This semester Miami graphic design students from my Print Design Systems class collaborated with graduate creative writing students from Professor Ann Fisher-Wirth’s course at the University of Mississippi. Together they created the first issue of a hypothetical new poetry journal. Ole Miss students first wrote an original body of work and then Miami students developed a poetry journal around the content. The central theme for this new journal was the concept of “connections.” In addition to publication design, Miami students also explored mass customization. Each student had to develop a pragmatic system for mass producing but also individualizing each copy.

From the project brief:

“Publications are traditionally mass produced. Each copy is exactly like the next. Added value comes into play only when an author signs a copy, thereby making it unique. Recently, designers have begun to produce publications which are both mass produced and custom one off pieces. For example, Daniel Eatock’s monograph includes an area on the spine for his fingerprint. Eatock went to the warehouse storing his book and applied the fingerprint to each copy himself. Each copy is therefore unique. Copies that were not fingerprinted could be brought to book signings so that Eatock could literally add his individual touch. Designer Luna Maurer designed a publication in which the page numbers were written in by hand in charcoal. Although the rest of the publication appeared to be a traditional mass produced book, the handwritten page numbers added an individual quality to each copy. In addition to the fact that they were written by hand, the charcoal smeared as the book was handled leading to more customization. In both cases, the human touch fought the anonymity of computer generated design.”

Ole Miss students: Emileigh Barnes, Julie Ann Brandt, Wendy Buffington, Jessica Comola, Joshua Davis, Paul S. Dean, Tim Earley, Kevin Fitchett, Dorothy Knight, Michael Martin Shea, Travis Smith, Joe Zendarski

A sample of the resulting journals

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Sticky Mucky Gooey, designed by Adam Cassidy

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All typefaces are modular to some extent, but in this assignment Miami graphic design sophomores pushed modularity to a new level. The assignment began with each student consulting their cell phone and then sharing their latest text message with the class. The text message content inspired the look and feel for a new modular typeface.

For this project, they used Fonstruct.com , a free online resource.

To read more about the assignment visit: participatorydesign.net

Grace by Beth Hall: Download from fontstruct.com

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Ellyn Bordoshuk : Download font from Fontstruct.com

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CEG by Colleen Griffiths: Download from Fontstruct.com

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Azion by Jake Brennan

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Jane Manchester

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Kristen Gebhardt

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Molly Zilis

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Nick Peltz

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Aaron Retter

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Alex Mazzurco

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Andrea Fiegel

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Ann Schniechowski

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Austin Li: download from fontstruct

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Erik Seyferth

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Erin Riley

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Jarrett Bowling

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Katie Stewart: download from fontstruct

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Kaleigh Pawar

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We Are Almost There by Maria Bell: download from fontstruct

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Messerhaus by Sam Childs: download from fontstruct

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View Book Launch Presentation

In November, MICA graciously hosted a Design Double Feature Book Launch celebrating the release of my new book Participate: Designing with User-Generated Content (Princeton Architectural Press) along with Ellen Lupton’s new book Graphic Design Thinking: Beyond Brainstorming. Book launch highlights included a lively participatory exercise involving modular coasters, a mini-exhibition, and presentations by Ellen Lupton, Zvezdana Stojmirovic, Helen Armstrong, Keetra Dean Dixon and JK Keller, Bruce Willen and Nolen Strals of Post Typography, Lauren Adams, Christina Beard, Chris McCampbell, Ryan Shelley, Chris Hurley, and Aggie Toppins.

I brought 10 Miami design students along for the launch. MICA graciously housed our students. In one fast-paced weekend, students did a whirlwind tour of Baltimore, checked out the MICA MFA program, and helped install the launch exhibition. Miami professor Peg Faimon joined us, as well.

The presentation was video-taped. I’ll share a link as soon as it is available.

Photography by Peg Faimon

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Architect John Bertram asked me to design a cover to be included in his current book project: The Lolita Cover Project. This project is an expansion of Bertram’s essay that published in the Nabokov Online Journal. Marco Sonzogni, a literary translator and lecturer in languages at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, is working with Bertram on the project.

According to Bertram, this book “explores the challenges and limits of representation (and mis-representation), and the relationship of a book to its cover through essays and graphic responses in the form of book covers for Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.

Other contributing designers included: Jessica Helfand, Ellen Lupton, Michel Vrana, Chin-Yee Lai and David Gee.

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Designer and writer Andrew Shea took a break from The Big Apple to lead our design seniors in a Design for Social Change workshop. The workshop grounded students in this growing design focus, as well as supported their efforts to develop impact-oriented thesis topics.

Shea’s upcoming book, Designing for Social Change, provided ample material for discussion.

His strategies for working with community groups to enact this kind of change included:
—Immerse Yourself
—Build Trust
—Prioritize Process
—Confront Controversy

Here are a few of the projects that he used to inspire our students
— pielab.org
—keysforthecity.com
—madeinmidtown.org

Andrew Shea is a graphic designer and writer. He earned his MFA in graphic design from Maryland Institute College of Art, where he advised undergraduate design students who worked with community organizations. Shea has taught graphic design at MICA, Fordham University, and Parsons The New School for Design.

Shea’s writing has also appeared online at Designer’s Review of Books and Core77, where he writes about subjects from sustainability initiatives and unique funding strategies to book and product reviews. He was recently granted a Sappi Ideas That Matter award and his solo and collaborative design work has been featured in Print Magazine, Core77, Adbusters, and Metropolis Magazine P/O/V. Shea values collaborations of all kinds and looks for opportunities to use graphic design in ways that might spur lasting social changes.

This year’s graphic design senior thesis projects will fall under the larger umbrella of AIGA National’s Design for Good initiative. Spring visiting critics will include Mike Weikert and Ellen Lupton.

Andrew’s book is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

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The AIGA Pivot Conference in Phoenix included a bevy of inspiring designers: Katie Salen, Chip Kidd, Terry Irwin, Karl Heiselman, Allan Chochinov and many, many more. Here are some memorable ideas from my time at the conference regarding the future of design:

“From things to experiences
From style to purpose
From finished to beta
From silo to ecosystem
From craft to business”

—Karl Heiselman , CEO of Wolff-Olins

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“Beauty is still something to aspire to. The joy of that can give meaning”

“Bombard yourself with different juxtapositions.”

“Make an internal catalog of what matters.”

“Study things. Look for patterns around you.”

—Jakob Trollback, Trollback + Company

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Advice from Terry Irwin, Head of the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon:

” —slow down
—live in and design for place (locality)
—focus on relationships not things
—ask how much is enough
—think in longer horizons of time
—mindful relation to other
—learn to connect the dots
—adopt new postures”

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“Deep play is rigorous and structured.”

—Katie Salen, game designer and Prof of Games and Digital Media at DePaul University

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Digitizing a text divorces it from a fixed reality. These dematerialized words float in cyberspace waiting for someone—anyone—to assign form. Organizations like Project Gutenberg have made digitized public domain texts freely accessible. Mechanisms like the Expresso Book Machine, courtesy of  NYC’s McNally Jackson bookstore, give users the ability to materialize previously inaccessible out-of-print texts in a matter of minutes.

Miami design students experimented with this new phenomenon in my typography class this semester. Each student chose a favorite classic novel that fell in the public domain, downloaded it from Project Gutenberg and then created his/her own custom edition.

Questions raised by the project were two-fold:

1) How can designers—or any member of the public for that matter—take advantage of this new text accessibility? What does it mean to publication design when each reader can produce their own custom layout?

2) What is the future of the book? If the majority of texts move to a digital form, how will physical books be redefined? Will they become treasured artifacts? What unique opportunities do physical materials like paper and ink provide a designer?

Sample Student Work:

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, design by Katie Stewart

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A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, design by Erik Seyferth

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Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne, design by Jarrett Bowling

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Grimm Fairy Tales by The Brothers Grimm, designed by Sam Childs

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Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen, designed by Colleen Griffiths

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Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, design by Andrea Fiegel

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Check out the rest of the projects  here.

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We’ve been busy preparing for the 2012 senior year. This year, thesis projects will have a general theme of “Design for Social Impact.” To support this concept, we are bringing in exceptional speakers/critics to work with the seniors. (photo of Ellen Lupton shown here)

Andrew Shea will come in October. Andrew is a designer and writer located in New York City. His new book Designing for Social Change: Strategies for Community-Based Graphic Design will be out this fall. He is going to do a workshop with seniors in Peg’s class to help formulate thesis concepts. He’ll also give a lecture about the general topic of designing for social change and, hopefully, be inspirational to all.

In the spring we have two fantastic critics coming.

The first is Mike Weikert. Mike is director of the MICA’s MA in Social Design and Center for Design Practice and a graphic designer with a thriving professional practice. He runs Weikert Design, a graphic design studio, as well as Small Roar, a line of graphic baby shirts, with his wife Stephanie. He is also partner of Piece Studio, a socially focused design initiative. The previous co-chair of the College’s graphic design department, Weikert was creative director at Atlanta-based Iconologic and served as a design consultant to the International Olympic Committee. Mike is also a Miami University graphic design alum.

Mike will serve as midterm critic for thesis projects. He will bring with him a wide range of experiences to share and, just as importantly, he is lots of fun.

The final thesis critic will be Ellen Lupton. She is curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City and director of the Graphic Design MFA program at MICA. An author of numerous books and articles on design, she is a public-minded critic, frequent lecturer, and AIGA Gold Medalist.

For those of you unfamiliar with Ellen, she is one of the top designers/writers/critics in the country. She will critique final projects and give a lecture for all the design/art students.

We are all excited to get this year started!

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Using the identity signage template from p.86 of our new book Participate, Zvez and I created our own marks.

(left to right) Helen Armstrong , Zvezdana Stojmirovic

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It’s here. My new book, Participate: Designing with User-Generated Content, is now available (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011). The book’s companion website is participatorydesign.net This book, co-authored by MICA professor Zvezdana Stojmirovic, looks at ways that designers are engaging users in the creation of their work.

As non-designers busily create, designers too must get creative. Prime players in contemporary culture, designers understand that major paradigms of production and distribution are shifting. More and more they are asked to create tools, templates and resources for their clients and other users to implement. They need ideas for harnessing user-generated content while maintaining their own status as professional designers.

Participate considers historical and contemporary models of making that provide just such ideas. Of particular interest are designers who use systems thinking to establish carefully regulated structures through which other users might create. Part theoretical exploration and part how-to manual, Participate challenges designers to transform audiences into users and completed layouts into open-ended systems.

In my own classroom, I find the discussion turning increasingly to ways that students can encourage user participation in their projects. Prospective employers want to see some experimentation in this direction. Participate would make a great textbook for generating fresh discussion in a graphic design or interactive media class, but it also has a wider appeal—students, young professionals and mature practicing designers. Participate addresses the following crucial question: how can designers lead the new breed of widely distributed amateur creatives rather than be overrun by them?

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Participate includes interviews with Steven Peterman, Daniel Eatock, Adam Michaels, Eric Husband. Aaron Koblin, Jonathan Puckey, Mia Cullin, Tamara Maletic, Dan Michaelson, Ije Nwokorie, Andrew Blauvelt, Bruce Willen , Nolen Strals, Keetra Dean Dixon, Luna Maurer, and Karsten Schmidt. It also profiles work from Miami University students and students from MICA.

Special thanks to all the designers who contributed work to the book.

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