Andrés Vera Martínez Assistant Professor, Cartooning and Illustration Lesley University College of Art and Design Cambridge, MA The Spanish term Mestizos, meaning mixed, came into popular usage during the 16th century to describe the offspring of Spaniards and Native Americans. Vaqueros, or the first cowboys, were Mestizos and their cowboy culture has been mythologized and … Continue reading “Espiritu, Texas 1886-2015: An Essential Part Of American History”
Matthew Monk Academic Dean Vermont College of Fine Arts After teaching graphic design for twenty years at a prominent institution for art and design education, I was given an opportunity to build a new graphic design MFA program from scratch in the context of a growing, up-and-coming arts college that is known for its successful … Continue reading “Rethinking Graphic Design Education”
Christie Shin Assistant Professor Communication Design, School of Art and Design Fashion Institute of Technology In response to the massive growth of media consumption in recent years, “Immersive reading” has become the primary focus of the publishing industry. While traditional reading only involves seeing the page, immersive reading spans the spectrum with a more engaging … Continue reading “The Next Wave in Publication Design”
Laura Franz Professor, Design Department Head, Graphic Design Option (Major) College of Visual and Performing Arts, UMass Dartmouth For decades, critics have predicted the end of the written word: “No one reads anymore! No one writes anymore!” Yet from birth certificates to gravestones, from T-shirts to text messaging, the written word—and thus reading—is woven into … Continue reading “Re-Defining Reading”
Andrew Shea Adjunct Faculty Pratt Institute Parsons, The New School Designers are eager to find solutions that are economically inclusive, socially progressive, and environmentally sound. And whether they call it social impact design, designing for social change, socially responsible design, or by another name, it usually implies that design makes some kind of impact. The … Continue reading “Small Disruptions”
Ziddi Msangi Associate Professor Design Department, College of Visual & Performing Arts University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Founding Faculty, Graphic Design Vermont College of Fine Arts Throughout East Africa, but especially in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, women wear wraps called kanga. They contain a central image along with a patterned motif and saying. They range from … Continue reading “Kanga as a Form of Visual Communication”
Mark Addison Smith, Assistant Professor Electronic Design and Multimedia The City College of New York The Queer Writing on the Bathroom Wall documents my typographic and theoretical process of discovering an instance of homophobic graffiti—gay fagget fucker die you know it’s a truck driver—within a midwestern truck stop men’s bathroom, translating the author’s letterforms into … Continue reading “The Queer Writing on the Bathroom Wall”
Liz DeLuna Associate Professor of Graphic Design Department of Art and Design St. John’s University Cemeteries provide a landscape rich in social, cultural and aesthetic history. They house the dead, but the grave markers designed and crafted by the living, leave a legacy of traditions, styles and preferences. This is especially evident in the variety … Continue reading “Bequeath(ed) Type”
Kathryn Weinstein Associate Professor Queens College, CUNY A startling revelation concerning outcomes for students graduating with graphic design degrees emerged from Steven Heller’s (2005) article, Too Many Grads or Too Few Competencies? The Design School Dilemma. The article estimated that as many as fifty percent of students graduating from design programs quit the field within … Continue reading “Too Many Grads Redux”
Kelly Walters Rhode Island School of Design MFA Candidate in Graphic Design I am a multimedia artist, a critical thinker, and a choreographer who works to understand the construction of black cultural expression in mainstream media. My aim as an artist, is to identify patterns within language, both visual and articulated, as a source from … Continue reading “Voice + Space + Place: Black Cultural Expression”
