A feminist base motivates us to engage questions around power relations, knowledge production, and systems of violence
Becky Nasadowski Assistant Professor University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
In recent years, many universities have embraced “diversity” with oblique statements of support. Related, design educators have rightfully sought strategies for inclusive pedagogy, increasing representation and working toward ensuring the classroom is comfortable. But inclusive is not synonymous with anti-racist, which requires antagonism and a reckoning with the pervasive inequities baked into our different fields and methods, the university, and our social relationships and histories.
In this presentation, I will provide an overview of my studio-seminar course Politics and Ethics of Design, where a feminist base motivates us to engage questions around power relations, knowledge production, and systems of violence. A substantial reading list frames sustained conversations on the politics of race, class, and gender as it relates to the field of design, creating a critical foundation for design practice. Select topics include data feminism and counter cartography, the designer’s role in constructing notions of citizenship, the limits of empathy in design thinking, and the neoliberal entanglement of work and passion.
By providing an anchor through reading and conversation, I ask design students to consider in their studio practice urgent questions: How do we respond to historical omissions? How do we interface with social movements? How do we act with an awareness of history that complicates liberal concepts of empathy as paramount? If we want students to engage power and sincerely explore what an anti-racist practice and education look like, then we need to fully engage in how design has traditionally played—and continues to play—a role in bolstering social inequity.
The experiential pedagogy of engaging physically with objects through observation and reflection.
Claire Elestwani Assistant Professor Lamar University
Virginia Patterson Assistant Professor California State University Fresno
As design educators work to create equitable learning environments, it is imperative we implement pedagogy which centers lived experience and community knowledge production over privileged experience. Traditional pedagogies of design focus on learning through activity such as projects and critique through dialogic exchange. These methods are celebrated for their inclusive nature, yet socioeconomic stratification often shapes inequities in the design learning environment. These strategies can privilege students who already feel comfortable in academic environments or have had access to extracurricular activities such as internships or design conferences, and reinforce a culture of exclusion within our discipline. In these implicitly elitist systems, students who are new to the studio environment tend to remain unengaged within the community of inquirers that is the classroom.
In this presentation, we will explore Object-Based Learning (OBL) as a pedagogy which decenters privileged experiences and recenters student knowledge and lived experience. Object-Based Learning, the experiential pedagogy of engaging physically with objects through observation and reflection, is prevalent in the disciplines of art history, museum education, and archeology. We will focus on OBL phases of concrete experience, questioning, and communal reflection as methods of design research rooted in learner-constructed meaning and student agency. We will also focus on OBL as an activity that can take place in ordinary built environments with objects encountered in everyday life. Rooted in verbal observation and reflection, OBL can offer an equitable landscape for intellectual risk-taking and surprise, both valuable to the learning and design process.
During our presentation, we will share examples of OBL in the design studio, frameworks for implementing OBL in various studio classes, and the benefits of OBL as a design research method. We will also share qualitative reflections from an OBL activity in a Packaging Design course, and its ability to foster voice and agency.
Presentations and discussion in Research and Scholarship in Communication Design at the 111th Annual CAA Conference 2023
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.
Saturday, February 18, 2023 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM EST
CHAIRS
Camila Afanador-Llach Florida Atlantic University
Heather Snyder Quinn University of Washington at St. Louis
DISCUSSANT
Jessica Barness Kent State University
PRESENTATIONS
Slowing Production, Increasing Socio-Political Context: Beyond “Spreading Awareness” in the Design Classroom Becky Nasadowski Assistant Professor University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Radical Characters: Studying Graphic Design and Typography through Chinese Characters (Hanzi) Mary Y Yang Assistant Professor Boston University
Equitable Design Pedagogy: A Case for Object-Based Learning Claire Elestwani Assistant Professor Lamar University
Virginia Patterson Assistant Professor California State University Fresno
What We Talk About When We Talk About Design: A Diachronic Investigation Into the Word ‘Design’ Nathan Matteson Associate Professor DePaul University
Chicano Independent Publication Masthead Design Joshua Duttweiler Assistant Professor Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
Alexandria Victoria Canchola Assistant Professor Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
Graphic Design and Authority: How the Design of Documents and Signage Creates, Endorses, and Authenticates Power Structures Claire Bula Adjunct Professor Boston University
The Limits of Control: Nonhierarchical Modes of Making, Decentering the Designer Christopher Swift Assistant Professor Binghamton University
Sustainable Design Pedagogy: A Fifteen-Week Case Study of Sustainable and Climate Design Methodology and Outcomes Maria Smith Bohannon Assistant Professor Oakland University
Presentations will be published on the Design Incubation YouTube Channel after October 7, 2022. Virtual Conference will be held online on Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 1pm EST.
An Affiliated Society Meeting at the 110th Annual CAA Conference
Join Design Incubation – Business Meeting on Thursday, March 3, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM at the 110th Annual CAA Conference. Free and open to the public.
Design Incubation Directors Jessica Barness, Liz DeLuna, Camila Afanador-Llach, and Dan Wong will moderate a discussion on the mapping of design research and its development trajectory.
Design Incubation recently launched a new initiative to map current activities in Communication Design Research and Scholarship (R&S). We kicked off this project at the international Design Research Society (DRS) Festival of Emergence 2021, and workshopped a second phase with AIGA DEC November 2021. This map is a collaborative, living, visual document that will further establish historical precedents and future trajectories for Communication Design R&S. Join us as we share progress, generate dialogue, and continue to shape this project.
The essence of a field entails its scope, actions, and outcomes. Communication Design entails conveying ideas using visual words and pictures, or typography and symbology.
Therefore, it is reasonable that all the features of typographic embodiment from reading to interpreting, from social and cultural lenses to physical constraints of lighting and reading distance, from physicality of paper and ink to impression of high resolution led displays, from legibility of letterforms to rhetorical forms of writing, and more, should be well understood by communication designers. The same could be said of all the features of pictures, symbols, and icons, and in addition, all the features of the ways pictures and words combine in layouts across media from print to time-based to interactive media, and in addition to that, all the ways people interact with these features in a multitude of contexts. You get the idea. There is a lot to know about the extent, mechanisms, and impacts of Communication Design.
But because Communication Design is a young discipline we know relatively little about almost all the aforementioned features, at least we ‘know’ little with the degree of precision or rigor that characterizes so many other disciplines. Because adolescent Communication Design knowledge has a wealth of unanswered questions and a broad expanse of topics needing investigation, to advance, Communication Design needs sustained research programs that focus on the key features of the discipline.
Visible Language seeks to promote Communication Design research by exposing both what has been studied in-depth and what needs to be studied in-depth.
This is a call for papers for the Summer 2022 issue of Visible Language that report on one of two related things: either a paper describing a series of related research studies spanning several years centered around a single topic – in other words a sustained research program, or a paper reporting research into what communication design topics are important enough that they should be researched for a sustained period – in other words, key topics that should have sustained research.
Articles reporting sustained Communication Design research programs may be much different from article proposals reporting topics that need study. The report of a sustained research program will be retrospective and will cover not one study but where, how, what, and why a series of related studies have been conducted and may feature the role of collaboration, funding sources, and the nature of a rich topic worthy of sustained study.
Articles describing Communication Design topics that merit sustained research should likewise be based on systematic study but will be prospective in nature, using some form of gathered and analyzed evidence to support why a particular topic merits sustained investigation including the topic’s definition and known parameters.
Article proposals should be in the form of a one-sentence summary of the article followed by an outline of the manuscript argument in the general form:
Introduction/Background – where this is grounded, why the subject is/was important;
Methods – how this has been/might be studied;
Results – what was/might be found; Discussion – why what was/would be found matters.
Submit article proposals to: Mike Zender, Editor, Visible Language mike.zender@uc.edu
Article proposals due by Feb, 28, 2022.
Notification of acceptance of article concept by Mar 15th, 2022. *acceptance of concept means the manuscript will be sent for peer-review, only articles accepted by the peer-reviewers will be publish.
Manuscripts due for peer-review on May 15th, 2022.
Peer-reviews to authors: Jun 1st, 2022.
Revised manuscripts due Jun 15th, 2022 publication – August 2022.
AIGA DEC edition with Design Incubation Chairs Jessica Barness, Liz DeLuna, Heather Snyder Quinn, and Dan Wong. Design Incubation recently launched a new initiative to map current activities in Communication Design Research and Scholarship (R&S). We kicked off this project at the international Design Research Society Festival of Emergence last month, and for this second phase, we are bringing it to the AIGA DEC. This map is a collaborative, living, visual document that will further establish historical precedents and future trajectories for Communication Design R&S. Join us as we share progress, generate dialogue, and continue to shape this project.
The notion of decolonizing type is massive in scope: from its history, to its design, application, technology, and future.
Laura Rossi García Professional Lecturer DePaul University
This research examines the history, practice, and pedagogy of typography. Typography is at the core of design—both implicit and explicit in its role in shaping language, culture, and power structures—but it is mired in “racial homogeneity and dominated by white men.”1 The selection, use, and application of typography—from style to legibility—can uphold or disrupt dynamics of power: who can read it, who uses it, who made it, whose voice does it carry—human, machine, the included or the excluded. While there is great movement to decolonize design, less is happening specific to decolonizing typography, or decolonizing type pedagogy. “Letterforms are loaded cultural objects” 2 —a container for language— and an “extension of the spiritual, social, political, and historic mind-set of nations”.3
The very notion of decolonizing type is massive in scope: from its history, to its design, application, technology, and future. How do we broaden and re-frame the structures and systems that exist in order to make room for oppressed and marginalized voices and make inclusive the societies in which we live? This presentation will introduce a series of case studies that serve as examples for how to reconsider the very root of thought around type systems and their effects and influence on our students, the field of design, and ultimately our products, systems, and societies.
1. Munro, Silas. “Typography as a Radical Act in an Industry Ever-dominate by White Men,” AIGA Eye on Design, August 26, 2019. Accessed: December 15, 2020. URL: https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/tre-seals-is-turning-typography-into-a-radical-act/ 2. Munro, Silas. Ib, id. 3. Shehab, Bahia and Haytham Nawar. “Early Arabic Printing” in A History of Arab Graphic Design. American University in Cairo Press: 2020. pp. 29-41.
Saturday, October 23, 2021
Time: 1:00pm–2:00pm
Online ZOOM event
Hosted by Christine Lhowe, Assistant Professor and Christine Krus, Professor of Art & Design, College of Communication and the Arts, Seton Hall University.
Presentations will be published on the Design Incubation YouTube Channel after October 5, 2021. Virtual Conference will be held online on Saturday, October 23, 2021 at 1pm EST.
Friday, October 29, 2021
4PM EST
Online ZOOM Event
Designing Your Research Agenda is an 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 discovering one’s design research inquiry. Design Incubation will also be discussing some of their ongoing work with the mission and focus of supporting design research. Designing Your Research Agenda is an ongoing design research event series.
Some of the questions we will discuss with panelists
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, yourself?
How do your department and institution define and support the work you do?
How would you describe/categorize your department and institution?
How do you position your research: design theory, design history, design practice, design research (traditional graphic design, speculative design, UX/UI, 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 and Heather Snyder Quinn
PANELISTS
Tasheka Arceneaux-Sutton Associate Professor of Graphic Design North Carolina State University and Faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts
Tasheka Arceneaux-Sutton is an Associate Professor of Graphic Design at North Carolina State University. She has taught graphic design at Southeastern Louisiana University and Typography at Loyola Marymount University. She is also a faculty in the low-residency MFA program in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts. In addition, Arceneaux is the principal at Blacvoice Design, a studio specializing in branding, electronic media, identity, illustration, print, and publication design for educational institutions, non-profit organizations, and small businesses. Arceneaux’s research focuses on discovering Black people omitted from the graphic design history canon. Recently, her research is focused on Black women who have made significant contributions to the graphic design profession. She is also interested in the visual representation of Black people in the media and popular culture, primarily through the lens of stereotypes.
Liat Berdugo Associate Professor of Art and Architecture University of San Francisco
Liat Berdugo is an artist and writer whose work investigates embodiment, labor, and militarization in relation to capitalism, technological utopianism, and the Middle East. Her work has been exhibited and screened at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), MoMA PS1 (New York), Transmediale (Berlin), V2_Lab for the Unstable Media (Rotterdam), and The Wrong Biennale (online), among others. Her writing appears in Rhizome, Temporary Art Review, Real Life, Places, and The Institute for Network Cultures, among others, and her latest book is The Weaponized Camera in the Middle East (Bloomsbury/I.B.Tauris, 2021). She is one half of the art collective, Anxious to Make, and is the co-founder of the Living Room Light Exchange, a monthly new media art series. Berdugo received an MFA from RISD and a BA from Brown University. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art + Architecture at the University of San Francisco. Berdugo lives and works in Oakland, CA. More at www.liatberdugo.com
Caspar Lam Assistant Professor Director of the BFA Communication Design Program Parsons School of Design
Caspar Lam is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the BFA Communication Design Program at Parsons. He is also a partner at Synoptic Office, an award-winning design consultancy working globally with leading cultural, civic, and business organizations. His research and practice explore the systematic relationships among graphic design, data, language, and their influence on visual culture. Caspar holds an MFA from Yale and degrees in biology and design from the University of Texas at Austin. He formerly led design and digital strategy at Artstor, a Mellon-funded non-profit developing digital products related to metadata and publishing for institutions like Harvard and Cornell. Adobe, AIGA, and the ID Annual Design Review have recognized his work. He has been a visiting critic at the Hong Kong Design Institute and served as an Adjunct Associate Research Scholar at Columbia University ́s GSAPP. He sits on the board of directors of AIGA NY.
