Tag: branding

Why Design Educators Should Embrace Collaborative (Group) Work in the Design Classroom 

Students apply for a specific role that was provided with a list of job responsibilities

Abby Guido
Assistant Professor
Tyler School of Art and Architecture

While the design industry has shifted from the individual designer creating work in a silo to a more collaborative approach, relying on both diversity of thought and expertise, design education is falling behind, where the focus is often on the individual and the iterative process of incorporating feedback, design students are missing a key component to becoming a successful designer today: learning how to be strong team members, how to generate diverse ideas, how to be thoughtful leaders, among other soft skills. As the design industry continues to embrace collaboration, design educators should explore how to better expose students to group design work in their curriculum. 

In the past, I have assigned group projects that allowed the students to select their roles and responsibilities with their teammates. While this has sometimes worked, more often it did not and I found myself spending most of my time helping the team push through personal issues, rather than focusing on the work itself. In response, I changed my approach in a course during the spring of 2020 called, “Event Design.” I had my students apply for a specific role that was provided with a list of job responsibilities, on a specific project team for a given event we would be designing for. This approach was much more successful, the students embraced their roles, created beautiful work, and were able to seamlessly pivot when our project and course had to majorly adjust due to the coronavirus and the cancelation of the in-person events we were designing for. 

The students in this course shared that their experience collaborating allowed them to learn new skills they had not considered needing to know. I witnessed a huge change in all of the students, and an opportunity to help better prepare our students for their careers. 

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 7.1: Oakland University, MI on October 17, 2020.

Teaching Design Team Collaboration Through Group Projects

Two case studies will be shown that demonstrate embedding best practices for team collaboration in the classroom.

Christine Lhowe
Assistant Professor
Seton Hall University

At the introduction of group projects in my undergraduate graphic design courses, students in various levels of their education often ask if they will be able to present the project in their portfolio to potential employers. Being that it was conceptualized as a team and multiple designers participated in the outcome, they express concern in presenting work that doesn’t exclusively belong to them. However, the design profession is largely collaborative and creatives often work on projects in teams. This presentation will showcase how I’ve utilized group projects to foster understanding of the collaborative nature of the design industry to intermediate and advanced graphic design students in a liberal arts University. 

I have embedded two learning outcomes within the course material. The first is team conceptualization. Creative teams commonly work together in developing original concepts in brainstorming sessions. The purpose of the sessions are to collectively generate ideas where value is placed in working together.Ownership of a concept may become ambiguous as some may be merged together or built on by team members. The second is entering a creative project post conceptualization. Designers are often asked to develop new creative assets while upholding an existing aesthetic for a brand, which raises the question, “was this my idea?”

Two case studies will be shown that demonstrate embedding best practices for team collaboration in the classroom. In the first, students worked together in an advanced Brand Evolution course to develop and maintain a brand across multiple digital and physical touch points. Secondly, in an intermediate Web Design course, students implemented a design system to collectively create the user interface of a large scale website. 

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 6.3: Fordham University on May 16, 2019.

Teaching Inclusive Design: Design with Everyone in Mind

Ziddi Msangi
Associate Professor
Graphic Design
UMass Dartmouth

The World Health Organization defines disability as “a contextual variable”. One is more or less disabled by their interaction with a physical environment, social environment, or institutional environment. Inclusive Design aims to “reduce the experience of disability and enhance everyone’s experience and performance.

Universal design standards were developed to guide Designers in addressing disabling environments. The goal is to create accessible spaces for people with functional limitations.

Graphic design educators can integrate these principles in the design studio, providing a generation of students with the tools to improve the quality of life for all citizens.

“A User Expert is a person who has developed expertise by means of their lived experience in dealing with the challenges of the environment. due to a physical, sensory, and/or cognitive functional limitation. User/Experts include, older people with changing vision or stamina, people of short stature, limited grasp, or who use wheelchairs.”-Institute for Human Centered Design

In this model, we move beyond personas, as a way of identifying a users needs when developing a brand. User experts with functional limitations share their lived experience with students. The insight students gain from a User Expert helps guide the design process.

This presentation will share the visual outcome of junior level branding and identity projects, and the impact on student understanding. Over the course of the semester, students were in conversation with four User Experts who helped guide the development of the projects.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 4.0: SUNY New Paltz on September 9, 2017.

Reveal, Empower, Propel: Design Education for a Tenacious Community

Herb Vincent Peterson
Associate Professor of Design: Coordinator of Graphic Design
Co-Founder of Marion Design Co.
Division of Art + Design
Indiana Wesleyan University

Wendy Puffer
Assistant Professor: Coordinator of Design for Social Impact
Co-Founder of Marion Design Co.
Division of Art + Design
Indiana Wesleyan University

No larger than 30,000 people and deeply bruised by a downtrodden economy rooted in racial tensions, the rustbelt town of Marion, Indiana begs to become triumphant once again. A community previously slated to become the thriving metropolis of the Mid-West, now promotes a residue of the past with blighted storefronts, broken homes, and vast and vacant warehouses. Here lies the real crossroads of America. Never before has there been such a need to see Design as a mechanism to reveal a true identity within a community and empower its people to propel forward into a new chapter of vibrant life.

How can design empower radical change? How can students learning design employ empathy to develop relational design practices and drive trust in a community plagued by deep trauma? What is the responsibility of University design programs connected to rust-belt and blighted American towns?

This is the story about a social design studio and the subsequent movements that change how we consider community activism and design education. The studio of faculty and undergraduates face wicked problems head on while gaining experience conducting ethnographic research with community members. The environment of unbridled growth of ideas, reflective of the academic model of the middle ages, encourages individuality and freedom of thought. Through an immersive experience where students learn to become design leaders, the social design studio of Marion Design Co. utilizes design thinking strategies engaging community toward authentic relationships, bringing much needed hope and innovation.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 3.3: Kent State University on Saturday, March 11, 2017.

Graphic Design in the Zone: Peak Performance in Picturing Sport

Jen Roos
Assistant Professor of Graphic Design
Computer Arts + Design
Mercy College
Founder and Principal
8 Point Studio

While much has been written about the significance of sport and graphic design in culture, there exists a gap in research examining their intersection. The cultural impact of sport and graphic design has increased and so has the importance of this growing body of design. The history of graphic design for sport reveals important cultural attitudes toward human movement, and contemporary design in this category depicts our shifting attitudes in the face of significant societal change. Contemporary designs for sport display an increasingly sophisticated and groundbreaking visual language for the poetics of movement through space. This modern translation of the experience of “flow”, or “being in the zone”, provides a heightened and visceral sense of great feats of modern physical prowess — albeit at a remove. Our current outsourcing of movement to visual and virtual realms and idolization of the promise of technology threaten to imperil our actual experience of physical movement and health on a global scale.

Individuals experience the seduction of motion more than ever by virtue of the rapidly evolving digital world and expanding global presence of sport. At the same time, health research indicates that we as a society are becoming dangerously sedentary. Given that we are increasingly detached from physical movement and real-life athletic experiences, we naturally seek visuals that represent the glories of the pinnacle of motion. We now need to ask if design and sport can work together to encourage — not just lionize — movement. Global entities such as Nike have begun to experiment with ways graphic design might inspire physical movement, an important mission that could have larger, positive implications for the role that graphic design can play in improving our future health across the world.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 2.0: The City College of New York, CUNY on Wednesday, June 3, 2015.

Design for Dystopia

Amelia Marzec
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Queens College
Hunter College

Imagine a future where the American dollar is worthless. To re-build the economy, citizens must use the only resource available: decades of postconsumer waste. With no way to afford expensive international electronics, but with a deep human desire to connect, they sift through products that have been subject to planned obsolescence for the possibility of working parts. The goal is to build a new communications infrastructure that is community-controlled and far from the prying eyes of any government.

In the global economy, we have enjoyed more connectedness than ever before; but have paid a price in privacy and autonomy. Governments can and will suppress communication, as we have seen during Arab Spring and the Hong Kong protests. Centralized internet and phone systems are not able to survive natural disasters, as we’ve seen during the Tohoku Earthquake and Hurricane Sandy. If roads are closed, gas is rationed and the internet is down, it is impossible to order any supplies. It is time to remove the mystique surrounding the production of telecommunications systems. We must learn to use what is at hand to be prepared for disruptions.

Design for Dystopia traces several projects from concept to outcome: a project that allows people to send messages offline using their mobile phones, bypassing their cell phone provider; a project that re-envisions the structure of electronics manufacturing in America; and thoughts on furthering the design of a more democratic communications infrastructure, using native materials. We need to consider that the devices and methods with which we are dependent on to communicate and receive our content are also political, and we need to address what is actually necessary for basic communication.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 1.5: Rhode Island School of Design on Saturday, March 7, 2015.

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.