Typography 1 is the first in a three-course sequence that introduces students to the fundamentals of typographic practice, both as a set of technical skills and as an expressive medium. This first semester of typography begins fully zoomed-in -- exploring how and why letterforms are formed. Students will work with various tools and materials to construct letters; with attention paid to meaning, voice and the line between language and abstract form. The second part of the semester concerns itself with setting type. Typesetting is the score for the reading experience. Typesetting conventions and nomenclature will be taught by zooming out from the letter, to the word, to the paragraph and to the page. Students will become comfortable with typographic color and texture in a finite static composition. This is a studio course, so some class time will be used for discussions, most of the time we will be working in class. There is an expectation that students work both individually and in groups and be prepared to speak about their own work and the work of their peers in supportive and respectful ways. A laptop and relevant software are required.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graphic Design Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Graphic Design

Typography 1 is the first in a three-course sequence that introduces students to the fundamentals of typographic practice, both as a set of technical skills and as an expressive medium. This first semester of typography begins fully zoomed-in -- exploring how and why letterforms are formed. Students will work with various tools and materials to construct letters; with attention paid to meaning, voice and the line between language and abstract form. The second part of the semester concerns itself with setting type. Typesetting is the score for the reading experience. Typesetting conventions and nomenclature will be taught by zooming out from the letter, to the word, to the paragraph and to the page. Students will become comfortable with typographic color and texture in a finite static composition. This is a studio course, so some class time will be used for discussions, most of the time we will be working in class. There is an expectation that students work both individually and in groups and be prepared to speak about their own work and the work of their peers in supportive and respectful ways. A laptop and relevant software are required.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graphic Design Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Graphic Design

Typography 1 is the first in a three-course sequence that introduces students to the fundamentals of typographic practice, both as a set of technical skills and as an expressive medium. This first semester of typography begins fully zoomed-in -- exploring how and why letterforms are formed. Students will work with various tools and materials to construct letters; with attention paid to meaning, voice and the line between language and abstract form. The second part of the semester concerns itself with setting type. Typesetting is the score for the reading experience. Typesetting conventions and nomenclature will be taught by zooming out from the letter, to the word, to the paragraph and to the page. Students will become comfortable with typographic color and texture in a finite static composition. This is a studio course, so some class time will be used for discussions, most of the time we will be working in class. There is an expectation that students work both individually and in groups and be prepared to speak about their own work and the work of their peers in supportive and respectful ways. A laptop and relevant software are required.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graphic Design Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Graphic Design

Typography 1 is the first in a three-course sequence that introduces students to the fundamentals of typographic practice, both as a set of technical skills and as an expressive medium. This first semester of typography begins fully zoomed-in -- exploring how and why letterforms are formed. Students will work with various tools and materials to construct letters; with attention paid to meaning, voice and the line between language and abstract form. The second part of the semester concerns itself with setting type. Typesetting is the score for the reading experience. Typesetting conventions and nomenclature will be taught by zooming out from the letter, to the word, to the paragraph and to the page. Students will become comfortable with typographic color and texture in a finite static composition. This is a studio course, so some class time will be used for discussions, most of the time we will be working in class. There is an expectation that students work both individually and in groups and be prepared to speak about their own work and the work of their peers in supportive and respectful ways. A laptop and relevant software are required.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graphic Design Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Graphic Design

Typography 1 is the first in a three-course sequence that introduces students to the fundamentals of typographic practice, both as a set of technical skills and as an expressive medium. This first semester of typography begins fully zoomed-in -- exploring how and why letterforms are formed. Students will work with various tools and materials to construct letters; with attention paid to meaning, voice and the line between language and abstract form. The second part of the semester concerns itself with setting type. Typesetting is the score for the reading experience. Typesetting conventions and nomenclature will be taught by zooming out from the letter, to the word, to the paragraph and to the page. Students will become comfortable with typographic color and texture in a finite static composition. This is a studio course, so some class time will be used for discussions, most of the time we will be working in class. There is an expectation that students work both individually and in groups and be prepared to speak about their own work and the work of their peers in supportive and respectful ways. A laptop and relevant software are required.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graphic Design Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Graphic Design

There is something magical about opening a seemingly ordinary book only to see a gloriously three dimensional structure burst forth from its pages. Upon closing the book, the large, complex sculptural form folds seamlessly back into flatness. In this studio students will learn to create such structures: movable artists books that pop up, unfold, transform into sculptures, theaters, installations, interactive experiences. Students will learn the basics of paper engineering and experiment with various pop-up structures as they create their own original, movable artists books. Even though our exploration will begin with structural, material, and formal investigation, students will be encouraged to treat form and content as an interdependent whole, as they envision their increasingly complex independent projects. Demonstrations, hands-on in-class work and homework, independent projects, discussions, research, introduction to digital fabrication; historic and contemporary examples in the expanded field from movable books to large scale art installations; artists talks, visits to RISD CoWorks, Nature Lab, and the Special Collections of Fleet Library will be part of our inquiry.

Elective

This course is a practical and conceptual exploration into electronic sensors, processors and actuators in the context of interactive art and design. Students will turn everyday objects into ambient interfaces or "responsive systems" that respond to the conditions of the human body, data networks, and the environment. Contemporary works of art and design - from kinetic sculpture and sound art to installation, architecture and product design - will be examined through readings and presentations. Open source hardware (Arduino) and software (Processing) will be taught along with the fundamentals of electronic circuitry. Emphasis is given to the development of creative projects (individual or collaborative), followed by an iterative implementation process (planning, prototyping, testing, analyzing, and refining). The course is structured around a series of tutorials and exercises, culminating in a final project. Students also present work-in-progress and prototypes during class reviews to receive qualitative feedback from the class and the instructor. Participants will engage with physical computing conceptually and technically in their studio work and are encouraged to leverage their individual backgrounds to excel in the respective context. Prior experience with electronics and programming is recommended but not required.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

Major Requirement | BFA Art + Computation, BFA Sound

Graduate Communication Introduction is a studio course about writing and speaking as design tools. We think about writing and speaking in two ways. First as a communication tool and second as a design tool. On the communication side, we address the many ways that writing and speaking surrounds a designed object (as a proposal, as sales copy, as instructions to users, as specs for manufacture, as criticism, etc.). We think about the audiences for those various kinds of communication and how to think about what they want and need. We look at examples of great design communication and we develop and practice our own skills for succinctly explaining our ideas. On the design tool side, we think about the many ways that writing can help clarify and quickly test out ideas. We think about writing as a form of rapid prototyping alongside sketching, model making, etc. We talk about what writing is good at, when other methods might be more useful, and when to combine methods. We explore techniques such as design fiction, scenario planning, and other narrative methodologies that are used in industrial design and related fields.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Industrial Design Students.

Major Requirement | MID Industrial Design

This course offers an introduction to the history and practice of artists as collaborators, critics, and creators in art museums from the 1960s to the present. Exploring questions concerning the purpose, possibilities, and problems of art museums, students will be invited to consider how artists have responded to museum collections, histories, and spaces. We will discuss different strategies artists have used to offer alternate ways of experiencing, examining or critiquing historic and contemporary art and design and other issues. Students will use a wide variety of interpretive lenses to analyze the interventions of a diverse range of artists, including Andy Warhol, Fred Wilson, Andrea Fraser, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Lee Mingwei, Simone Leigh, and artists of RISD’s own Dorner Prize, among others. Students will also be invited to consider training in studio art as preparation for different ways of working with museum collections—from conservation and curation to education and exhibition design. Through case studies, readings, guest lectures, and field trips, students will explore key issues, debates, and concerns of artists as collaborators and museums as sites of critical and creative production. Coursework includes writing, research, and creative projects inspired by students' own artwork and contemporary and historic objects from the collection of the RISD Museum.

Elective

This course with its focus on curriculum development and pedagogical practices for students in elementary school has been designed as a the companion to TLAD-612G where the focus is students in secondary school. In this way, this pair of courses provides graduate students with an essential foundation to teaching the visual arts (art and design) from pre-K to 12th grade. This course provides students with insights and experiences in studio-based teaching and learning through the lens of an elementary setting. Students will be introduced to curricular and pedagogical practices that are grounded in meaning making and artistic inquiry, as well as authentic forms of assessment. There is a special emphasis within this course on approaching each of these frameworks (curriculum, instruction, and assessment) through an understanding of the developmental needs - cognitive, social, and personal - of young children. Within this course, students will engage in curriculum design and lesson planning through the development of a series of units that are grounded in enduring ideas in art and design education. Additionally, students will have the opportunity to engage in micro teaching experiences in partnership with a local elementary school classroom. They will have the opportunity to teach a carefully designed art/design lesson to a group of elementary-aged children and have the chance to thoughtfully reflect on their own teaching practices and encounters in the classroom.

Enrollment in this course is limited to Teaching + Learning in Art + Design Students.

Major Requirement | MA, MAT Teaching + Learning in Art + Design

Interiority and Power addresses dominant power structures and narratives within the field of Interior Architecture, challenging students to build counter-narratives through engagement with historical, theoretical, and practical texts, case studies, and intellectual debates.

Practices of ‘situating’, ‘unlearning’ and ‘futuring’ ask students to identify systems of colonization, define their role as tools of cultural dominance in architectural design, and seek an alternative through forms of anti-colonial, representative, collective, and reparative practice. The course addresses the architectural canon, Western aesthetics, the concept of positional dominance, policy and planning histories, race and decoloniality, ecological and environment, and the politics surrounding adaptive reuse and architectural terminologies.

The course will also examine historiography, and how history is written, moving topically rather than emphasizing linear history. Through collaborative research, readings, debates, and the construction of a collective lexicon, students learn to challenge and decenter localities of power and aesthetics, allowing them to reframe values for design futures. This historical and theoretical framing positions students to engage with their studio and material practices as critical and historically-situated thinkers.Students learn the vital importance of a critical approach and implementation of this course’s learning outcomes into other course subjects and learning/designing in general.

The course is structured as a seminar, with a portion of each class day devoted to lecture and discussion, as well as periodic structured debates asking students to research and reflect on assigned module topics.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Architecture

“Any attempt to understand an artistic medium through the lens of technology alone is futile and counterproductive,imposing limits on the conceptual understanding of the work. Good art is always both deeply rooted in and at the same time transcends its medium.”
-Christiane Paul
 
This course will explore digital design and fabrication within the context of contemporary art, design and architecture. Through a series of technical demonstrations and assignments, connections will be made between CAD/CAM software, fabrication technologies and the physical world. Additionally, the course will explore digital fabrication as it relates to traditional sculptural processes such as mold making + casting, metalworking and woodworking.
 
This course, although technical in nature, is not technical in spirit. Our goal is not the mastery of any one software application or fabrication technology, but instead an understanding of how to effectively leverage digital processes and tools in one’s studio.
 
The semester will be divided into a series of assignments, each exploring various approaches to digital design and fabrication, and will culminate in a final project blending digital fabrication with an existing project and/or research interest.
 
You will leave this course with the ability to model complex geometries, to collect and process 3D scan data, and to output using additive fabrication equipment. We will utilize the resources of RISD at large, but will focus on highly accessible, open source digital fabrication tools available within the Sculpture department.

Elective

Robots (re)Imagined inaugurates the first formal collaboration between the Rhode Island School of Design, the Brown Arts Institute and Brown School of Engineering —a groundbreaking laboratory where artists, designers, computer scientists, and engineers work side by side to invent new vocabularies for robotics and art.

Robots have long mirrored our collective hopes and anxieties: they clean our homes, assemble our products, patrol our borders, and populate our dreams of the future. We are told they will replace us, liberate us, or destroy us. But what if robots could do something entirely different—something poetic, unpredictable, even transformative? What if they could teach us new ways of being together, of making and thinking across disciplines, of reimagining intelligence itself?

This course is both a studio and an experimental research lab where students will design and program robots that perform beyond utility—machines that move, sense, and communicate in ways that unsettle the boundaries between the technical and the aesthetic. Through readings, discussions, and collaborative projects, students will engage the cultural imaginaries of robotics—its histories, fictions, and futures—while building hands-on systems that test what a robot can be.

Combining the rigor of engineering with the speculative freedom of art and design, Robots (re)Imagined challenges students to make, code, and choreograph robots as expressive, responsive, and collective beings. The semester culminates in a public presentation of interdisciplinary projects that expand the social, ethical, and imaginative possibilities of robotics in the twenty-first century.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Lectures: Tues & Thurs 10:30am to 12pm / Lindemann Performing Arts Center, BAI Performance Lab

Labs: Tues (or) Thurs: 6:40 to 9:30pm / ERC 347, ACT Lab

Elective

Ceramics: a Global Perspective will focus on two non-western ceramic traditions/movements: the Indigenous Ceramics of the Americas and Asian Ceramics. These two seemingly disparate movements have had a profound influence upon western, modern and contemporary ceramic art. Indigenous Ceramics of the Americas provides a ‘close to home/under the surface foundation’ of material and design. Asian ceramics, with its global reach of historical trade roots, provides insight into the movement and transformation of material, technology, and use value.

This combined seminar and studio class provides a historical context and hand on experience of historical developments and hierarchical structures in the ceramic arts. To enhance the students’ understanding of traditional materials and technology upon form and content, students will make ceramics (using the corresponding traditional techniques) alongside art historical study. Each clay and firing type embodies making parameters that effect form, color, content and use. Through the remaking of historical forms, students acquire a nuanced understanding of the importance of technology upon the content and use value of objects made.

The class will focus on three distinct regions and periods in ceramic history: Indigenous Practice of the Americas (Peru, New Mexico), Asian Porcelain, Production and Kiln Technology (Korea, Japan, China) and the Silk Road Trade Routes from Asia into the Middle East, Africa and up into Western Europe effecting ceramic production between 1600 – 1900. The class will culminate by illuminating the effects of colonialism and globalization of these three periods upon late 20th century, and current ceramics. In particular, we will become sensitive to the cultural appropriation of Indigenous culture and Asian aesthetics by teaching its philosophy, colonial history and initiate sensitivity to stereotypes and cultural erasure within ceramic production and its communities. The Ceramics department has visiting artists representing artists from many world cultures and students are required to attend these lectures. Independent research is required.

This course is a requirement for Sophomore Ceramics students. Non-major Sophomores may enroll pending seat availability. Email the Department Head and instructor jointly to request permission.

Major Requirement | BFA Ceramics

In “Designing Food” students will explore the product development process through an edible lens. Students will learn to design food-based products ranging from fine dining tasting experiences to sensory experiments to traditional packaged products. With an emphasis on material exploration and iterative design, students will identify opportunities surrounding undervalued ingredients and examine how design fits in a culinary landscape. We will practice iterative making with frequent group tastings and discussions to perfect form, formulation, and process. Through the semester we will host visiting industry experts including chefs, food entrepreneurs, and botanists to explore the material, ecological, economic, and interpersonal power of food product design.

The two main assignments that run-in tandem throughout the semester are The Iteration Project and The Hero Ingredient Project. The first is an individual assignment where each student will choose one dish they wish to perfect. They will prepare the dish multiple times for their class with tastings, evaluations, and close documentation. The Iteration Project culminates in a final tasting showcase and a finished Food Journal documenting the journey. The Hero Ingredient project is a group assignment where students will research and choose an edible material or ingredient with vast design potential. They will investigate and test that material with the goal of discovering its full and perhaps hidden expressions and creating a product that leverages its unique characteristics. Past projects have included fine perfume, restaurant concepts, high fidelity packaged goods, material libraries, and fine dining experiences.

Other assignments will include short in class exercises and individual research. Class will often center around group discussions on various parts of food systems, with weekly dialogs around assigned readings and videos.

Learning objectives include strengthening critical thinking and opportunity identification abilities, honing user research skills, understanding culinary benchtop formulation and processes for manufacturing, navigating group work, and strengthening communication and presentation skills. This studio is focused on sharing so bring your voice and your appetite!

Major Requirement | BFA Industrial Design, MID (2.5yr): Industrial Design

Can Okinawa be a design laboratory for planetary futures?  How do we grow resilient and creative on a warming planet?

The Japanese mainland is moving toward a subtropical climate, and most regions of the world have experienced excessive heat in recent years. This course investigates the material ecologies of Okinawa, a subtropical island whose cultural and architectural identity has been shaped by climate, history, and politics. Okinawa’s arts and buildings evolved under the pressures of heat, humidity, typhoons, and salt air—conditions that are no longer exceptional, but increasingly the reality of our global present. With summers growing longer and hotter each year, what lessons might be drawn from Okinawa’s centuries of adaptation to help us design for a future of rising temperatures worldwide?

Okinawa, once an independent kingdom, is Japan’s southernmost prefecture, where a distinctive and cosmopolitan culture developed from its geopolitical position and subtropical environment. This culture flourished during the Ryukyu Kingdom (1429–1879), which spanned from the Muromachi period to the early Meiji era. In the 14th and 15th centuries, trade with China and Southeast Asia introduced techniques such as dyeing. These imported practices were uniquely adapted to the Ryukyu climate and sensibilities, giving rise to the rich material cultures of Okinawa.

From coral limestone fortifications to red clay roof tiles, from lacquerware and bingata textiles to the concrete structures of the postwar era, Okinawa offers a layered material landscape that embodies resilience, adaptation, and reinvention. Although one of the smallest prefectures in Japan, it ranks third nationwide in the number of designated traditional crafts. Students will examine how traditional crafts and building practices emerged from the island’s ecology, how architecture transformed under modern pressures, and how contemporary makers and designers are reimagining material practices for ecological survival.

Students will create a collective atlas of material textures and patterns, drawn directly from observation during site visits to craft studios, historic sites, and both traditional and contemporary architectural works. These drawings, compiled into a book, will represent not only the tactile qualities of Okinawa’s materials but also their embedded histories of climate, politics, and cultural exchange. More than documenting materials and textures, we will search for clues in an island culture that has long adapted to heat, humidity, salt air, and strong weather patterns—conditions now spreading across the globe. By situating Okinawa within the planetary condition of excessive heat, this course expands design thinking, treating materiality as a cultural and ecological system that can offer strategies and inspiration for resilience in a warming world. 

Registration is not available in Workday. Students must complete an application through RISD Global Summer Studies. A minimum GPA of 2.5 is required for all RISD students. Failure to remain in good academic standing can lead to removal from the course, either before or during the course. Additional information including deadlines and travel costs can be found on the Global Summer Studies website.