Welcoming Dr. Leslie Atzmon as Director of Design History and Theory
Starting this January 2026, we welcome Dr. Leslie Atzmon as Director of Design History and Theory. Atzmon has been participating with our team for several months. She is currently on the jury of the 2025 Design Incubation Educators Awards, as well as other initiatives we have under development.
Leslie Atzmon is a designer and design historian who teaches at Eastern Michigan University. She co-edited the collections Encountering Things: Design and Theories of Things (Bloomsbury 2017) and The Graphic Design Reader (Bloomsbury 2019). Atzmon and colleague Ryan Molloy were awarded a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) ArtWorks grant from 2012-2014 to support experimental book design workshops and the creation and production of The Open Book Project book. Atzmon has a new collection, entitled Visual Ecologies of Placemaking, edited with Pamela Stewart (forthcoming Bloomsbury 2026).
Atzmon’s current work mainly investigates the intersections between design and science, with a focus on biodesign. In 2016, Atzmon was a Fulbright fellow at Central Saint Martins UAL, UK doing research on Darwin and design thinking. This led to the essay, “Intelligible Design: The Origin and Visualization of Species,” in the journal Communication Design (2016). In 2019/2020, she curated the exhibition Design and Science, which ran at Eastern Michigan’s University Gallery and The Esther Klein Gallery/Science Center in Philadelphia. She also edited a related collection entitled Design and Science (Bloomsbury 2023). Atzmon is currently working on a biodesign textbook, entitled Biodesign in Context (forthcoming Lived Spaces 2027), with Professor Diana Nicholas of Drexel University.
Presentations and discussion in Research and Scholarship in Communication Design at the 114th Annual CAA Conference 2026
Thursday, February 19, 2026 4:30PM – 6:00PM CST Hilton Chicago – Lower Level Salon C-6
Recent research in Communication Design. Presentations of unique, significant creative work, design education, practice of design, case studies, contemporary practice, new technologies, methods, and design research. A moderated discussion will follow the series of presentations.
Friday, November 14, 2025
11:00AM – 12:30PM EDT
Online (ZOOM)
Recent research in Communication Design. Presentations of unique, significant creative work, design education, practice of design, case studies, contemporary practice, new technologies, methods, and design research. A moderated discussion will follow the series of presentations.
Friday, November 14, 2025 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM EDT Online
Colloquium Attendee Registration
Please register here to attend the upcoming DI colloquium.
Friday, June 20, 2025
11:00AM – 12:30PM EDT
Online (ZOOM)
Recent research in Communication Design. Presentations of unique, significant creative work, design education, practice of design, case studies, contemporary practice, new technologies, methods, and design research. A moderated discussion will follow the series of presentations.
Friday, June 20, 2025 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM EDT Online
Colloquium Attendee Registration
Please register here to attend the upcoming DI colloquium.
The online Academic Abstract Writing Program at Design Incubation offers a series of activities that will help design researchers to craft a written synopsis of their research. The outcome(s) will be a concisely written document typically expected of academic publication venues. This includes conferences, journals, grant applications, publishers, and academic organizations.
The program is designed along two tracks:
The first track is for design faculty who are new to academia and want a program that will help them to navigate the academic publication arena.
The second track is aimed at design faculty who have established their research agenda and activities, and would like to explore ways to broaden their scope of publication opportunities.
Application:
Academic Abstract Writing Workshop Program
This program is designed to facilitate design researchers in the development of their academic research abstract(s) for conferences, grant proposals, journal articles, and other publications.
The program does not guarantee abstract submissions will be accepted by the academic venues. The program is designed to improve your understanding of abstract writing, and the factors involved in developing a successful abstract submission.
Complete all required application information. Submit as much information as possible in the other fields to help us to understand your interests, goals, and challenges.
Seats are limited for this fellowship program. Upon acceptance, there is a $100 (members)/ $150 (non-members) program registration fee.
An Affiliated Society Meeting at the CAA 113th Annual Conference
Affiliated Society Meeting at the CAA 113th Annual Conference, New York City
Friday, February 14, 2025 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM New York Hilton Midtown – 2nd Floor – Murray Hill West
This is a hybrid event. Attendance is free to anyone in person. (No conference fee is required.) To attend virtually, complete the form below to receive details for the virtual login.
Join Design Incubation for a workshop on Writing an Academic Abstract. We will provide examples, recommendations, best practices, and ideas on crafting a written synopsis of your communication design research for submission to conferences, journals, invited lectures, grant and book proposals.
Please complete the form and let us know how we can facilitate your academic abstract writing efforts. This event is suited for junior faculty new to research and publication. It is also an opportunity for senior faculty to discover community and feedback on their scholarly endeavors.
Graduating students may not understand the historical conditions that created their discipline.
Aggie Toppins Associate Professor Washington University in St. Louis
Design history is not a firmly established field in the United States. Scholars Grace Lees-Maffei and Rebecca Houze show how in the UK, by contrast, educational reforms in the 1970s mandated that colleges offer subject-specific contextual studies, creating demand for design historians in studio programs and initiating the field’s growth in Europe. Although many early graphic design historians were American educators, most colleges here offer little design history content. Consequently, graduating students may not understand the historical conditions that created their discipline.
NASAD Data Summaries show that enrollment in communication design programs is eclipsing studio art, yet most design students are required to study art history. The author will argue that as design professions contend with new forms of automated labor, skills in historical thinking—described by Andrews and Burke through the “five Cs” of change over time, context, causality, contingency, and complexity—are as useful as analyzing aesthetic objects. Design conferences and journals have recently spotlighted design history pedagogy, questioning its entanglements with connoisseurship and canonicity, and with capitalism and imperialism. How are these trends making an impact on design history education today?
In this presentation, I share insights from data I collected on 345 US-based undergraduate programs in communication design. The data affirms that the survey course is often the only touchpoint graphic design students have with design history. I aggregated information about these courses from academic bulletins, course catalogs, and program websites, and verified facts with faculty. The data contributes evidence for current practices and patterns of change in course titles and descriptions (which indicate common approaches and themes), textbook choices, and faculty training. The data will serve as a useful resource for educators looking to situate their curriculum in current discourse, and for administrators in positions to advocate for faculty hires and curricular revision.
Presentations and discussion in Research and Scholarship in Communication Design at the 113th Annual CAA Conference 2025
Recent research in Communication Design. Presentations of unique, significant creative work, design education, practice of design, case studies, contemporary practice, new technologies, methods, and design research. A moderated discussion will follow the series of presentations.
Welcoming Cat Normoyle, incoming Director of Peer Reviews, and Camila Afanador Llach as Chair, Director-at-Large
This 2024 academic year has been busy and productive at Design Incubation. We have had many activities this fall, including the Design Educators Awards, currently accepting nominations and entries until December 31, 2024. In October, we had our first fully in-person colloquium since the onset of the pandemic and our largest one to date at Boston University with four sessions and more than 20 research presentations. This year, we celebrate our 10th year with new members and ongoing development. We continue to host the series, Design Your Research Agenda (DYRA), the latest one in November. We will be publishing this episode online shortly.
Starting this September 2024, we welcomed Cat Normoyle, Associate Professor at East Carolina University as the incoming Director of Peer Review. In spring 2025 she will be taking over this role from Camila Afanador-Llach, Associate Professor at Florida Atlantic University, who has held the position since fall 2021.
Normoyle is a designer, writer, and educator whose research and creative activities focus on community engagement, interactive and immersive experiences, and design pedagogy. She has a strong record of contributions to design scholarship and community engagement, evidenced by publications, presentations, and grants. Notably her writing appears in articles and book chapters published by AIGA Dialectic, Design Research Society, AIGA Design Educators Community, Routledge, and others. She is a recent grant recipient of the Engagement Scholarship Consortium for her work on the project, Our Story: The LGBTQ Stories of Eastern North Carolina, which is preparing for a fall 2025 exhibition of work. She is currently working on a book project, “Community-based Practices in Action.” We are excited to welcome her as the new Director of Peer Reviews at DI.
Afanador-Llach has made tremendous contributions to the peer review process at DI over the last 3 years. She has further developed the peer review process, ensuring the double-blind process is objective, anonymous, rigorous, and fair and that it offers the benefits of the peer review to our members by offering feedback to all who have participated in our colloquium submission process.
Afanador-Llach will be staying on as a Chair and Director-at-Large as she segues into other DI initiatives. We would like to thank her for her three years of service as Director of Peer Review and we are excited to be working with her in new capacities.
Afanador-Llach was promoted to tenured Associate Professor at Florida Atlantic University, and is currently researching and writing about the history of graphic design in her home country Colombia. She recently completed a three-year NEH-funded project cataloging and translating metadata, developing an online resource. With her experience with metadata and from her role as DI Director of Peer Review, we hope to further the development of keyword analysis and implementation at DI.
Design scholars and researchers discuss various aspects of their research agendas
Friday, November 8, 2024 1:00pPM Eastern / 12:00PM Central Virtual Event
Designing Your Research Agenda is a panel discussion and open forum for design scholars and researchers to discuss various aspects of their research agendas. We aim to open a dialog regarding multiple challenges of discovering one’s design research inquiry. Designing Your Research Agenda is an ongoing design research event series.
Some of the questions we will discuss with panelists include:
How did you determine your research agenda (high-level timeline of your career/trajectory)
How do you define research and why do you think it matters/for society, the field, and yourself?
How do your department and institution define and support the work you do?
How would you describe/categorize your department and institution?
If you were going to position your work within a category, would you say your research addresses: design theory, design history, design practice, design research (traditional graphic design, speculative design, UXUI, typography, AR, VR, creative computing, design solutions, etc.), design pedagogy, or something else?
What barriers (if any) exist at your institution or in the field for creating and disseminating your research?
Moderators
Jessica Barness Kent State University
Heather Snyder Quinn DePaul University
Biographies
Jason Alejandro is a Puerto Rican graphic designer and Associate Professor of Graphic Design at The College of New Jersey. His academic research explores intersections of cultural identity, design history, and critical pedagogy, with a focus on how these topics shape visual communication. Alejandro is particularly interested in using graphic design to address social and cultural narratives, including underrepresented communities in design education. His work spans writing, publishing, and visual projects, including contributions to both academic and professional design discussions on identity and collaboration in design practice. He is horrified at how well ChatGPT generated this bio, even if it is somewhat generic.
Yoon Soo Lee is a Professor of Art and Design. She has been teaching at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth since 2001, and also at Vermont College of Fine Arts since 2011.
Yoon Soo’s practice moves around three core areas of study: the art of pedagogy, how to work in dialogue cross-discipline, and how to create art and design that is based on self-knowledge. These investigations have led to presentations at the AIGA Educators Conference, UCDA Design Educators Conference, grants from the National Institute of Health, presentations at the Cognitive Science Society and papers such as “Functional Criticism in the Graphic Design Classroom” published in “Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal”.
Yoon Soo studied at Seoul National University where she received her BFA and MFA, and she also studied at Western Michigan University where she received her second MFA in graphic design.
D.J. Trischler is an Assistant Professor of Communication Design for the University of Cincinnati’s Ullman School of Design in the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. He teaches typography, design research methods, and an introduction to design lecture. His research addresses the “dis-placed” sentiments familiar to the contemporary human experience, experimenting with possibilities to use design to “place” people in their surrounding ecologies. Through his research, he aims to increase place attachment, a sense of community and belonging, grow neighborliness and community engagement, and ultimately strengthen quality of life and well-being. D.J.’s work in this niche originated from his graduate thesis research into Neighborhood-Centered Design.
