Tasks Due Today from Week 05

  • Meetings
  • Research Paper 1 First Draft & Peer Review Printed
  • Review Decolonizing Design
  • Review Universal Typography & International Style Evolution
  • Week 5 Agenda Checklist

This Week’s Topics

Check-In & Share

Fall 2023 Playlist

Tutoring / Checklists

Complete your Essay #1 by the deadline and you will have the opportunity to revise it. Challenge yourself to get your paper to a point where it’s ready for submission to the City Tech Writer.

In addition to getting writing help at the Writing Center, the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) tutors are available to you and will provide one-on-one help with your writing for this course. Use this link to schedule an appointment.

Schedule WAC Tutoring Appointment

Don’t forget to submit your Weekly Agenda Checklist, indicating the tasks you’ve completed. These checklists help you track how well you keeping to your Learning Plan and will help determine your final grade at the end of the semester.

Freewrite – The Art of Noticing

Prompt: In your language of choice, write continuously in your notebook for 9 minutes about your observations “hunting for the infrathin.” Write down your observations of infrathin or maybe your opinions about what an infrathin is. 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 invent new examples of infrathin.

Infrathin = The French word inframince (translated into English as infrathin) was coined by artist, Marcel Duchamp.

Without getting too specific, we can surmise that infranthin is the space between spaces, the sound between sounds, the sensation between sensations; neither here nor there, this nor that, but both—all at the same time.

  1. Indifference, the infrathin between good and evil.
  2. In a glass, the infrathin marriage of melting ice cubes and the
    water they’re in.
  3. Signaled by birds flying into clean windows because they do
    not see them.
  4. Jeggings, an infrathin marriage of jeans and leggings.
  5. Freezer burn.
  6. The imprint of a sock around an ankle after the sock is
    removed.
  7. The connection two people feel through the static electric
    cling of their arm hair.
  8. From still to boiling water, the exact transitional moment.
  9. The flutter of cash as it’s expelled from the ATM machine.
Kenneth Goldsmith, 1000 Infrathins, University of Pennsylvania, 2018

Activities

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

1. Essay #1 Peer Review (30 min)

Today, you should have printed the first draft of your Essay #1 and the Peer Review Checklist/Rubric provided in the Guidelines. Find a partner, exchange papers, and review your partner’s paper using the Checklist and Rubric. Take 15-20 minutes to review the paper and then 10 minutes to discuss the feedback with your partner. Add notes on an additional page.

*If you didn’t print your paper or prefer to read/comment digitally, share your post/Google doc link with your partner.

2. Defining Your Research Topic (15 min)

“Our identity is abstract and ever-changing. The ways in which we’re shaped by our world can evolve as the world around us changes and we encounter new experiences… With diverse representation comes a wealth of experiences and perspectives that elevate the design industry.”

KALEENA SALES from Extra Bold, Princeton Architectural Press, 2021.

Who are you? What do you care about?

This week, we will take a look at the Research Project guidelines again and begin in earnest to define our project topic and outline. Use your Research Project to bring awareness to the issues that matter to you as an individual, as a global citizen, as a designer. In our recent Discussion: Week 3 Manifestos, you shared your own manifesto to define what today’s designer should be thinking about, rebelling against, and acting on. Take another look at what you wrote and reply to someone else’s.

In your Writing Portfolio, you can collect your influences, the “stuff” that informs your design aesthetic, and what you believe in. As communication designers, we are always collecting and sampling from the world in which we live.

Nothing is truly original. This video below uses music as its subject to show that we are constantly “sampling” from and influenced by past and present cultures. If you were to collect all your visual, musical, and cultural, “samples” what would your collection look like? Use that collection of influences to help direct your research project topic.

Kirby Ferguson – How Sampling Altered The Universe

If you haven’t seen it yet (and even if you have), watch Abstract: The Art of Design > Paula Scher to learn how a designer’s 40-year career was influenced by her life, her culture, her city, her passion. Take note of the specific historical, social/cultural, and design influences.

Abstract: The Art of Design > Paula Scher

3. Research Project & Presentation Outline – Overview (15 min)

This week you will work in class to start to formulate your Research Project & Presentation Outline. The final Outline will be due Week 8.

Review the Research Project & Presentation guidelines again. The following will help with the development of your Outline.

Create your Research Project Outline in Google Docs with the following content:

  1. Introduction
    In one or two sentences, define your research question or thesis.
  2. Background/Review of the Sources
    Explain in detail the topic you are examining. Include a summary of the basic background information on the topic gleaned from your sources/readings review (you can include information from the readings and class, but the bulk should be outside sources).
  3. Rationale
    Explain why your research topic is culturally, socially, or politically significant. Include a description of the questions you are examining and why you are exploring this topic. Why is it meaningful to you?
  4. Method and Design
    A description of how you will go about collecting resources/data and how you plan to present the information in your presentation, starting with the introduction and ending with a conclusion.
  5. References
    List the resources and references you have found so far. Include all references in MLA style.

4. Work in Class (1 hour)

If you have completed fewer than three (3) Reading Responses, please take this time to complete and post Reading Responses 1-4. At the end of class, please share what you’ve completed.

If you are up-to-date on your reading responses, take this time to either work on your Essayr#1 or your Research Project Outline.

Resources

Week 06 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 Thursday class. 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 6 Agenda
Name

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