As the Associate Director of Graphic Design, I wrote and worked to oversee most of the core-conceptual-track and branding-track of our graduate-level (MFA/MA) graphic design curriculum. In doing so, my work is best shown through the work of our many talented students who most often come into the graduate program with no previous experience. My job is to get them from the question of "what's a font?" to the work you see below and ultimately to earning an advanced degree in design. I keep a robust blog about it all.
As a 36 (MA) or 63 (MFA) degree program, our curriculum is divided into a two-track path: conceptual and formal courses. I have conceived, written, refined and taught in each of our seven semesters. Special attention is paid to the process as well as the outcomes of each course.
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Zack Simons chose the films of Sam Pekinpah as the focus for his Integrated Communications project. You can see more of Zack's work here.
Visual Literacy (2nd semester) // After a fairly quick entry into the program, Visual Literacy attaches a lexicon to the raw ideas explored in the first semester. In this class, we start with basic design principles, proceed to history, design systems and finish with communication theory including semiotics and gestalt theories. The four projects in the class reinforce these topics. I authored the entirety of this course — building upon my work at UCBerkeley's extension program — including robust lectures and multi-phase projects.
For Project #3 in Visual Literacy, Celia Wen, Hanisha Amin and Pat Charoensiri transformed a humble hand-drawn sign into a system of well orchestrated pieces delivering on the same communication intention.
Visual Thinking (3rd semester) // Visual Thinking is the newest class in our curriculum conceived and written in reaction to the growing need for topical ideation as students approach their thesis projects. This class covers the entirety of design thinking and formal execution from identifying opportunities; brainstorming; identifying key messages and audiences; and multimedia delivery of these key messages and concepts. As an artifact, it is 65K words — plus visuals; examples; links; and self-created videos and walk-throughs. As a class, it is considered a trial run for their thesis-project ideation further explored in the subsequent class. The class debuted in the Summer of 2013 (online) as a seven-week condensed course. All examples below are from that first class session. You can read more about the class and explore the robust deliverables here.
From initial research and development of a creative brief to the design of a system of deliverables including narrative, 3D, digital and motion, the students in Visual Thinking — a third semester class (so, 31 weeks after their very first design class) — delivered a complex set of materials in a condensed seven-week semester. The results are amazing... check them out.
Type Systems (3rd semester) // Type systems is a tactical class which focuses on the fundamentals of visually maintaining consistency and clarity of communication through typography. While attention is paid to form and personality, the course is centered around creating an understanding of how the individual elements work together in printed, environmental and digital deliverables. Special attention is paid to a simplistic presentation style that I developed which has been picked up in other classes and each of the student's projects is proudly detailed by them in a brief video — check them out.
Visual Communications Lab (4th semester) // VisComLab is the precursor to the students' thesis journey and has evolved from a very loose set of projects into an incredibly tight and narratively structured class. The class evolved from a set of legacy materials (thanks, Brody Hartman + Phil Hamlett) and was written/co-written/edited by me as a set of fifteen modules for our online curriculum (debuted online in 2008). The class was co-taught onsite by myself and the MFA Director in a large collaborative environment balancing lecture and critique of the individual projects. The class aimed at identifying each student's individual point-of-view on the aims and significance of design in the modern context and from this self-reflection, a topic ripe for thesis exploration was discovered. Fast-paced weekly "labs" forced students to quickly explore and experiment with their ideas and not become too tied to any one formal outcome, but instead focus on the final project — a robust narrative detailing the idea, process, discoveries and insights.
Featuring powerful information graphics and a clean layout, Zack Simons tackles the much-discussed issue of cannabis legalization from a very factual point-of-view. You can check out the entirety of the project here.
Lama Khayyat addressed the topic of religious stereotypes in a project that eventually evolved into her MFA thesis project, Muslimia.
The topic of handcraft was the focus of Erin Canoy's project which evolved into her MFA thesis project centered around craft and industry in her native Philippines, One Weave.
Integrated Communications (5th semester) // This class was inherited in a fairly raw format from a former instructor and I have attached a robust design process to the execution of the massive amount of deliverables required for successful completion of the course. This has turned it into a class about process and methodology rather than "stuff" and provides the students with a number of usable, problem-solving "frameworks". This class runs alongside the students' thesis development so the lessons picked up here in bifurcating and managing a complex project and set of deliverables are directly applicable to their thesis work. The class is couched in the creation of a film festival, however, after going through the process, students are able to apply the process and methodology I developed to almost any design challenge.
For her festival, Brianna Johnson chose Japanese gore director Takshi Miike. See more of the project here.
Jon Wong crafted custom graphic illustrations and brought them to life through intricate fabrication of wood and plexiglass articfacts for his project.
The Nature of Identity (7th semester) // The Nature of Identity is a robust soup-to-nuts branding class and an evolution of a class I wrote and taught at UCBEX (Graphic Design 3). The class centers around the craft of branding more so than simply logo design and debuted in its current form in 2005 at AAU. Since the initial publication of the course, if has undergone a good bit of development including refinement of industry-standard exercises aimed at identifying and exploring the "soul" of a brand at its most fundamental level. Students are asked to find and reinvent a dying brand — and, in many cases, envision alternate futures for these languishing businesses. While often centered in fantasy, this class more than any other has received the "I'm doing exactly what we did in class at work today. Thank you for preparing me!" comments after our students enter the workforce and find that the exercises in class have real-world applications. Students wrap it all up in a series of visual guides, a video and a functional, live website for their brand.
Joe Golike chose the venerable TSA for his project and envisioned what security would look like in the next forty years.
Although bright in color, Ginny Wang envisioned a dark future for Napster which takes take cues from the initial goal of the brand: getting you what you want. See more of her project here.
We are proud of all of our students // Some students, however, have maintained a more robust web presence. On their pages, you can clearly see the projects from the above classes and I invite you to take a look at how far they've come and how much they've accomplished. You can find them all at www.79NM.net.