Tag: design pedagogy

Service-learning: A Natural Fit in Design Education?

M. Genevieve Hitchings
Assistant Professor
Advertising Design & Graphic Arts
New York City College of Technology, CUNY

College level design courses can provide students with opportunities to work effectively in collaboration with actual clients. Such projects, undertaken jointly by faculty, students, and clients, develop student skills not only in design, but also in research, and in communicating with the public. Carefully chosen projects can also be of benefit to society, and offer advantages over work confined to the classroom. Since a large part of what we do in communication design is geared at problem solving for clients, service learning seems a natural fit in design education; and presents students with unique opportunities to work on projects focused on critical social issues. And yet when put into practice ethical dilemma can arise that are not so simple to navigate when teaching a class. This presentation highlights difficulites faculty-contemplating bringing a client into a design class may encounter.

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.