Stephen Farrell

This studio course explores typography's impact on language to create meaning, organization and tone. Students experiment in typographic composition and page structure with special regard to the flow and rupture of different text types and reading scenarios. Students learn the technical aspects of typography (specification and copyfitting), methods for composing dynamic multipage formats (combining digital and analog), and contexts (both historical and structural) for understanding the vast repository of typefaces. This course is a core requirement for the Visual Communication Design portfolio review. The framing text for this class is Ellen Lupton's Thinking with Type. But students will be introduced to numerous examples from the history of (predominantly Western) letterforms and concretized language. Understanding these historical forms in their contexts will reveal the logic behind the modern classification of digital type. Students produce weekly type projects which are critiqued and handed in as three project sets. The first set analyses letterforms, structurally and then programmatically. The next project set covers text setting and typographic compositions of increasing semantic and syntactic complexity. The last project is a multilingual, illustrated book layout where students engage the fundamental concept of 'structured variety' over a series of pages.

How does graphic design facilitate the ways we gather, give and receive information? How might we use typography and pictures, diagrams and symbols, sequence and spatial configuration to untangle a raw mass of data, guide a complex procedure, open (or suppress) correlations or satisfy multiple users' needs? This studio course explores principles and concepts of information design and visual display. Emphasis will be placed on analysis and mapping of raw data, structuring hierarchical and parallel pieces of information, enforcing statistical honesty, picturing nouns (maps, timetables?)j and picturing verbs (representation of mechanisms and motion, narrative...). This course is a core requirement for all Visual Communication students. We will look at examples and strategies from several of Edward Tufte?s books and a wide spectrum of visualizations throughout history. Each week, teams of students will analyze data visualizations from New York Times, History Shots and others. There are two shorter projects which introduce basic concepts via typographic hierarchies and quantitative analysis. These are followed with two larger team projects: one print-based visualization of a macro-system, and one screen-based exploration of personal analytics.

This course explores boardgame design as an expression of data visualization and user interface (UI) within a play environment. Teams of students will develop their chosen research areas into fun, strategic, well-crafted integrations of theme, game mechanics and world order. Resource management will provide a framework for developing mechanics, while playtesting and prototyping will drive teams’ iterative process. The only way to truly understand how boardgames work is to play boardgames and analyze the play experience. To this end, much of our in-class time will be spent 1.) playing existing games that highlight certain game mechanics and levels of difficulty, and 2.) repeatedly play-testing each others' evolving games. How does each game immerse us? Do their themes come forth and flow through the game mechanics? Are they fun, unpredictable, balanced? How does each one situate its players in a point of view? How does graphic design facilitate immersion and theme and an understanding of structures and actions. Lectures, team presentations, and individual team meetings with teachers will supplement game play. The course will begin with one-week studio exercises focused on theming, game mechanics and visualization techniques for boardgames. Over the semester, teams of students will research, design and prototype a Eurostyle boardgame of their choosing. The final will include a prototype of the game, rulebook, and overview teach video.

How will knowledge pass through this moment in time? This studio course takes up the `publication' as an epistemological framework and set of design principles spanning print and new media. Teams of students reimagine the structures and inflections of existing experimental books, manuals, catalogues, archives, and museum collections, creating app-based interactive incarnations. Students will design and prototype using contemporary tools, such as Adobe XD and Principle. While designing, beta-testing and presenting for phone and tablet, the class will focus on the conceptual parallels, analogues, and tensions between print and new media design as to aesthetics, structural possibilities, inspiration, and context. Students are given lists of material to reimagine, including: experimental books such as An Anecdoted Topography of Chance or Jung?s Red Book; reference manuals such as How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive; archives such as Art and Architecture magazine; and artifacts such as the Rosetta Stone or Nutshell Studies. This course also asks students to analyze and present to the class a variety of apps and websites from publishers like Touchpress, Tender Claws, Washington Post and the national parks service. Students will work in teams of three to concept, design, produce and present two interactive app prototypes for touch tablet. Students will also analyze existing apps and present their findings.

In this team-taught studio course, students have the opportunity to explore a specific design problem in the student's area of concentration and develop it thoroughly and comprehensively as a thesis throughout the semester. Work is carried out independently and discussed once a week in a critique seminar format. Students formally present their work at various points throughout the semester. Final work is presented to an outside panel of industry professionals. Students must submit a proposal to be admitted to Advanced Studio and have the signature of one of the two instructors to register for this course. Open to seniors and post-baccalaureates only. Readings and research materials for this class are largely directed by each student?s thesis and supplemental material suggested by the course instructors and classmates. Materials are presented to the class alongside work progress for discussion. Students should expect to produce a body of work consisting of finished pieces during the semester and a presentation detailing their process and trajectory, to be presented in a culminating course critique with an outside panel.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.