Design Incubation Colloquium 5.2: CAA 2019 Conference New York

Presentations and discussion in Research and Scholarship in Communication Design at the 107th Annual CAA Conference 2019 in NYC.

Hosted by CAA Affiliated Society, Design Incubation.

Research in Communication Design. Presentation 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.

Design Incubation Colloquium 5.2: CAA 2019 New York City
Thursday, February 14, 2019

10:30am–12:00pm
New York Hilton Midtown, Second Floor Regent

Abstract submission deadline: August 6, 2018.
Submit abstracts online at Colloquium Abstract Submissions.

The colloquium session is open to all conference attendees.

Co-Moderators

Liz DeLuna
Associate Professor 
Graphic Design
St John’s University

Robin Landa
Distinguished Professor
Michael Graves College 
Kean University

Presentations

10 Case Studies in Eco-Activist Design
Kelly Salchow MacArthur
Associate Professor
Michigan State University

Art, Interaction and Narrative in Virtual Reality
Slavica Ceperkovic
Professor
Seneca College

Form, Focus and Impact: Pedagogy of a 21St-Century Design Portfolio
Peter Lusch
Professor of Practice
Lehigh University, Bethlehem PA

Pitch & Roll: Exploring Low-Risk Entrepreneurship for Student Designers
Jennifer Kowalski
Professor of Instruction
Graphic Arts & Interactive Design
Temple University Tyler School of Art

Questioning the Canon: Discussing Diversity and Inclusion in the Classroom
Sherry Freyermuth
Assistant Professor
Lamar University

Design Activism & Impact: How Can Principles of Social Impact Assessment Improve Outcomes of Socially Conscious Design Efforts in Graphic Design Curriculum?
Cat Normoyle
Assistant Professor
East Carolina University

Cultural Competence for Designers
Colette Gaiter
Professor
University of Delaware

Exploring Narrative Inquiry as a Design Research Method
Anne Berry
Assistant Professor
Cleveland State University

State of Flux
Natacha Poggio
Assistant Professor
University of Houston Downtown

The Fellowship Program at Design Incubation

Call for Participation: 3-day academic design research and writing workshop. Application deadline, September 1, 2018

Application deadline: Sept 1, 2018
Fellowship dates: January 10-12, 2019
Location: St. John’s University, Manhattan Campus, 51 Astor Place, New York, NY 10003

Target Audience: Design academics in one or more of the following areas: graphic design, information design, branding, marketing, advertising, typography, web, interaction, film and video, animation, illustration, game design. Full-time tenure track or tenured faculty are given preference but any academic may apply. Applicants who are tenure track or tenured faculty are given first priority but other faculty or independent researchers may apply.

Format: All Fellows accepted into the program participate in the Fellowship Workshop as part of the overall experience. The Fellowship workshops offers participants the opportunity to share and develop ideas for research and individual writing projects while receiving constructive feedback from faculty mentors and peers in their field.

Fellows arrive with a draft of their writing and work on this specific project throughout the various sessions of the Fellowship Workshop. Each meeting includes a number of short informational sessions and a session devoted to analyzing and editing written work. The remainder of the 3-day workshop will be focused on activities which allow participants to share their projects with peers and receive structured feedback. Between sessions, Fellows will have time to execute revisions, review others participants work, and engage in discussions. Initiation of and work on collaborative projects is encouraged.

For more further details visit:
The Fellowship Program at Design Incubation

To apply visit the application details and online form:
Fellowship Program format and online application process

For Frequently Asked Questions visit the FAQ page:
Fellowship Program frequently asked questions

María Rogal Will Chair the 2018 Communication Design Educators Awards

Design Incubation’s Communication Design Educators Awards program was established to recognize and showcase faculty accomplishments through peer review. This competition reflects the organization’s mission to foster professional development and discourse within the academic design community. Since 2016, applicants from around the world have entered this awards competition recognizing design excellence and ingenuity in the academic study of communication design, with categories in published research, creative work, teaching, and service. The award processes and procedures are rigorous, transparent, objective and professional. Each year, entries are reviewed and ranked by an independent, renown jury of design educators and researchers across a broad range of design expertise and scholarly accomplishment within the discipline.

After envisioning the academic design awards and chairing the jury, University of Minnesota graphic design professor Steven McCarthy is passing along the role of Chair. We value his continued support and involvement in the program. Design Incubation offers their gratitude for his leadership in the launch of this important effort.

We are excited to announce María Rogal, Professor of Graphic Design in the school of Art + Art History at the University of Florida will chair the 2018 jury. She has had the distinction of being a juror of the awards since its inception. McCarthy writes, “Rogal brings vast experience, great powers of empathy, and astute judgment to the task. Rogal’s disciplinary connections and intellectual network will undoubtedly offer the jury some fresh input as the competition enters its third year.”

Rogal offers McCarthy her greatest respect and appreciation of his leadership over many years, particularly in having recognized the need for professional development and creating a program to support it. Rogal writes, “the diverse submissions I reviewed over the past two years were rewarding and inspiring. But this process also highlighted how important these awards and the application process can be for communication design educators. Through the application and peer review process itself, we also support professional development.”

We thank Bloomsbury Publishing, the sponsor of these awards. The 2018 awards program will follow the same timeline as previous years, with entries due May 31, 2018. An overview of the awards program is on our website. Look for more information on the program in the coming months.

DI-AwardsPressRelease2017

White Plains Storefront Project: Art In Vacant Spaces

Teaching Award Runner-up

Warren Lehrer
Professor
School of Art+Design, Purchase College, SUNY
Founding Faculty Member, SVA (School of Visual Arts) Designer as Author Graduate Program”

For two years in a row, the White Plains BID (Business Improvement District) asked me and my Community Design class at Purchase College, SUNY to “improve the visual appearance of vacant storefronts in downtown White Plains and thereby enhance the ambiance and pedestrian experience in the downtown business district.”

Community Design is a senior level graphic design class that serves the campus and non-profit communities while providing students with “real” projects that interrogate ideas of community, civic engagement, and an expanded role of the designer. The class functions as a design studio that works on multiple projects of different kinds, scales and media with a variety of clients/collaborators. In the fall of 2015, the Storefront project was one of 11 projects. In 2016, it was one of 6.

In year one of the Storefront project, the students and I reframed “the brief” to go beyond “aesthetic enhancement” of the vacant storefronts, by creating works of visual poetry that reflect the conditions of downtown White Plains and the people who inhabit it. As the class had ten other projects on its plate that semester, and the course is not a writing course (I also teach a elective writing course for designers), we brought in Judith Sloan to write poetry for the project. (Judith is my partner in EarSay, a non-profit arts organization dedicated to uncovering and portraying stories of the uncelebrated.) After researching White Plains and interviewing residents, commuters, historians and city officials, Judith wrote five poems that left room for visual interpretation by students.

Each student in the Storefront team did their own primary and secondary research on nearby White Plains and selected a poem or poems they were interested in. From the 20% commercial vacancy stock, students picked storefronts they thought most suitable for their selected poem(s) and began visualizing them within the frame of the storefront using typography as well as shape, color, texture, image, sequence, metaphor. The student’s interpretive “performance” of a text into a space was influenced by the store’s configuration, number of windows, and proximity to other landmarks (train station, bookstore, other vacant spaces, etc). Invariably, the design student’s re-composition of the poem necessitated consultation with the poet, sometimes culminating in collaborative re-writes. This fluid collaboration/negotiation between designer and writer, the whole creative team and the BID/property owners, and with materials and vendors—helped catapult the project beyond a normal class assignment or traditional designer/client relationship. The resulting transformation of a blighted area into an activated public space fusing poetry and art was an enlarging and successful experience for everyone involved. The windows stimulated conversation, enchantment and change in the community. Half the stores utilized in year one have since rented, the commercial vacancy rate is down to 17%, and the White Plains BID approached me to do the project again—with an expanded budget—for a second and now third year. In year two of the project, we expanded the media beyond printed vinyls and lenticulars, to include laser cutting, digital monitors and projections.

LehrerWhite Plains Storefront Project

Warren Lehrer is a designer, writer, and educator known as a pioneer of visual literature and design authorship. Awards include: Center for Book Arts Honoree, the Brendan Gill Prize, the Innovative Use of Archives Award, three AIGA Book Awards, a Media That Matters Award. Grants/fellowships include: NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, Rockefeller, Ford, Greenwall Foundations. Collections include: MoMA, the Getty Museum, Georges Pompidou Centre, Tate Gallery. With Judith Sloan, Lehrer co-founded EarSay, an arts organization dedicated to portraying lives of the uncelebrated. Lehrer is also a playwright, performer, and frequent lecturer and keynote speaker. He is a full professor at Purchase College, SUNY, and a founding faculty member of the Designer as Author grad program at SVA. His recent illuminated novel, A LIFE IN BOOKS, has received nine awards, including the International Book Award for Best New Fiction, the IPPY Outstanding Book of the Year Award, and a Print Magazine Design Award.

Recipient of recognition in the Design Incubation Communication Design Awards 2017.

Rethinking the Capstone in a Graphic Design BFA Program

Regina Gardner Milan
Lecturer
Department of Art & Design
University of Massachusetts Lowell

Evolving the BFA capstone project to develop professional competencies for emerging designers.

Encouraging students to develop projects that address their competencies and those that they need to develop. A year-long course sequence encouraging extensive creative exploration while working within developed constraints that are specific to each student. These constraints are developed through a reflective process of research and critical analysis of their skill sets and portfolio. They then apply these skills and making to a defined set of projects.

Projects are developed across complex design systems encouraging personal design thinking and and challenging student’s skillsets. Projects include both analog and digital solutions including app design, web design, interactive installations and motion graphics.  Faculty encourage growth mind-set and conceptual development of projects that help define a student’s aesthetic and aspirations for their post-college practice.

Developed two years ago, this new capstone has proven successful in encouraging critical design thinking, content development, and putting students in the strongest possible position for entering their professional design practice. Students graduate with a strong social media presence, robust resumes and expanded portfolios.

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

Reconstructing a BA Graphic Design Program: Scalpel or Sledgehammer?

Nancy Wynn
Associate Professor
Merrimack College

In the fall of 2015, as the new faculty member at Merrimack College, I was thrust into this position. A cold dose of reality hit—my senior students’ work was, sadly, a mess. It was clear the design program needed to be rebuilt and renamed. Acting fast became necessary, because moving slowly would continue the problem. Both scalpel and sledgehammer were required (along with lots of coffee) delivering a newly redesigned BA Graphic Design program for approval and implementation by fall 2016. The program bridged both design thinking and making with the skill set of a Liberal Arts education.

The analysis started with the NASAD/AIGA analytical and consultative briefing papers. They were a good starting point, but they did not answer the question of how to build an expanded BA model responsibly? How elastic is the BA model? What beneficial Liberal Arts skills could be integrated into a graphic design student’s education? How could avenues be created for various types of students to be successful? And, where and how should professional engagement enter into the program?

This story begins by sharing methods for responsibly creating a “hybrid” BA model, keeping students’ best interests in mind, and honoring the industry’s professional standards. Topics to be shared include evaluating existing majors and minors; partnering with other majors and departments; which courses to keep vs. which should be thrown out; setting sizable goals for a 4-year BA graphic design program; ideas on future learning spaces and technology; and, understanding what is valuable in a 21st century graphic design education as the industry continues to evolve.

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

Zika and Public Health Guidelines: Prototyping Models for Different Personas

Courtney Marchese
Assistant Professor of Interactive Media + Design
School of Communications
Quinnipiac University

: In graphic design, models are material prototypes that help synthesize research into testable forms. Through experimentation and testing, many rounds of revisions are made to culminate in a visual that can effectively speak to its audience. In an age of infinite information, data visualization, particularly in global health, is a critical arena for accurate and useful visual modeling. For example, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has Zika Pregnancy Guidelines in the form of a flowchart (Figure A). While it is certainly a necessary model to share with the general public, it is often cumbersome and difficult to understand. Riddled with professional medical terminology, footnotes, and companion charts, the model fails to serve as an accessible form to the information most needed by its audience. In examining the CDC’s guidelines, it is unclear whether they intend to communicate with health professionals or women potentially infected with zika. Rather than using a “one size fits all” approach to the chart, I propose modeling different forms that the information can take as viewed through the lens of different people in different environments and scenarios. Each prototype will take on a persona and emphasize the most important information to a specific audience explaining what to do before, during, and after exposure to zika virus. As such, each persona also serves as a model of sorts to represent an audience segment. By prototyping multiple forms, my goal is to make critical health information engaging and clear to those who need it most. Additionally, these prototypes can serve as a model for other issues within public health communication.

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

Reading Design: An Introduction to Critical Theory

Dave Peacock
Associate Creative Director, LiveAreaLabs
Faculty, Vermont College of Fine Arts

What is theory? How does theory relate to graphic design? In short, theories are frameworks for understanding and making sense of the world. Further, they allow us to ask specific kinds of questions and follow particular lines of reasoning. For designers, theory is a means to move beyond purely aesthetic concerns and address issues such as power, representation, and commodity culture.

This presentation will highlight a handful of theories that have influenced literature, art history and, more recently, design discourse over the last few decades. Examples from art, popular culture and graphic design will help facilitate an introductory understanding of several important ideas, including Marxism, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism and Feminism. Designers and educators will also gain insight into how to incorporate theory into their writing, research and design work.

Dave Peacock is a designer and educator based in Seattle, Washington. He is an Associate Creative Director at LiveArea (livearealabs.com), a creative, marketing and technology agency with a focus on interaction design and digital retail. Dave also serves as co-chair and faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts, where he teaches in the Graphic Design MFA program. Dave has exhibited nationally and internationally, and his work has been recognized by Type Directors Club, Communication Arts, Graphic Design USA, AIGA, The ADDY Awards, Print Magazine, How Magazine, The Northwest Emmy Awards and The Seattle Show. A Colorado native, Dave holds an MFA in Visual Communication Design from the University of Washington and a BFA from the University of Utah.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 4.1: San Jose State on Saturday, Sept 30, 2017.

Multi-modal Interface Design: Communicating Design Through Presentation and Review

Peter Lusch
Assistant Professor of Graphic Design
College of Arts and Architecture
Penn State

Danielle Oprean
Post-Doctoral Research Scholar
Stuckeman Center for Design Computing
Penn State

Multi-modal visualization has long been considered important for design communication through representation and presentation, yet it has not been explored through an interface. In this presentation we discuss the outline for our test of use of a new interface designed to provide a multi-modal experience of design representations through the presentation and review processes. This interface is being developed for use in an immersive environments lab, a unique presentation space that allows for large-screen display and virtual reality. Before implementing a new interface, testing needs to be done to identify issues and perceptions of how well it works. We aim to test the feasibility of using a multi-modal interface with advanced-level undergraduate students in the design disciplines (architecture, landscape architecture, and graphic design) as a way for them to communicate design through presentation and review. In this presentation we talk about how usability testing allows for the results of actual use of an interface to feed back into improving the overall design. Specifically, we will provide an overview of our application of usability testing in design disciplines to address our hypothesis that being able to view different modalities of design representation at one time is more meaningful to communicate design both during presentation and in the review process. Success of the meaningfulness of the interface will be explored through the TAM model (Davis 1992) of usefulness, ease of use, and behavioral intention. We will also present the primary end point goals for this study, including our human factors study, and our self-report measurement of actual use of the multi-modal interface through questionnaires measuring usefulness, ease of use, and behavioral intention.

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

Type Thursday Interview With Liz Deluna and Mark Zurolo

Read the interview with Thomas Jockin of Type Thursday, Liz Deluna and Mark Zurolo.

View at Medium.com