Tasks Due from Week 4

  • Schedule a meeting with the Professor
  • Bauhaus Form and Function
  • Reading Response #4
  • Week 4 Agenda Checklist

This Week’s Topics

Check-In & Share

Fall 2023 Playlist

Meetings

If you haven’t yet, please sign up for a remote meeting, please do that right now. If you are not available during the meeting slots, please contact me to find another time.

Schedule a Meeting

Use the Zoom Link to join the meeting.

Feedback & Support

Feedback for the third week’s assignments has been posted. Check your post to see the comment and some inline feedback via Hypothesis. If you submitted your work late it may take me another week to catch up. Feel free to reach out if you have specific questions or would like me to prioritize your feedback.

Writing Center Tutors

The Writing Center, now located in G608 inside the iTec student computer lab, has appointments available for students to book.

Find an accountability partner & reader

Find a classmate who you can partner with to help to keep you on track with your assignments (for this class and others). Ask for feedback each week to gain insight into how your ideas and writings are landing with your peers. This is the most important feedback you can receive.

Freewrite – The Art of Noticing

Prompt: In your language of choice, write continuously in your notebook for 8 minutes about what you noticed when you practiced an hour of digital silence. Write down every detail you can remember. Don’t edit, or correct, don’t stop, just write. If you get stuck, just write the same word(s) over and over until you think of something else to write down. Feel free to embellish your experience.

Activities

Below find the information covered in this session. Complete all of the following activities, videos, and assignments.

1. “Decolonizing” Design Decolonization (30 min)

Ingenuity and elegance in ancient African alphabets – Saki Mafundikwa TED Talk

What I do have greater issue with is the buzzword du jour: “Decolonization.” Here I declare myself the police (along with other Natives). Again, I raise my eyebrows at all this debate and interest by people who have no idea what it means to be “colonized.” Who feels it knows it—WE the colonized have to lead that debate. Nothing irks me more than “intellectuals” and self-appointed “experts” waxing philosophical about decolonizing design education. My very good friend and partner in crime, Sadie Red Wing and I ask the very crucial question, “What are they decolonizing to?” Only someone who has experienced the sting of colonization can decide that question. We are the ones with the indigenous knowledge systems that become the new curriculum. I’m fond of saying that our future lies in our past, for there lie our greatest achievements and contributions to the development of humanity. We have done the research and have the authority to author new textbooks and course material that our students can relate to and find relevance in. We have to decolonize Decolonization.

Saki Mafundikwa
Saki Mafundikwa and Sadie Red Wing on Decolonializing Design

The History of African Design as told by Saki Mafundikwa, Laudika yaNdangi, Tech Gazi, February 22, 2022

Saki Mafundikwa on 20 Years Running the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts – Ksenya Samarskaya, AIGA Eye on Design, September 22nd, 2020.

Saki Mafundikwa and Sadie Red Wing on Decolonializing Design, Change Lab: Conversations on Transformation and Creativity, October 23rd, 2019

2. Universal Typography and International Style Evolution (30 min)

The early European and Russian avant-garde designers like the Futurists, Dadaists, and Constructivists changed the way typography was used. Today we may use typography, not just to communicate information or data, but as a compositional element to communicate a tone, feeling, or idea. [Note the African and Native American relationships to typography above.]

In the readings this week we were introduced to the ideas of two designers who shared a passion for typography and layout that was clean, efficient, and structured. Influenced by the Dutch De Stijl and Bauhaus movements their work aimed to achieve a universal method for visual communication.

This evolution of influences from the Constructivists, De Stijl, New Typography, and the Bauhaus led to the mainstream adoption of the modernist International Typographic Style or Swiss Style in the mid-20th Century and beyond.

Swiss Style / International Typographic Style

The next generation of designers and pioneers of the Swiss Style, Karl Gerstner, and Joseph Muller-Brockman created and spread their systematic approach to design across Europe and America. The typographic tools for layout and typography that we use today in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc. grow out of the structured grid and typographic methods of the Swiss Style. Web and interface design also rely on the grid for clear communication. Margaret Rhodes highlights The Swiss Designers Breaking Tradition in her review of a 2016 exhibition featuring young Swiss designers. She notes that “The Swiss Style created a sea change in design, and helped earn designers a kind of professional status separate from artists.”

Watch the Graphic Design History section on Swiss Typography on LinkedIn Learning or in the YouTube video (1:21:57 to 1:25:45) to refresh your knowledge of this movement.

Confoederatio Helvetica  = Switzerland (in Latin)

Originating from the early Avant-Garde, the Swiss Style / International Typographic Style (and the modernist aesthetic in general) reaches its height in the 1950s and 1960s. In America, it transforms corporate advertising.

The ultimate Swiss Style typeface “Helvetica” was designed in 1957. It became a hallmark of the International Typographic Style and one of the most popular typefaces of the mid-20th century.

What is Killing Helvetica? by Envato

3. Research Project Prep (1 hour)

Introducing the Research Project & Presentation

The initial outline for your Research Project will be due in two weeks (Week 7). We will be going over the details next week, but start thinking and really formulating some ideas.

You don’t have to lock yourself into a topic yet, but your should by now have started to consider your aesthetic and theoretical interests based on the theories we’ve discussed so far, your manifesto, and your acts of noticing. If nothing has piqued your interest yet, ask you self “What do I feel passionate about?” “What do I love to talk about?” “What graphic style, design movement, decade, or typeface is my favorite?” “What makes me feel angry, sad, depressed?” “If I could be doing anything right now, what would it be?” “How could I use my skills as a designer to change the world?”

Prep

Let’s take another look at your Manifestos from last week’s discussion post.

Play around with AI to brainstorm some research topics.

Ask ChatGPT some questions like “Define a communication design research topic based on my interests in climate change and the Bauhaus”

ChatGPT

Ask Firefly to create some visuals based on your interests. For example “A graphic with Constructivist graphic design and ecological design principles.”

Adobe Firefly

3. Assignment: Essay 1

Guidelines:

Due Dates:

  • Your first draft should be posted by the next class. Bring a printed copy of your first draft and the Rough Draft Peer-Review Checklist.
  • Your final version will be due the following week.

Resources

Week 5 Agenda Checklist

Below are all of the tasks, big and small, for this week. The due date is Wednesday, 11:59 pm before our next class meeting. Timely completion of these tasks will contribute to your success in this course.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Tasks from the Week 5 Agenda
Name

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