Tasks Due Today from Week 8

  • Review Week 8 Agenda
  • Review Research Project Guidelines
  • Completed Research Project Presentation Outline
  • Provided feedback and inline comments on classmate’s Essay
  • Submit Week 8 Homework Checklist

This Week’s Topics

Check-in (10 min)

Fall 2024 Playlist

Freewrite – The Art of Noticing (15 min)

This week’s task brought to you by Ten:

Count with the numbers your find

Find numbers in urban landscape and start “counting” – and see how far you get. Look for a 1, then a 2, then a 3 and keep going!

ART OF NOTICING

Prompt: In your language of choice, write continuously in your notebook for 10 minutes about what you noticed this week when completing the task. Don’t edit, or correct, don’t stop, just write. Feel free to share or not.

Next Week’s Prompt by Nathaly :

Track the Moon

Try to stay aware of what time of day it is and what cycle of the moon that you’re in… try to look at the night sky each night. Take a pause from you nightime routine and look at the night sky.

ART OF NOTICING

Activities

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

1. Check-in: Peer-Review of your Research Essay – Stereotype

How did it go?

Here’s an example of inline feedback and comments. Thanks to former students Andre & Adrika!

2. Share & Post: Research Project Presentation Proposal (30 min)

Please give a brief overview of your Research Project Presentation idea with the class.

You can use your Research Project to bring awareness to the issues that matter to you as an individual, as a global citizen, as a designer. You can also use this Research Project to explore a design movement or aesthetic that inspires your creative work.

If you missed last class, please review the Research Project Presentation guidelines for details about the Proposal.

Due next week: Research Proposal post

For next class, create a new post with your final Research Proposal. Copy, paste, and refine the outline you created in your Google Doc into a new post. Use the Category: Research Proposal. Be sure to spell/grammar check before posting.

Your Proposal should include the following:

Introduction
In one or two sentences, define your research question or thesis.

Background/Review of the Sources
Explain in detail the topic you are examining. Include a summary of the background information learned from your initial review of sources/readings/references.

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?

Method and Design
Demonstrate how you plan to present the information in your presentation. Outline each section of your presentation with cited sources to support each of the ideas you are presenting. Make sure your research question/statement is clearly presented in the introduction, then outline your research-supported arguments/claims and relevant subtopics, and end with the conclusion. Include images and videos to support your ideas, as needed.

References/Resources
List the resources and references you have found so far by using the Library Databases or Google Scholar. Include all references in MLA style. In addition to referencing our assigned readings, you should cite at least ten library sources with proper citation information in an annotated bibliography in MLA format. Create your annotated bibliography as you do your research.

3. Manifestos! (1 hour)

The majority of published design history and theory takes a narrow western perspective. While this history is significant to our contemporary design lineage, let’s pause to take moment to consider that in the history of design, not every story gets told.

Over the next few weeks we will be exploring the history of design and trying to incorporate voices often absent from the history books. We will be looking at the lack of diversity in the history of the American design field and exploring some ways young designers can influence the design field. One way is writing about your work, your process, and what you believe in; something designers/artists have been doing for hundreds of years.

This week we will look some of the manifestos and writings created by designers who demand that the field of design (and worldwide culture) change direction.

Graphic design was in its infancy in the early 20th Century, and the artists and designers of the early Avant-Garde were laying the foundation for the field amidst worldwide upheaval and technological and social change. Like the artists and designers of the Avant-Garde, we as designers are called to address some of these same issues: the nature of communication, globalization, gender politics, and the representation of power. Add to that a recent worldwide pandemic, wars, economic and racial inequity, and climate change. We have a lot going on to drive that passion for change.

A Designer’s Social Responsibility

…Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.

There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programs, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help…

First Things First Manifesto 2000

In a 1994 essay in Eye magazine, Andrew Howard reminded designers about the 1964 manifesto entitled ‘First Things First’ signed by British designer Ken Garland and a group of 21 colleagues. The manifesto’s aim was to “reject the ‘high pitched scream of consumer selling’ and omnipotent lure of the advertising industry in favour of what was defined as socially useful graphic design work.”

Several years later, thirty-three designers renewed the original call for a change of priorities and published ‘First Things First Manifesto 2000‘ in Adbusters, Emigre,  Eye, Blueprint, Items in the Netherlands, and Form in Germany. 

In 2014 – on the 50th anniversary of the manifesto – over 1600 designers across the world renewed their commitment to the manifesto.

In 2020 an updated version, FTF 2020, was published online and included a focus on the climate crisis and racial justice. “Our time and energy are increasingly used to manufacture demand, to exploit populations, to extract resources, to fill landfills, to pollute the air, to promote colonization, and to propel our planet’s sixth mass extinction.” 

Check out this short 2:30 min video of David Berman, author of Do Good Design. Berman’s main thesis is: “Rather than sharing our cycles of style, consumption, and chemical addictions, designers can use their professional power, persuasive skills, and wisdom to help distribute ideas that the world really needs: health information, conflict resolution, tolerance, technology, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, human rights, democracy …”

David Berman on Design And Social Responsibility – 2 mins 30 secs

It is time to think again about design’s social function and the way it is determined by our culture.

1994 Eye magazine, Andrew Howard

Manifestos in History – Collections

Let’s take a look at some design manifestos from various artists/designers/poets and movements over the years:

Manifestos – Art History Project

Collection of Design Manifestos – Design Manifestos

Here are more recent manifestos to help you to consider your own:

4. Write your own Manifesto! (30 min – in class work)

After exploring the historical manifestos and more recent manifestos, review this post and add your own Manifesto in a comment before next class.

Week 9 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 9 Agenda
Name

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