Author: Design Incubation

Nourishing the Creators of a Design Economy in the South Bronx

Mathew Bethancourt
Assistant Professor
Media Design Programs Team, Visual & Performing Arts Unit
Hostos Community College, CUNY

Andy London
Lecturer
Media Design Programs Team, Visual & Performing Arts Unit
Hostos Community College, CUNY

Sarah Sandman
Assistant Professor
Media Design Programs Team, Visual & Performing Arts Unit
Hostos Community College, CUNY

Rees Shad
Chair of Humanities Department
Media Design Programs Team, Visual & Performing Arts Unit
Hostos Community College, CUNY

The Media Design Programs at Hostos Community College are empowering students to build creative capital in their local South Bronx community. Students’ professional and collaborative educational experiences are further enhanced by Media Design Immersions outside of the classroom and institution such as the Media Design Challenge, Hive Cooperative and Hostos Design Lab. Media Design Immersions provide high-impact learning and profound portfolio building opportunities through cross-cultural work exposure. These experiences have yielded public-facing media projects such as billboard designs on Madison Avenue, a series of educational games focused on math and science, the publication of a game design text book, a multimedia exhibition at a world renowned cultural institution and a short film and screening at a local Bronx gallery. In addition, the Media Design programs is launching the Hostos Design Incubator which, in collaboration with Lehman College and Macaulay Honors Institute, seeks to provide students with the space and instruction to create a new wave of design/tech industry in the South Bronx.

 

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 1.2: New York City College of Technology on Friday, October 31, 2014.

Using Historical Archives to Explore Cultural Representation in Design & Mass Media

Ryan Hartley Smith
Assistant Professor, Graphic Design
Art Department, Queens College, CUNY

Communication designers today have unprecedented access to visual reference material from around the globe. This is largely thanks to the recent advent of online creative resources and archives. Whether a designer uses this material as formal inspiration, or directly incorporates imagery into a project, their appropriation can raise a multitude of ethical, cultural, and historical questions to consider.

Over the past four semesters, students in my Color and Design courses have explored these questions by using material in our college’s extensive Civil Rights Archives to generate socially minded projects, and to discuss cultural representation, authorship, and re-appropriation.

This presentation describes the outcome of our most recent project, which adapted the Civil Rights-era format of a “Mass Meeting” to examine the legacies of the 1964 Freedom Summer.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 1.2: New York City College of Technology on Friday, October 31, 2014.

Painting with the iPad: Using Traditional Techniques on a Digital Canvas

Monika Maniecki
Adjunct Lecturer
MFA in Illustration
Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 1.2: New York City College of Technology on Friday, October 31, 2014.

The Graphic Design Portfolio: Process Over Product

Irina Lee
Design Director, Bureau Blank
Adjunct Lecturer, School of Visual Arts
Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Visual Communications: Art + Graphic Design
SUNY Farmingdale

Portfolio preparation can be a friendly approach to learning time management, identifying personal career goals, and transitioning from a student to a professional practice. 
 
“Live Interviews + Networking Night” was born out of the necessity to focus and motivate the graphic design seniors. Over the course of 6 weeks, the work leading up to the “big night” provides a real-world setting for students to research the design industry, identify personal career goals, iterate, self-initiate the necessary portfolio work, articulate their work through written case studies, seek out help and feedback from design professionals, and learn to make their own decisions. Instead of the traditional teacher/student reviews, students seek reviews from industry professionals and supplement their work with group reviews and self evaluations. 
 
Through this process, students gain confidence in their work, become stronger writers, improve collaboration and group facilitation skills, and learn how to build their networks. The talk will include students’ work, teaching methods, and tips for anyone interested in incorporating a similar model into their upper-level design courses.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 1.2: New York City College of Technology on Friday, October 31, 2014.

Colloquium 1.3: Call for Submissions

Deadline: November 26, 2014

The  2014 winter colloquium will be held at Parsons, The New School. We invite all Communication Design researchers to submit abstracts for consideration by our panel of peers.

For more details, see the Submission Process description.
Event Date: Tuesday, December 2, 2014

The New School University Center
65 5th Ave, Academic entrance (corner of 13th St)
New York, New York
Room 617

3PM – 5PM

Please RSVP if you plan on attending.

Design Incubation Fellowship Program

January 12, 15, 19, 2015
11am-1pm
St. John’s University
Manhattan Campus
101 Astor Place
New York, NY 10003

This is Design Incubation’s inaugural Fellowship Program. To find out more information and to apply, please visit the Fellowship Program section, review the format of the workshops, and the fellowship application process.

Colloquium 1.2 Call for Submissions

Deadline: October 15, 2014

The  2014 autumn colloquium will be the next event to be held by Design Incubation at CityTech, CUNY. We invite all Communication Design researchers to submit abstracts for consideration by our panel of peers.

For more details, see the Submission Process description.
Event Date: Friday, October 31, 2014
11am-2pm
New York City College of Technology, CUNY
300 Jay Street
Room N119
Brooklyn NY, 11201

Please RSVP if you plan on attending.

Design Incubation Colloquium 1.2: New York City College of Technology

Design Incubation Colloquium 1.2: CityTech

Hosted by M. Genevieve Hitchings & Dan Wong
Friday, October 31, 2014
11am-2pm
New York City College of Technology, CUNY
300 Jay Street
Room N119
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Please RSVP if you plan on attending. Presentation lists to follow.

Presentations

Nourishing the Creators of a Design Economy in the South Bronx

Mathew Bethancourt
Assistant Professor
Media Design Programs Team, Visual & Performing Arts Unit
Hostos Community College, CUNY

Andy London
Lecturer
Media Design Programs Team, Visual & Performing Arts Unit
Hostos Community College, CUNY

Sarah Sandman
Assistant Professor
Media Design Programs Team, Visual & Performing Arts Unit
Hostos Community College, CUNY

Rees Shad
Chair of Humanities Department
Media Design Programs Team, Visual & Performing Arts Unit
Hostos Community College, CUNY

Painting with the iPad: Using Traditional Techniques on a Digital Canvas

Monika Maniecki
Adjunct Lecturer
MFA in Illustration
Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY

The Graphic Design Portfolio: Process Over Product

Irina Lee
Design Director
Bureau Blank
Adjunct Lecturer
School of Visual Arts
Department of Visual Communications: Art + Graphic Design
SUNY Farmingdale

Using Historical Archive to Explore Cultural Representation in Design & Mass Media

Ryan Hartley Smith
Assistant Professor, Graphic Design
Art Department, Queens College, CUNY

Attendees

  • Yue Chen, Adjunct Lecturer, CityTech
  • Kristin Derimanova, Asst Professor, Kingsborough Community College
  • Janet Esquirol, Borough of Manhattan Community College
  • Maria Giuliani, Assoc Professor, CityTech
  • Ken Golden, Asst Professor, Queensborough Community College
  • Genevieve Hitchings, Asst Professor, CityTech
  • Raffi Khatchadourian, Asst Professor, CityTech
  • Pete Mauro, Asst Professor, Queensborough Community College
  • Jerron Smith, Adjunct Lecturer, CityTech
  • Susan Spivak, Assoc Professor, Kingsborough Community College
  • Emilie Lengain, Graphic Designer
  • Phyllis Rosenblatt, Adjunct Lecturer, CityTech
  • Kathryn Weinstein, Assoc Professor, Queens College
  • Kathy Wilson, Graphic Designer
  • Dan Wong, Asst Professor, CityTech
  • Nina Young, Adjunct Lecturer, CityTech, BMCC

Design Incubation Colloquium 1.1: Queens College

Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Conference Room, Klapper Hall
Queens College
65-30 Kissena Blvd.
Queens, NY 11367-1597

Presentations

Definining Practice, Redefining Education: Five Case Studies
Juliette Cezzar
Associate Director & Assistant Professor
BFA Communication Design
Parsons the New School for Design

Reality Check: Learning About the Difference Between Design and Designer
Yue Chen
Art Director
Office of Visual Communication
New York City College of Technology, CUNY

Engaging the Campus Community with Design Thinking
Andrew DeRosa
Assistant Professor
Queens College, CUNY

Attendees

  • Liz DeLuna, Associate Professor, St. John’s University
  • M. Genevieve Hitchings, Assistant Professor, CityTech—CUNY
  • Lisa Maione, Adjunct Lecturer, Parsons—The New School, Queens College—CUNY
  • Grace Moon, Assistant Professor, Queens College—CUNY
  • Aaris Sherin, Associate Professor, St. John’s University
  • Ryan Hartley Smith, Assistant Professor, Queens College — CUNY
  • Kathryn Weinstein, Assistant Professor, Queens College—CUNY
  • Dan Wong, Assistant Professor, CityTech—CUNY

 

Defining Practice, Redefining Education: Five Case Studies

Juliette Cezzar
Associate Director & Assistant Professor
BFA Communication Design
Parsons the New School for Design

The last decade has brought with it a fragmentation of the design field, where the work of the graphic designer is publicly being defined as limited to artifacts (magazines, posters, advertisements) while “new”fields of interaction design, digital product design, service design, and branding are distancing themselves as rapidly as possible. At the same time, schools have moved away from prioritizing concept and theory, emphasizing the teaching of skills instead, oftenblaming the demands of the technological marketplace.

The result has been a suite of technology-based skills courses that are tacked onto existing curricula, making many students’ transcripts read as comma-separated lists of various subfields without preparing them for the field they are graduating into.

This presentation demonstrates five ways faculty can incorporate the teaching of technology into the fundamentals of graphic design and carry them through into subsequent “non-technology” courses such as editorial design. The aim is to bring technology into concept, methodology, and theory, not just technique – then to bring those three things back into our programs.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 1.1: Queens College on Tuesday, August 26, 2014.