Author: Design Incubation

Design and Culture: Peer-Review Journals From the Inside Out

Elizabeth Guffey
Professor of Art & Design History
State University of New York at Purchase
Editor, Design & Culture

Rarely do we get a chance to see from the inside what the editorial process of peer review journals looks like. We will provide an unusual chance to see what the editorial process looks like, from the editors’ point of view, beginning with initial review of submissions through the peer review process and to final publication. We will also discuss some of the realities of publishing—including the timely pressures on editors to produce well-balanced journal issues with a variety of high-quality articles.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 2.3: St. John’s University on Saturday, January 16, 2016.

Design Incubation Colloquium 2.3: St. John’s University

Saturday, January 16, 2016
2:00pm – 4:30pm
St. John’s University Manhattan Campus
101 Astor PL, New York
(Local subways: 6 at Astor Place; N,R at 8th Street)

To attend: RSVP@designincubation.com. Include name, email contact, and affiliation. All are welcome.

Presentations

Design and Culture: Peer-Review Journals from the Inside Out
Elizabeth Guffey
Professor of Art & Design History
State University of New York at Purchase
Editor, Design & Culture

Self-Publishing in Higher Education: Meaning and Approach
James Pannafino
Associate Professor
Interactive and Graphic Design
Millersville University, Pennsylvania

Envisioning South Africa’s Global Struggle Against Apartheid
Steffi Duarte
Curatorial Research Assistant
Product Design & Decorative Arts Department
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Decorative Art & Design Department
Cleveland Museum of Art

The Fine Art of Persuasion: Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan
Gennifer Weisenfeld
Professor
Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies
Duke University

Big Data in Interactive Web Design
Vinoad Senguttuvan
Senior Data Scientist
Metis

Attendees
  • Jen Roos, Mercy College, NY
  • Gigi Polo, Parsons
  • Dimitry Tetin, SUNY New Paltz
  • Aaron Ganci, Indiana University–Purdue
  • Meaghan Barry, Oakland University, MI
  • Anna Pinkas, BMCC
  • Janet Esquirol, BMCC
  • Liz DeLuna, St. John’s
  • Kathryn Weinstein, Queen’s College
  • Grace Moon, Queen’s College
  • Matt Ferranto, Westchester Community College
  • Kathryn Simon, Parsons
  • Lynne Foster, Pratt Institute
  • Jon Santos, Common Space Studio
  • Amye McCarther, U Texas Austin
  • Hui Xie, St. John’s
  • Scott Fowler, Chelsea High School
  • Bonnie Blake, Ramapo College
  • Dan Wong, CityTech
  • Aaris Sherin, St. John’s

Design Incubation Fellowship: January 14–16, 2016

The 2016 Design Incubation Fellowship was held January 14–16, 2016 at St. John’s University’s Manhattan campus. This year’s participants may choose to pursue one of two modes for engaging with original research projects.

2016 Design Incubation Fellows:

  • Jen Roos, Mercy College, NY
  • Gigi Polo, Parsons The New School for Design, NY
  • Gennifer Weisenfeld, Duke University, NC
  • Steffi Duarte, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, NY
  • Dimitry Tetin, State University of New York, New Paltz
  • Aaron Ganci, Indiana University–Purdue University, IN
  • Meaghan Barry, Oakland University, MI
  • Anna Pinkas, Borough of Manhattan Community College, NY
  • Janet Esquirol, Borough of Manhattan Community College, NY

Agenda

Day 1: Thursday, January 14th

9:00am–10:00am

Introduction
Dan Wong
Co-founder, Co-chair Design Incubation

11:00am-12:00pm

Book Proposals
Georgia Kennedy
Managing Editor Fairchild Books,
a division of Bloomsbury Publishing (UK)
Synthesis

1:00pm–5:00pm

Writing for Journals: Workshop Session
Maggie Taft
Managing Editor, Design and Culture

Day 2: Friday January 15th

9:00am–12:00pm

Break Out Session / Working Groups

1:00pm –5:00pm

Writing Process and Feedback
Andrew Shea
Author of Design for Social Change
Principal of design studio, MANY

Structuring Scholarship
Aaris Sherin
Director of Fellowships at Design Incubation

Day 3: Saturday January 16th

9:00am–12:00pm

Presentation of Participant Work/Progress
Feedback; Wrap-up

2:00pm–4:30pm

Design Incubation Colloquium 2.3
(open to the public)

Villages in the City

Hui Xie
Visiting Scholar in St. John’s University
Associate Professor
Graphic Design
School of Art and Design
Shenzhen Polytechnic
XiLi Lake, Nanshan District
Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

“Men and women do not want to move back, but the mark of youth has been branded in their heart. This is not their hometown, but with a deep nostalgia as well.”

As a unique specimen of Chinese urbanization, the villages “DaChong” and “GangXia” in Shenzhen, China represent a bridge between rural and urban. With the huge gap between disadvantageous groups and mainstream society, the existence of villages in the city created a buffer zone between low-income workers and the high cost of living. Unfortunately, in recent years because of ongoing urban renewal development, the villages have been razed and are now flat ground. Victims of high speed economic development, the villages of Shenzhen are disappearing, and because of their absence the names “DaChong” and “GangXia” are becoming as meaningless and vague. The multimedia installation “Villages in the City” incorporates vernacular typography used for signage with phrases like “ I LOVE YOU” and “I MISS YOU” to explore what should we learn and remember from these places.

The names “DaChong” and “GangXia”and shapes used to create their Chinese characters are data carriers as are the handwritten advertisements found on the walls of buildings. They provide with a wealth of living information about daily life in the most densely inhabited district in Shenzhen. Documentary photography, neon and stainless steel characters are used to create compositions, which reveal traces of the environment where immigrant working class citizens used to live. Text and imagery of messages from people for looking for or advertising jobs, information about selling Chinese herbal medicines, and telephone numbers of movers are combined with house numbers, street names, and the price tags from street foods to produce site-specific installations which serve as constructive links to former residents while recreating memories of village nights. “Villages in the City” is a memorial for the loss of history and an exploration aspect of village life that should be remembered.

Zone1/ZoneA: Reflection/ Resilience

David Frisco, Adjunct Professor, CCE
Graduate Communications Design
School of Design
Pratt Institute

ZoneA/Zone1 took place during the Fall 2013 semester of a graduate-level design studio, at a design school in New York City.
Using the NYC Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency (SIRR) Report as a departure point, our teams engaged with the five most affected communities in NYC through qualitative research in the form of cultural probes and interventions, addressing each area’s unique relationship to the city’s waterfront and impacting climate change, ultimately creating a set of proposals and in some cases, implementing solutions and toolkits serving to improve grass-root resiliency efforts in each community.

Our objective was to design a responsive communication strategy as well as individual or community-led activities that advanced resiliency efforts and foster behavior change, putting preparedness at the fore. The goal was to inspire and engage a community to take action.

We concentrated on the following 5 communities identified in the NYC Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency (SIRR) Report: A Stronger, More Resilient New York

  • Brooklyn-Queens Waterfront
  • East and South Shores of Staten Island
  • South Queens
  • Southern Brooklyn
  • Southern Manhattan

Our initiative focused on qualitative research strategies to utilize design as a means for transformation. With an emphasis on a human-centered, holistic, and empathic approach, our teams applied Design Thinking methodologies to localized problems and issues in an attempt to transform the behaviors of individuals in desirable and sustainable ways, while creating meaningful experiences and interactions.

Emphasizing that people are participants rather than simply users, we studied human factors — cognitive, physical, emotional, linguistic, social and cultural behaviors. We explored numerous conceptual and procedural frameworks which guide the design process, in order to address the needs of people and organizations, and convert them into progressive, sustainable solutions.

Design Criticism in Search of a Platform

Dr. Gaia Scagnetti
Assistant Professor
Graduate Communication Design
Pratt Institute

By definition criticism presents negative connotations. In philosophical terms, criticism is not an action but a method of systematic analysis of a written, oral and visual discourse. It involves merit recognition and it means a methodical practice of doubt. Design criticism has had a short life story and never reached the popularity of Architecture or Art criticism, Film or Literary criticism. Probing design work is perceived as a threat, especially in a time when liking is the expected way of supporting peers both within and outside of social networks. To like and express appreciation for the work of others is a consolidated strategy to get noticed and welcomed in a community of practice, especially among the young generation.

Support is rarely shown through critical encouragement and is mostly communicated through unconditional recommendations; endorsement is seen as a currency to be exchanged regardless of the intrinsic value of a certain production. The problem gets exacerbated by the platforms we use to contribute to disciplinary conversations: symposia, conferences, talks are now always recorded and publicly streamed. This public exposure does not support attempts to make critical analyses; streaming is an opportunity for advertising others or yourself, your connections and your relevancy. Public speeches are opportunities to create connections the so called shoutout to other projects, friends or celebrities. In a time where positivity is the currency nobody wants to practice doubt.

We can consider the process of criticism to be equivalent to making strategic decisions it is a part of how we govern ourselves. Strategies are rarely discussed out in the public, but within a dedicated environment where the social rules of conduct are made explicit and intentions are shared. Similarly, design criticism should be fostered and cultivated within purposebuilt platforms. Design criticism needs a home more than ever. Analysing, considering or dissecting design discourse is a contribution to the politics of truth and criticism is the art of not being governed quite so much.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 2.1: Pratt Institute, Graduate Communications Design on Saturday, October 24, 2015.

On Technology, Design and Art: A Reformulation

Alex Liebergesell
Associate Professor
Pratt Institute
Graduate Communications Design

The term “design” (Latin designare, to designate) is defined as “intent.” Technology, from the Greek techné (art, craft), are tools derived from the deliberate application of knowledge. Design and technology are therefore inseparably rooted in their common meaning as the deliberate instantiation of ideas.

Vilém Flusser, in his 1993 essay About the Word Design, explains design as a “bridge” born during the Industrial Revolution, which attempted to close the “sharp division between the world of the arts and that of technology” in place since the Renaissance. For Flusser, design is a reunion of “equals” which makes “a new form of culture possible.”

But is design really a reunion of art and technology? In the face of converging trends in art, technology and design, Flusser’s typology is outmoded. His view still maintains a separation between art and technology, and while he ascribes a strong causal value to design as a cultural arbiter, he over-expresses its dependency on technology and ignores art as an intrinsic expression of technology. In short, neither art or design are defined as technologies, thus rendering his entire equation untenable.

However, if we designate both art and design as technologies, and accept that the former is primarily preoccupied with intrinsic expression and the latter with extrinsic functionalities, we can readily assign technology as the universal constant from which all knowledge, inventions, and creative expressions — in effect, all culture — emerges. By assigning equal value to art and design as manifestations of technology, we can better grasp the convergence in methods and intent that are common to these disciplines today. Moreover, this alternative formula provides room and equal footing for liberal arts and social science co-products such as philosophy, political theory and the institutions which sustain them, all key technologies and human inventions essential for design and artistic development.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 2.1: Pratt Institute, Graduate Communications Design on Saturday, October 24, 2015.

Membit: A Magic Time Machine

Jay Van Buren
Artist, Designer
CEO and Founder, Early-Adopter.com LLC
Co-Founder and CEO, Membit Inc.

Places are part of our identity. Our memories and experiences are tied to places, and yet in a world where we increasingly use digital means for everything, there’s no good way to mark a place as special to us, or to connect with the other people for whom that place matters. GPS is insufficiently precise and computer-vision-based augmented reality depends upon some kind of physical marker, a poster, a plaque, or other demarcation.

Membit allows people to annotate a location with precisely placed, augmented content without using computer vision. It uses the patented “human positioning system” which works anywhere.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 2.1: Pratt Institute, Graduate Communications Design on Saturday, October 24, 2015.

Improving Cybermedia Literacy In Art Education Through Internet Art: A Study on Adolescent Perspectives

Laura Scherling
GreenspaceNYC, Co-founder
The New School, Design Lead
Teachers College, Columbia University, Doctoral student 

By fostering cyberliteracy in the arts, educators and their students can examine the digital artifacts of our time and embrace a dialogue that addresses the profound effects that digital art, such as Internet artwork, is having on youth culture in formal and informal learning environments. This research, through a series of interviews with four adolescent participants who have grown up as digital natives, explores an enhanced focus on cyberliteracy in visual arts education, on both the part of students and educators. Four major themes are explored: cybermedia literacy in art education, adolescent Internet use, the emotional and psychosocial development of the adolescent, and online identity construction.

Design Incubation Colloquium 2.1: Pratt Institute, Graduate Communications Design

Design Incubation Colloquium 2.1

Hosted by Santiago Piedrafita, Lauren Davis, Gaia Scagnetti
Saturday, October 24, 2015
10am–1pm

Pratt Institute
Graduate Communications Design Department
Manhattan Campus W18th Studios
123 West 18th Street
(between 6th and 7th Avenues)
Room 301
New York, NY 10011

Design Incubation Colloquia 2.1 (#DI2015oct) will be held at the Pratt Institute, Manhattan Campus, Graduate Communications Design Department. This event is open to all interested in Communication Design research. RSVP with name and affiliations if you plan on attending.

Agenda details and list of presentations/speakers updated intermittently.

Abstract submission for presentations deadline October 10, 2015.  For details visit the Call for Submissions, and Submission Process description.

Presentations

Design Criticism in Search of a Platform
Dr. Gaia Scagnetti
Assistant Professor
Pratt Institute
Graduate Communication Design

On Technology, Design, and Art: A Reformulation
Alex Liebergesell
Associate Professor
Pratt Institute
Graduate Communications Design

Membit: A Magic Time Machine
Jay Van Buren
Artist, Designer
CEO and Founder, Early-Adopter.com LLC
Co-Founder and CEO, Membit Inc.

Improving Cybermedia Literacy In Art Education Through Internet Art: A Study on Adolescent Perspectives
Laura Scherling
GreenspaceNYC, Co-founder
The New School, Design Lead
Teachers College, Columbia University, Doctoral student 

You Look Like The Right Type
Mark Addison Smith
Assistant Professor
Electronic Design and Multimedia
The City College of New York, CUNY

Zone1/ZoneA: Reflection/ Resilience
David Frisco, Adjunct Professor, CCE
Graduate Communications Design
School of Design
Pratt Institute

Villages in the City
Hui Xie
Visiting Scholar in St. John’s University
Associate Professor
Graphic Design
School of Art and Design
Shenzhen Polytechnic
XiLi Lake, Nanshan District
Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

Attendees
  • Aaris Sherin, St. John’s University
  • Liz DeLuna, St. John’s University
  • Scott Lundberg, Pratt Institute
  • Leonor Kerke, Pratt Institute
  • Kathryn Weinstein, Queens College, CUNY
  • Kiran Puri, Pratt Institute
  • Sha Huang, NAVA
  • Gizem Serifoglu, Pratt Institute
  • Liana Castillo
  • Lynn Overmyer, Donorschoose.org
  • Mary Ann Biehl, CityTech, CUNY
  • Tony DiSpigna, Pratt Institute
  • Alisa Zamir, Pratt Institute
  • Steffi Duarte, Cooper Hewitt/Cleveland Museum
  • Marianna Trofimova, CityTech, CUNY
  • Phyllis Rosenblatt, CityTech, CUNY
  • Andrew Shea, CityTech/Pratt
  • Ann Morris, Pratt Institute
  • Corwin Green, Pratt Institute
  • Dan Wong, CityTech, CUNY
  • Genevieve Hitchings, CityTech, CUNY