The poster has been an archetypal graphic design format since the late 19th century when lithographic printing technology came of age and captured the imagination of artists, bringing their vision into Paris streets. This course will invite you to explore future possibilities and contexts for the poster-as paper and as screen-building on its singular capacity to transform ideas into iconic picture planes; and examining the dynamics of typography and image, both still and in motion. Prompts will progress from individual posters, to sequences, to site-specific installations that explore the potential for interactive discourse in public space. Studio assignments will be supported with presentations and readings about poster history and contemporary poster design.

Open to Junior, Senior or Graduate Graphic Design Students.

Elective

This is a course about design and motion, filtered through the lens of real-world, graphic design applications. From film titles to animated gifs, design installations to handheld applications, motion is an important consideration in 21st century graphic design. This course combines disciplines of graphic design, animation, storytelling and sound design. Through a series of in-studio and multi-week assignments, students will create animated projects that include real-world assignments as well as experimental exercises. Short weekly lectures will discuss historic and current works of influential Motion Designers, Animators and Directors. Adobe After Effects will be the primary production tool for this class. Through the sequence of assignments, students will become fluent with the software.

Open to Junior, Senior or Graduate Graphic Design Students.

Elective

How do designers respond, think about and make for equitable futures? How much do we need to scrap or throw under the proverbial bus (ourselves included)? Unmaking studio is a space that explores possibilities through collaborative experimentation and reflection on how we can design in pluralistic ways. We will intentionally break habits, structures, tools, methods, and models of thought that have become canonized as the way to make Graphic Design. Along the way, we will experiment, at times in collaboration, with a series of prompts that explore analog and digital outcomes — forms, images, stories, languages, publications, the unknown, the emergent — thinking about the stories our work tells about ourselves (our lineages, our choices, and our values), our communities, and how all of this has the potential to radically and joyfully shift how we engage as human beings.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00

Open to Junior, Senior or Graduate Graphic Design Students.

Elective

This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of motion graphics, as well as the implementation of video, and sound design. Students will learn a variety of motion graphics software, such as Adobe After Effects and Premier, as well as studio tools like Ableton Live, and/or other audio-visual programs. Students will learn how to capture, manipulate, mix and optimize audio visual material for final production and implementation. Through a series of in-class and multi-week assignments, students will create animated projects that include motion design real-world assignments, as well as experimental exercises, with the goal of exploring intersections between graphic design, story telling, visual composition, and the realms of rhythm and sound. Adobe After Effects will be the primary production tool for this class. Each student will propose a long term project, this project will be developed throughout the semester and presented as the final project for the class. In addition to our software tutorials, there will be a series of short weekly lectures to review specific histories, and also current practitioners who are using motion graphics and sound to create works in the worlds of design, fine art, and performance.

Open to Senior or Graduate Graphic Design Students only. Please contact the instructor to be added to the waitlist.

Elective

As our interfaces expand beyond their familiar boundaries, what new conceptual and expressive opportunities will emerge for written communication? Visions for “extended realities” are too often defined and constrained by big tech, with typography relegated to “clean” interfaces and chat boxes. This hands-on studio course imagines alternatives by exploring the affordances (and unruly glitches) of digital type beyond the rectangle. Combining interaction, motion, and experimental typography, we will play with type in emerging media contexts, from the cutting edge of variable web fonts to augmented and virtual realities. Over the course of workshops and larger projects, we will draw on diverse sources—including sci-fi, avant garde art and design histories, and critical texts—to develop strategies for merging type, tech, and language in new ways. Basic familiarity with HTML and CSS is recommended, but not required.

Open to Junior, Senior or Graduate Graphic Design Students.

Elective

Building on a collection of texts at the intersection of language, identity, and societal conditioning, this course examines the extent to which typography can engage in world building and the production and dissemination of proposals for alternative systems. Through a series of parallel assignments including reading, writing, and making, we will individually and collectively explore different strategies and mediums through which we can activate a multitude of voices and approaches that comprise our complex world of many worlds.

Open to Junior, Senior or Graduate Graphic Design Students.

Elective

In this Graphic Design studio, students will learn the building blocks of book construction. In addition to handwork and bindery skills, students will work to set type, manually and digitally, to match their conceptual vision and learn to plan, execute and create well crafted book projects. The course will cover the history of the book from codexes and manuscripts all the way through modern zines to give us context for our technical work. We will study the medium of the artists’ book which, though rooted in traditional book forms, take on any shape and design that the artist can imagine. This medium has a rich history—we’ll study exemplars in the Special Collections archive and visit with contemporary artists in the field. 

Craft is essential to creating effective forms that tell the story of our design practice. How can the technical skills learned in traditional book binding be adapted to your vision and voice?

Open to Junior, Senior or Graduate Graphic Design Students.

Electi

From Letterpress to Inkjet: this workshop will offer the students a unique opportunity to connect the dots. Two technologies more than 500 years apart will inspire the students in finding either harmony or discord. Neither is proven wrong. Students will be introduced to the Type Shop through the techniques and procedures for setting and printing metal and wood type on the Vandercook proofing presses. Engaging in this historic craft, newly developed skills will be transformed into contemporary results. The students will unite the digital with the analog technology, for example by feeding a letterpress print through the inkjet plotter or to digitize hot metal type. The options are endless. Specifications on paper selection will be discussed and samples of letterpressed books will be shown for inspiration. Any such targeted integration of science and art goes beyond the sheer structural and aesthetic qualities of given product. But as regards graphic design "product," it must contain the conscious integration of the human factor, technology, and aesthetics to prove effective.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior and Graduate Graphic Design Students only. Please contact the instructor to be added to the waitlist.

Elective

From Letterpress to Inkjet: this workshop will offer the students a unique opportunity to connect the dots. Two technologies more than 500 years apart will inspire the students in finding either harmony or discord. Neither is proven wrong. Students will be introduced to the Type Shop through the techniques and procedures for setting and printing metal and wood type on the Vandercook proofing presses. Engaging in this historic craft, newly developed skills will be transformed into contemporary results. The students will unite the digital with the analog technology, for example by feeding a letterpress print through the inkjet plotter or to digitize hot metal type. The options are endless. Specifications on paper selection will be discussed and samples of letterpressed books will be shown for inspiration. Any such targeted integration of science and art goes beyond the sheer structural and aesthetic qualities of given product. But as regards graphic design "product," it must contain the conscious integration of the human factor, technology, and aesthetics to prove effective.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior and Graduate Graphic Design Students only. Please contact the instructor to be added to the waitlist.

Elective

From Letterpress to Inkjet: this workshop will offer the students a unique opportunity to connect the dots. Two technologies more than 500 years apart will inspire the students in finding either harmony or discord. Neither is proven wrong. Students will be introduced to the Type Shop through the techniques and procedures for setting and printing metal and wood type on the Vandercook proofing presses. Engaging in this historic craft, newly developed skills will be transformed into contemporary results. The students will unite the digital with the analog technology, for example by feeding a letterpress print through the inkjet plotter or to digitize hot metal type. The options are endless. Specifications on paper selection will be discussed and samples of letterpressed books will be shown for inspiration. Any such targeted integration of science and art goes beyond the sheer structural and aesthetic qualities of given product. But as regards graphic design "product," it must contain the conscious integration of the human factor, technology, and aesthetics to prove effective.

Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior and Graduate Graphic Design Students only. Please contact the instructor to be added to the waitlist.

Elective