world succeeded in maintaining their national identities, while implementing the technological changes into their industries, hence joining the global world of graphic design. However, because of challenges related to mark-making and the specifics of calligraphic-based scripts, Iranian typography – and by extension graphic design – struggled to maintain and its rich historic traditions and visual aesthetics, as Perso-Arabic characters necessitated a process of digitization for use in dominant graphic software applications of the time.
Furthermore, during this global digital revolution, various socio-political and technological circumstances resulted in the isolation of the Iranian graphic design arena from the global culture, for more than a decade. More recently, the dusk of 20th-century, brought forth an impenitent generation of innovative thinkers and designers, keen to define their lost identity. Through inwards nationalistic perspectives as well as technical and conceptual innovations, this generation made giant leaps and set forth a trajectory toward joining the global graphic design arena.
This research delves into the nuanced traditions of Iranian calligraphy and the struggle for its adaption to western printing technologies. Specifically, it focuses on the process, and the eventual arrival of what may be referred to as a hybrid graphic form – one comprising of the traditional eastern calligraphic forms and nuances, merged with the characteristics found in western typographic structures and letterform design.
This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.2: Parsons Integrated Design on Thursday, Feb 16, 2017.Not Just Playing Around: Game Design In The Interaction Design Classroom
Liese Zahabi
Assistant Professor of Graphic/Interaction Design
University of Maryland, College Park
The act of play is key in the art and science of Interaction Design. A sense of fun, wonder, and the unexpected help shape the games we interact with on our computers and phones, but also the interfaces we wouldn’t associate with games: working out with Fitbit, learning code with CodeAcademy, managing our money with Mint. By utilizing principles from games, designers can help motivate, engage, and teach users.
This presentation will highlight the work of graphic design students across two separate semesters. As part of an Advanced Interactive Design class, students were charged with designing, prototyping and play-testing games. Students chose a topic and target audience, and conducted initial research to help build the concept and content for the final game prototype. The students conducted play-testing to help them shape and revise their game designs, and had five weeks to complete the project. The resulting games ranged from phone and iPad apps to board games and card games. Students explored a myriad of topics: endangered animals, Crohn’s Disease, alternative energy, humility, empathy, packing gear for a music gig, constellations, and many others.
Engaging students with games has achieved many positive outcomes, often enabling them to understand the material, and the design process, more deeply. A sense of fun and exploratory play permeates the classroom, energizing students and encouraging true collaboration: you need players to play games, so students enlist each other for that purpose. Games are also little worlds—suggesting systems-based structures, the creation of rational rule sets, and demanding a focus on both design details and overall game experiences. Asking students to build and design games allows them to explore all these aspects in a contained and creative way, and helps to make them better designers and thinkers.
This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.2: Parsons Integrated Design on Thursday, Feb 16, 2017.Grafik Intervention: Sparking Urban Revitalization Efforts Through Graphic Design
Brit Rowe
Associate Professor of Art & Design
Department of Art & Design
Ohio Northern University
How can graphic designers use their skills and knowledge to draw attention to—and invoke a solution to—the problem of urban decay? How can they take responsibility and help rehabilitate those wounded environments?
Buildings that sit vacant for one or more years can become eyesores in any community and even bring down the value of properties surrounding them. In some situations, it is too costly to rehabilitate these spaces, causing developers to avoid them and leaving them susceptible to blight. This presentation discusses how students in a senior level graphic design course designed a Grafik Intervention to bring awareness to an underutilized building and to inspire community members to consider the potential the building held.
The Grafik Intervention is an open source project that identifies a site based on its underutilized urban space and potential for revitalization. The building is carefully selected based on its notable history and location. Along with the digital projections during the event, an historical exhibit was created to emphasize the significance of the building. The goal was to engage the public through visually dynamic and compelling communication methods. The projections were created to provide historical information in an urban context on the building after dark. Through the use of projected visuals and real-time discussions, printed questionnaires were used to elicit information from the general public as they walked or drove by the case study building.
This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.3: Kent State University on Saturday, March 11, 2017.
Teaching Design in the Age of Convergence
Robin Landa
Distinguished Professor
Michael Graves College, Kean University
To help people master Canon’s capabilities, 360i in partnership with Canon “set out to create a classroom experience in the field.” With Canon Photo Coach, 360i helped photo enthusiasts take the kind of photos they hoped for. 360i “used social listening to find New York City’s most photographed areas and then placed billboards right where people were taking those photos.” They created smart billboards—digital screens and trucks equipped with giant monitors that tapped into API data such as light, weather, time, traffic, location and events—giving real-time tips to photographers right when they needed them. This solution is neither conventional advertising nor graphic design.
Interactive public screens. Mobile design. Social media design. Environmental experiences. From any consumer’s point of view, brand experiences have been converging. However some design courses remain in pre-digital era silos.
Moira Cullen, Coca-Cola’s former design director, once said our profession could no longer tolerate thinking in silos. Yet we’re still divided in departments, in the classroom, and in our own brains. Contemporary visual communication problems demand new types of pedagogy.
To effectively address dealing with this convergence, I have been abolishing graphic design and advertising categories (and some conventions) in the classroom. Getting my students to think of visual communication as value-added experiences is my approach. I do this by asking students to consider the following questions when critiquing their own concepts.
- What benefit does your concept offer people?
- Is there any social good you can promote while promoting a brand?
- Can a design or advertising solution be in the form of entertainment, a product, service, or utility?
As a result, my students have secured coveted internships and jobs with New York City agencies and studios. It’s time to embrace integrated ways to teach in the age of convergence.
This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.2: Parsons Integrated Design on Thursday, Feb 16, 2017.
Addressing Racial Disparity in Design Education
Audra Buck-Coleman
Associate Professor
Graphic Design Program Director
University of Maryland College Park
How do you engage undergraduates in complex, conflict-ridden issues such as social injustice, racism and police brutality? How can these students co-design meaningful objects and messages around such topics that resonate with its stakeholders and community members? Finally, how can you know if these efforts have been productive and successful? BMORE Than The Story offers one case study of how to answer these questions.
In April 2015, the death of Freddie Gray and his treatment by police sparked anger, protests and violence in Baltimore. People from President Obama to the mayor of Baltimore to countless others called the protesters “thugs” and strongly denounced the Uprising and the destruction taking place. The overriding media narrative was pejorative and full of scorn. West Baltimore schools and their students, including those at nearby Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts (AFSIVA), a public high school, were implicated in the crime and destruction whether they committed it or not. These students lost control of how they wanted to be defined and regarded.
BMORE Than The Story brought together AFSIVA students and graphic design seniors at University of Maryland College Park to co-design an exhibit that would address critical issues in their community: racial disparities, identity, disenfranchisement, equity, oppression, policing and self-agency. The students reclaimed their narrative and voiced counterpoints to the previous year’s one-sided media portrayal. The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History in Culture in Baltimore, a Smithsonian affiliate, hosted the exhibit April through September 2016.
In addition, project authors incorporated qualitative and quantitative research to assess the project’s effectiveness. Results showed the high school students were empowered by the project and deemed the exhibit highly successful. Lessons include ways to engage students on difficult topics as well as ways to measure the effectiveness of such a project.
This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.2: Parsons Integrated Design on Thursday, Feb 16, 2017.The Design Incubation Communication Design Awards 2017
Awards in Scholarship: Published Research, Scholarship: Creative Work, Teaching, Service. Sponsored by Bloomsbury Publishing.
Design Incubation Communication Design Educators Awards 2017 is a competition. We offer recognition in 4 academic categories in the field of Communication Design:
- Scholarship: Published Research
- Scholarship: Creative Work (design research, creative production, and/or professional practice)
- Teaching
- Service (departmental, institutional, community)
The purpose of these awards is to showcase design excellence and ingenuity in the academic study of design. We are excited to announce a partnership with Bloomsbury Publishing who are sponsoring this year’s awards.
Entries will be accepted starting March 1, 2017. Deadline is May 31, 2017. Complete the online entry form here.
Category: Scholarship Creative Work
Portraits of Obama: Media, Fidelity, and the 44th President
Scholarship: Creative Work Award Winner
Kareem Collie
Lecturer
Harvey Mudd
Stanford University
Category: Scholarship Published Research
Critical Making: Design and the Digital Humanities
Scholarship: Published Research Award Winner
Jessica Barness
Associate Professor
Kent State University
Amy Papaelias
Assistant Professor
SUNY New Paltz
Category: Service
The Sit&Tell Project
Service Award Winner
Jenn Stucker
Associate Professor
Bowling Green State University
Category: Teaching
BMORE Than The Story
Teaching Award Winner
Audra Buck-Coleman
Associate Professor
University of Maryland College Park
White Plains Storefront Project: Art In Vacant Spaces
Teaching Award Runner-up
Warren Lehrer
Professor
School of Art+Design
Purchase College, SUNY
Founding Faculty Member
Designer as Author Graduate Program
SVA (School of Visual Arts)
Science Through Storybooks
Teaching Award Runner-up
Martha Carothers
Professor
University of Delaware
Jurors
Audrey Bennett
Professor
Communication and Media
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Steven McCarthy (Chair)
Professor of Graphic Design
University of Minnesota
Emily McVarish
Associate Professor
Graphic Design; Design; Writing
California College of Art
Maria Rogal
Professor of Graphic Design
University of Florida
David Shields
Associate Professor & Chair of Department of Graphic Design
Virginia Commonwealth University
For details on how to enter, go to the Awards Application Process page.
Announcement of Awards
The awards will be announced the first week of September 2017.
Citizen! Designer! Now!
A town hall style panel discussion about design’s role in the Trump Era. Sponsored and hosted by AIGA/NY and Parsons.
@Parsons Lecture Series Presents Citizen! Designer! Now!
A town hall style panel discussion about design’s role in the Trump Era. Sponsored and hosted by AIGA/NY and Parsons.
For more details visit: http://aigany.org/event/citizen-designer-now/
Friday, 2 December 2016
5:30–8:00 pm
Parsons
Starr Foundation Hall, Room UL102
63 5th Avenue
Teaching Type: A Panel Conversation on Typography Education
Educators will discuss innovations, challenges and best practices for teaching typography.
As a mainstay of design, typography is a corner stone of most degree programs in visual communication design. Still questions abound. How and where typography is taught is as varied as its use in design applications. We invite you to join fellow educators in a conversation which will focus on how, where and when we teach typography. Our panelists will explore the role of typography in the continuum of design education and identify areas where traditional programs experience shortcomings and challenges. We will ask what fundamental skills should be taught and whether the way we are teaching typography needs to change in a screen-based world? Finally, we will ask the audience to participate in identifying specific skill sets and methodologies which should be part of type-centric design curriculum in the 21st Century.
The conversation will be moderated by Doug Clouse, President of TDC and Principal at The Graphics Office and Liz DeLuna, Associate Professor of Design at St. John’s University.
Type Directors Club
347 West 36th Street
Suite 603
New York, NY 10018
Saturday, April 1, 2017
2pm–5pm
Moderators
Liz DeLuna
Associate Professor of Design
St. John’s University
Doug Clouse
President, Type Directors Club
Principal, The Graphics Office
Panelists
Thomas Jockin
Founder of TypeThursday
Adjunct Professor
Queen’s College, CUNY
and Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY
Amy Papaelias
Assistant Professor
Graphic Design
SUNY New Paltz
Co-founder of Alphabettes.org
John Gambell
Senior Critic
Yale School of Art
Yale University Printer
Juliette Cezzar
Designer, Writer
Assistant Professor
Communication Design
Parsons School of Design, The New School
Hosted by the Type Directors Club.