***The following schedule is subject to change. Refer to the Weekly Agenda posts that are linked here for up-to-date content.***

Week 1

  • Topic: Introduction, Course Overview – Why Theory?
  • Readings / Media: Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field. Princeton Architectural Press, 2009 (excerpt)

Week 2

  • Topic: Laying the Groundwork for Design Theory
  • Readings / Media: Hall, Sean. This Means This, This Means That: A User’s Guide to Semiotics, Laurence King Publishing, 2012 (Chapters 1 & 2); Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (excerpt)

Week 3

  • Topic: Language, Linguistics, Symbols, Signs
  • Readings / Media: F.T. Marinetti, “Manifesto of Futurism”; Aleksandr Rodchenko, “Who We Are: Manifesto of the Constructivist Group”; El Lissitzky, “Our Book”

Week 4

  • Topic: Manifestos, Movements and the Avant-Garde
  • Readings / Media: Walter Gropius, “The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus”; Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, “Typophoto”; Herbert Bayer, “On Typography”

Week 5

  • Topic: Bauhaus Function and Form; Research Paper 1

Week 6

  • Topic: Choosing a Research Project Topic
  • Readings / Media: Karl Gerstner, Designing Programmes (exc.); Joseph Muller-Brockman, “Grid and Design Philosophy”; Jan Tschichold, “The Principles of the New Typography”

Week 7

  • Topic: International Style Evolution; Research Project Proposal due Week 8
  • Readings / Media:  Celebrating the African-American Practitioners Absent From Way Too Many Classroom Lectures by Madeleine Morley; Typography as a Radical Act in an Industry Ever-dominated by White Men by Silas Munro; Design Gets More Diverse by Alice Rawsthorn

Week 8

  • Topic: Mainstream Modernism + American Corporate Identity; Mid-Term Assessment
  • Readings / Media: Paul Rand, Good Design is Goodwill; Steven Heller, Underground Mainstream

Week 9

  • Topic: Media as Message
  • Readings / Media: Roland Barthes, “Rhetoric of the Image”; Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (exc.)

Week 10

  • Topic: Context and Representation; Stereotype in Advertising Media; Visual Rhetoric

Week 11

  • Topic: Post-Modernism
  • Readings / Media:  Katherine McCoy and David Frej “Typography as Discourse” 

Week 12

  • Topic: The Digital Revolution & Social Responsibility
  • Readings / Media: Rick Poynor “The Evolving Legacy of Ken Garland’s First Things First Manifesto“

Week 13

  • Topic: New Paradigms / Final Presentation prep
  • *Final Project

Week 14

  • Topic: Research Project Presentations, Peer Feedback, Grade Survey

Week 15

  • Topic: Wrap up

 

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