Tag: 2014

The Unique Challenges of Defining Research and Scholarship for Communication Design Academics

Dan Wong
Assistant Professor
Advertising Design & Graphic Arts
New York City College of Technology, CUNY

Retrospective summary
Prepared July 2026 from the presenter’s slides and speaker notes. No abstract was submitted for this presentation in 2014. Colloquium 1.0 was by invitation; abstracts were not peer reviewed.

Communication design academics are evaluated for promotion and tenure against research standards developed in other disciplines, while the field has few scholarly journals of its own and no accepted definition of what its research is.

Communication design practice, in and of itself, is research.

This presentation tests communication design against definitions of research drawn from federal guidelines, arts and humanities research councils, and university policy, on the premise that knowing where a discipline fits determines what it does. It situates communication design within a taxonomy of the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and arts, then distinguishes it from adjacent design fields: unlike industrial, interior, or fashion design, it cannot conceptualize in a vacuum, having no purpose absent a need to communicate. Drawing on Charles Owen’s mapping of disciplinary activity, it argues that extending practice toward research moves the field from synthetic and real activity toward the analytic, contributing to knowledge rather than only drawing on it. It then examines the fine art model, where exhibition functions as peer review, and advances a parallel for design: client selection as review, with professional credentials — experience, budget accountability, demonstrated return on investment — constituting reviewer qualification.

Against the empirical apparatus of the sciences — hypothesis, subjects, controlled trials, statistical analysis — the presentation asks whether research in design should instead be a natural result of practice. Institutional criteria already recognize a completed design project as research when it extends the field’s knowledge base, is open to peer review, is documented in writing, and has its methodologies described.

Practice satisfies the first of those conditions. The remaining three are matters of documentation and venue rather than of method — infrastructure the discipline has yet to build, and the condition on which recognition of practice as scholarship depends.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 1.0: Inaugural Event at AIGA on Thursday, June 5, 2014.

Using Printmaking Techniques to Teach Metacognitive Skills to Design Students

Sharon (Libby) Clarke
Assistant Professor
Advertising Design and Graphic Arts
New York City College of Technology, CUNY

As we educators wrestle with the shifting significance of print in our classrooms, we risk losing equipment, space, and funding for printmaking techniques that are seen as being no longer relevant. This study works to prove that techniques including relief printing, letterpress and lithography can be instrumental in bridging the gap between the haptic and the conceptual for poorly performing students. It strives to demonstrate that printmaking lessons are ideal for teaching the bedrock metacognitive skills so many low-performing or disadvantaged students lack when they come into our classrooms. These observations are posited to help cement printmaking’s continued place in our institutions and our curricula.

This year-long study focuses on the application of current educational theories through printmaking lessons to help beginning students improve markedly in a college setting. Specifically, metacognitive strategies are taught through printmaking projects in order to reach and support the lowest performing students in a variety of design classes and art workshops. The problem-solving skills inherent in printmaking makes it a particularly good medium to help students overcome difficulties to find connections to new material, thereby providing them with the confidence and context they need to succeed academically.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 1.0: Inaugural Event at AIGA on Thursday, June 5, 2014.

Design Bravery: Managing Fear and Facilitating Development through Collaboration

Lisa J. Maione, Art Director / Designer

Adjunct Lecturer, Queens College CUNY
Part-time Lecturer, Parsons The New School for Design

Finding one’s voice as a designer is a continuous process which calls upon our inner confidence. We hone a specific type of confidence — a ‘design bravery’ — that comes in many forms, at all scales, and with practice. At Queens College, Graphic Design 1 is the first course where we explore form, material, meaning, and context in 2D design. Even from early on in the semester, voice is practiced, challenged, and strengthened. With various rolls of colored of painter’s tape, the students in the class are asked, “As a collaborative group, design and produce the most interesting line connecting Point A and Point B.” Points A and B are marked as X’s on two far points. The students have made lines in classrooms, hallways, an outdoor sitting area, staircases, and a stretch of high-traffic hallway connecting two buildings. There are very few rules: “Nothing should inhibit anyone’s safe passing through the space; Everything must be within reach to be removed; Respect school property.” Armed with blue, pink, green, and yellow tape as their tools, the class begins to negotiate. Who begins? Where does the first mark go? Is there a unifying theme? Before long, an expansive, collaborative, visual vocabulary is built. Along the line, the students encounter texture, color, typography, overlap, transparency, contrast, movement, rhythm, time. As the group is working, a curious passerby asks a question; a student explains what they are doing. The line is interactive and public, both in-process and at its end. Without fail, every “basic design principle” naturally emerges from the line and is ripe for discussion. The line shows us that graphic design does is indeed not specialized nor unfamiliar. Graphic strategies rise up when we create the simplest gesture with a basic tool. From here, our semester adventure is able to begin.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 1.0: Inaugural Event at AIGA on Thursday, June 5, 2014.