Prof. Jenna Spevack | COMD3504_D061 | FALL 2024 | Thurs 2:30pm
This section of the course site includes assignment instructions in reverse chronological order. The most recent assignment is at the top. To locate a specific assignment use the sidebar search or the main menu Course Info > Assignments.
The Research Project Presentation assignment is designed to facilitate independent research in contemporary design and design theory.
Consider the communication design ideas/theories we discuss in this course and the contexts in which they emerged. Compare those with your own aesthetics, ideologies, and theories and … Continue Reading “Research Project Presentation”
Each week, let’s choose or adapt one noticing task from the book “The Art of Noticing” by Rob Walker or create your own. Exercising your noticing muscles will help you to increase your curiosity, awareness, and … Continue Reading “Weekly Noticing Tasks”
Over the next three weeks, as you work on your Research Presentation, we will explore the evolution of contemporary design and add to the lineage with voices often missing from the history books.
We will start by looking at … Continue Reading “Assignment: Designer’s Cookbook”
A manifesto is a declaration of intent — often the intent to bring radical change to the world. Throughout history, many art movements have written manifestos, and it’s always a sign that things have gotten real.
OBELISK – Art Manifestos Defining new realities
Stereotypes: are widely circulated oversimplifications of people and groups; a preconceived idea of what a person is like, based on a range of different factors. These factors can involve culture, religion, race, sexual orientation, age, gender, appearance.
The … Continue Reading “Assignment: Decoding Stereotype in Advertising”
Stuart Hall was a Jamaican-born British sociologist, cultural theorist, and political activist. He looked at the power of mainstream media (advertising, TV, film, etc) to understand the representation of race, gender, class, ethnicity, and religion. We will read an excerpt from Chapter 1 “… Continue Reading “Assignment: Reading Response – Representation”
“Rhetoric is the ‘technique of using the means of expression to persuade’. The hallmark of all rhetoric is that it involves at least two levels of language, the primary or denoted (non-coded) and the figurative or connoted (coded).”
Aesthetics of Photography
You will … Continue Reading “Assignment: Reading Response 3 – Visual Rhetoric”
Our next reading assignment is an introduction to semiotics. These topics directly relate to how we understand communication design from a theoretical perspective.
We will be reading Hall, Sean. This Means This, This Means That : A User’s Guide to Semiotics, Laurence King … Continue Reading “Assignment: Reading Response – Semiotics”
Our first reading consists of an introduction to the text Graphic Design Theory: Readings From the Field, Armstrong, Helen, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009. Navigate to pages 6-7 to read “Why Theory? by Ellen Lupton.”
And we will also read a page from the … Continue Reading “Assignment: Reading Response – Why Theory?”
The following is our list of course assignments. NOTE: It will be updated as the course progresses.
Refer to the guidelines for each of the following Assignment Instructions, Discussions, Reading Responses, Free-writing, and Designer’s Cookbook.
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