Extended Deadline: Design Incubation Awards 2021

Check it out! We’ve extended the deadlines.

Design Incubation Communication Design Awards 2021

Has it been a hectic year for you too? Phew. And we’re not sure how this autumn will go. But we do know that there has been some very fascinating work produced recently. Great published works, creative and experimental projects, innovative teaching methods, and important designed service initiatives.

We’ve decided we’re going to break some rules and extend our own deadlines. The annual international Design Incubation Communication Design Awards 2021 have extended their nomination and entry period to Wednesday, December 1, 2021. 

We hope you will enter your work, or nominate the work of a colleague or graduate student. There’s lots of really great stuff out there, and our friends want to see it! Help us shine the light on these and offer you some recognition.

What is the $20 entry fee for? There are lots of hidden costs when running an all-volunteer organization. Even though most of them are relatively small, they add up to more than you would think. However, if this is the only thing stopping you from entering your work, please don’t let it be. Submit anyway. It’s on us. We are not motivated by profits at Design Incubation, we are motivated by seeing you succeed 🙂

Design Incubation Writing Fellowship 2021

A three-day virtual workshop facilitating academic writing and publishing for designers.

Day 1
Thursday, June 3, 2021

10:00am–11:00amIntroductions + Icebreaker
11:00am–12:00pmLive Q&A: Submitting a Book Proposal/Manuscript with Louise Baird-Smith
12:00pm–12:15pmMini Break
12:15pm–1:30pmExercise: What, Why, and How We Write
1:30pm–2:30pmLunch (on your own)
2:30pm–3:15pmPresentation: Where Writing Meets Publishing
Aaris Sherin
3:15pm – 3:30pmMini Break
3:30pm – 6:30pmWorkshop: How to Think and Talk About Writing
Maggie Taft

Day 2
Friday, June 4, 2021

10:00am–10:30amPart 2 of How to Think and Talk About Writing
Maggie Taft
10:30am–12:45pmGroup Sessions
12:45pm–1:45pmLunch (on your own)
1:45pm–3:30pmGroup Sessions
3:30pm–3:45pmMini Break
3:45pm–4:30pmWriting for Journals with Visible Language
4:30pm –5:30pmPresentation: Public and Academic Scholarship
Liat Berdugo
5:30pm –6:30pmWriting for Journals with Design and Culture

Day 3
Saturday, June 5, 2021

10:00am–11:00amPresentation: A Life in Writing: Contracts, Agents and Monetary Consideration
Robin Landa, Distinguished Professor, Kean University
Author over twenty books
11:00am–1:30pmGroup Sessions
1:30pm–2:30pmLunch (on your own)
2:30pm–4:30pmGroup Sessions
4:30pm–6:00pmSharing Session / Wrap Up
Please note: This schedule is tentative and is subject to change

2021 Design Incubation Fellows

Articles Track

Arlene Brit, Associate Professor, Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Minneapolis, Minnesota

Lisa Elzey Mercer Assistant Professor, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Urbana-Champaign, Illinois

Katie Krcmarik, Assistant Professor, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Lincoln, Nebraska

Shreyas Krishnan, Assistant Professor, Washington University. St. Louis, Missouri

Gurkan Maruf Mihci, Assistant Professor, Indiana University–Purdue University. Indianapolis, Indiana and Ph.D. student, Ozyegin University, Istanbul

Omar Sosa-Tzec, Assistant Professor, San Francisco State University. San Francisco, California

Lisa Jayne Willard, Assistant Professor, The University of Tampa. Tampa, Florida

Neil Ward, Associate Professor, Drake University. Des Moines, Iowa

Books Track

Dennis Cheatham, Assistant Professor,Miami University. Oxford, Ohio

Meaghan Dee, Associate Professor, Virginia Tech University. Blacksburg, Virginia

Jessica Jacobs, Associate Professor, Columbia College. Chicago, Illinois

Kyuha Shim, Assistant Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania

Ann McDonald, Associate Professor, Northeastern University. Boston, Massachusetts

Reviews Track

Tasheka Arceneaux Sutton, Associate Professor, Southeastern Louisiana University and Vermont College of Fine Arts

Breuna Baine, Associate Professor, Auburn University. Montgomery, Alabama

Maria Smith Bohannon, Assistant Professor, Oakland University. Rochester, Michigan

Erica Holeman, Assistant Professor, University of North Texas. Denton, Texas

Dan Vlahos, Assistant Professor, Merrimack College. North Andover, Massachusetts 

CFP Cross Journal Special Issue: Making Justice Together

Deadline for submissions: November 15, 2020.
Publication of special issue: June 2021.

Original papers are invited for peer-review that address one of the following three topics:

Generative Justice in Design

Journal: New Design Ideas (Azerbaijan)

Marginalized Identities in the Design of Aesthetics for Resistance

Journal: Image & Text (South Africa)

Interconnected Apart: Design Research(ers) in the Periphery, in Isolation

Journal: Wicked Solutions Annual (USA, forthcoming

About the Special Issue

Making Justice Together is a refereed cross-journal special issue edited by Audrey G. Bennett (University of Michigan, USA) that aims to face down injustice and inequity with the dissemination of criticism, history, research, and theory on the use of design resources collaboratively and cross-culturally to yield social justice. We intend the expression making justice together to be read in two ways. First, how can the collaborative processes of designing (making, fabricating, producing, prototyping, speculating, visualizing) integrate concepts of justice (inclusion, equity, diversity, access, freedom, democracy)? Second, how can the social process of justice (in institutions, civic spaces, legal systems, ecosystems, industry) benefit from design knowledge and resources?

Generative Justice in Design

co-edited by Ron Eglash, Ph.D., University of Michigan, USA

Journal: New Design Ideas (Azerbaijan)

Extractive economies, whether capitalist or communist, have similar failures. They extract value from ecological systems in the destruction of nature; from workers in the alienation of labor, and from civic life in the colonization of our social networks. The opposite is a generative economy: one in which value is not extracted, but rather circulated in unalienated form. For all three categories (ecological value, labor value, and social value) generative justice is defined as follows: The universal right to generate unalienated value and directly participate in its benefits; the rights of value generators to create their own conditions of production; and the rights of communities of value generation to nurture self-sustaining paths for its circulation. New opportunities for design in generative justice include agroecology, where forms of organic value circulate from plants to people and back again; commons-based peer production, which ranges from feminist makerspaces to localized currencies; and in platform cooperatives, where worker ownership is creating alternatives for everything from Uber to Facebook. By decolonizing the circular economy, design in generative justice exposes greenwashing and empowers Indigenous, anti-racist and queer theory critiques. How are designers facilitating generative justice, creating new innovations for unalienated value circulation that address grassroots empowerment, egalitarian futures, and ecological collaboration with our nonhuman allies? We seek original papers on this topic to be refereed for free publication in the New Design Ideas

Journal which is indexed in Scopus. Authors should follow the journal’s submission guidelines here and submit papers in APA style to Audrey Bennett (agbennet@umich.edu) and Ron Eglash (eglash@umich.edu)

Papers may take one of the following formats:

  • original articles (5000 words)
  • state-of-the-art reviews (2500 words)
  • short communications (1500 words)

Marginalized Identities in the Design of Aesthetics for Resistance

co-edited by Neeta Verma, University of Notre Dame, USA

Journal: Image & Text (South Africa)

From the Civil Rights era to present-day movements in the West like Me too and Black Lives Matter, it has been proven that organized resistance can make an impact on policy and bring about social change. Whereas historical protests typically have been centralized around leaders–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights movement, Nelson Mandella and the Anti-Apartheid Movement, Mahatma Gandhi and the Quit India Movement through satyagraha (true principle and Ahimsa (non-violence)) for India’s Independence from Britain–today’s protests are more centralized around communication technology and media (e.g., #blacklivesmatter, #metoo, etc…). Movements no longer brand the leaders’ identities, instead they brand and operate around the core principles of the movements. What does it mean today to design for resistance particularly in the wake of the “lynching” of George Floyd by Minneapolis police? What are the affordances and constraints of marginalizing human identities and promoting mantras and slogans in the design of aesthetics for resistance? We seek original papers that address these questions and others to be refereed for publication in Image & Text. We invite original articles (5000 words) for peer review. Authors should follow the journal’s submission guidelines here and submit papers using Harvard Reference style to Audrey Bennett (agbennet@umich.edu) and Neeta Verma (nverma@nd.edu).

Interconnected Apart: Design Research(ers) in the Periphery, in Isolation

co-edited by Dan Wong, designincubation.com and New York City College of Technology, CUNY

Journal: Wicked Solutions Annual (USA, forthcoming)

Social distancing has created unprecedented challenges for underrepresented communities and the designers who work with them. The question is: When proximity and collaboration are constrained, what is the impact? This session will bring together designers who conduct research for and with underrepresented communities that are underserved, economically-disadvantaged, or marginalized. We seek papers that speak to the future of design research for and with communities within the periphery of society in terms of equity and access during this current period of social distancing. We also seek panelists who represent minority groups and can speak on related topics. We are particularly interested in design research and designers that “intersect” two or more underrepresented social and political identities and disciplines of design. We seek original papers on this topic to be refereed for publication in the new Wicked Solutions Research Annual of the CAA Committee on Design and Design Incubation. Papers should take the following format:

  • original articles (2500 words excluding bibliography) as Microsoft Word documents using Chicago Manual of Style, footnotes, and bibliography format for citations. The paper should include 1) Research question / Problem definition, 2) Methodology / Methods of data collection and analysis, 3) Data analysis and findings, 4) Conclusion, and 5) Bibliography. The content of your paper should include a statement of its original contribution to the discipline supported by an appropriate literature review. Please include four to six keywords with your paper.

Submit papers to Audrey Bennett (agbennet@umich.edu) and Dan Wong (dwong@citytech.cuny.edu).

Design Incubation Fellowship 2020

Thursday, June 4 – Saturday June 6, 2020.
A three-day virtual workshop facilitating academic writing and publishing for designers.

The 2020 Design Incubation Fellowship Workshop will include sessions by Maggie Taft, Founding Director of the Haddon Avenue Writing Institute; Jilly Traganou, PhD, Editor of Design and Culture; Louise Baird-Smith, Commissioning Editor – Design and Photography Bloomsbury Visual Arts; Robin Landa, Distinguished Professor, Kean University; and Andrew Shea, author of Designing for Social Change: Strategies for Community-Based Design. Aaris Sherin is director of the Design Incubation Fellowship program.

Fellows 2020

Erin Beckloff
Assistant Professor
Miami University Ohio

Diana Duque
Independent researcher, Writer, Designer
MA Design Studies

Xinyi Li
Assistant Professor
Pratt Institute

Andrea Marks
Professor
Oregon State University

Sarah Martin
Assistant Professor
Indiana University

Kimmie Parker
Assistant Professor
Oakland University

Ali Place
Assistant Professor
University of Arkansas

Sarah Rutherford
Assistant Professor
Cleveland State University

Ruth Schmidt
Associate Professor
Institute of Design
Illinois Institute Technology

Johnathon Strube
Assistant Professor
University of Nebraska Omaha

Augusta Toppins
Associate Professor
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Kelly Walters
Assistant Professor
Parsons School of Design, The New School

Derek Witucki
Lecturer
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Schedule

Day 1
Thursday, June 4, 2020

10:00am–11:00am Introductions + icebreaker
11:00am–12:00am Exercise: What, why and how we write
12:00am–12:20pm Mini Break
12:20pm–1:30pm Presentation: Where writing meets publishing
Aaris Sherin
1:30pm–2:30pm Lunch on your own
2:30pm-6:00pm Workshop: Editing and providing feedback
Maggie Taft

Day 2
Friday June 5, 2020

10:00am–11:00am Live Q&A: Submitting a Book Proposal/Manuscript  
Louise Baird-Smith
Commissioning Editor – Design and Photography Bloomsbury Visual Arts
11:00am–1:30pm Group Exercise: Review and Feedback: Working drafts
1:30pm–2:30pm Lunch and Learn: (optional) Tenure and promotion discussion
2:30pm–3:30pm Presentation: The writing process, feedback and being a creative maker
Andrew Shea
3:30pm–4:30pm Live Q&A: Submitting a Journal Article
Jilly Traganou, PhD
Editors of Design and Culture
4:30pm–4:45pm Mini Break
54:45pm –6:30pm Group Exercise: Review and Feedback: Working drafts

Day 3
Saturday, June 6, 2020

10:00am–11:00am Presentation: A Life in Writing: Contracts, Agents and monetary consideration
Robin Landa
Distinguished Professor
Kean University
Author over twenty books
11:00am–1:30pm Group Exercise: Timelines and next steps
1:30pm–2:30pm Lunch on your own
2:30pm–3:30pm Live Q&A with past DI Fellows
4:00pm–5:00pm Group Exercise: Creating a plan for peer support
5:00pm–6:00pm Sharing Session / Wrap Up

Please note: This schedule is tentative and is subject to change