Y Announcement

Overview

Juniors will present their work for review on Wednesday, May 25. It’s a great way to end the year for all of us, by allowing a closer look at each student and a wide view of the curriculum. Students receive critical feedback from faculty other than their instructors and can receive some of the best on-the-spot advising for future study (areas of improvement/strengths). Think of the review as your final Design Studio project for the year, a unit that carries the question: “how does one present 9 months of work in 10 minutes?”

Your Design Studio instructors may have specific advice, but below are the Department’s expectations of the review. This document is shared with faculty before entering the review.

Summary of goals for the review

• — To draw out strengths and weakness within a student and in the curriculum at large
• — To allow for a holistic view of a student’s body of work
• — To allow students to meet and hear from faculty other than their instructors
• — To advise students on future courses, internships, areas of interest
• — To force a student to present his/her body of work in a clear manner and a short amount of time (an important design problem in its own right)

Advice on what and how to prepare

• — Bring all of your work from this year. What you see as weak or irrelevant may really help instructors understand your trajectory. Consider how your presentation may emphasize the primary projects from each course while giving instructor’s access to the process or versions. We want to see your stronger and weaker moments in order to help guide you as best we can.
• — Include non-school work if it helps to complete a picture of your year. For example, if you spent months on a project for a student group, show it!
• — Show non-major studio work (wintersession) and be prepared to talk about Liberal Arts courses and how they fit into your GD work
• — Visit your room in advance to plan out your presentation. Arrive 20 minutes before your scheduled time to hang up work on walls and lay out projects on tables. Borrow a friend’s laptop if you need more computer displays. Use the projector if needed. Bring pushpins or other supplies that you need. Bring a laptop or plug in to a projector if available to show digital work.
• — You may need to reprint work or revise work to fit your presentation. Digital work may be best printed given the short time period.
• — You may ask a classmate or friend to be present to take notes or to hear the conversation. The review is considered closed except for peers you invite or faculty who are assigned or wish to be present.

The reviews go quickly so we will start and end on time. A list of student date and times will posted on a Notice (available online as well). Ask your DS instructor if you have any questions. Best of luck preparing your work and closing out the semester.

Apr 7, 6:30pm, CIT 103

Vinca Kruk of Metahaven will be giving a lecture and workshop.

More on http://mthvn.tumblr.com/

Our first visiting designer lecture of the semester is this Thursday.

February 25, 6:30pm
Metcalf Auditorium, Chace Center

Michael Rock is a founding partner and Creative Director at 2×4 and Director of the Graphic Architecture Project at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. At 2×4, he leads a wide range of projects for Prada, Nike, Kanye West, Barneys New York, Harvard and CCTV. Before starting 2×4, he was co-founder of Information incorporated in Boston. From 1984–91 he was Adjunct Professor of Graphic Design at the Rhode Island School of Design and since 1991 he has been a member of the design faculty at the Yale School of Art where he holds the rank of Adjunct Professor. In addition, he was a fellow at the Jan Van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, The Netherlands, and a contributing editor and graphic design journalist at I.D. Magazine in New York. His writing on design has appeared in publications worldwide. He holds an A.B. in Humanities from Union College and a M.F.A from the Rhode Island School of Design. He is the recipient of the 1999/2000 Rome Prize in Design from the American Academy in Rome and currently serves on the board of the Academy.

Michael’s classic essay Designer as Author (1996)

Unit 14 schedule process proposal

Relevant quotes

“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, “Emigre,” 1999, # 51

“Designers are the mediators of our daily experience. The easier my compost bucket is to use, the more comfortable my ride on the bus, and the more appealing my reusable grocery bag, the more likely I am to participate in environmentally sound practices. Designers cary a heavy responsibility, but at the same time they can offer our future the greatest gift.”

Gavin Newsom, Lt. Gavernor of California [in: Just Design by Christopher Simmons]

“Now is the time for designers to step up and use what they know how to do to help shape a positive future for people and the planet.”

John Bielenberg [in: Just Design by Christopher Simmons, p. 1]

“Why ‘social design’ here, now? What is society today, in certain parts of the world, such that it is not unusual to think that designers might have a role to play in reforming society? What is design that designers think reformed sociality is the outcome, if not also the means, of what designers do?”

Cameron Tonkinwise, Director of Design Studies, Carnegie Mellon University, ‘Social Design and the Age of Neoliberalism’, [in: Social Design Futures, HEI Research and the AHRC by Leah Armstrong Jocelyn Bailey Guy Julier Lucy Kimbell, p. 3]

“Social design cannot be a subspecialty of the design profession (like graphic design, package design, product design, service design, and so on), but is a larger activity that depends upon design in all its forms–thought, processes, tools, methodologies, skills, histories, systems–to contribute to the needs of larger society. It implies at once an attitude and an approach to life: as such, it can help us frame how we want to live in the future. It is therefore inherently pragmatic and results-oriented, simultaneously humble and ambitious, and fundamentally optimistic and forward-looking.”

William Drenttel [in Designing for Social Change by Andrew Shea, p. 7]

“This is not to suggest that so-called ‘good’ design is necessarily better design; bus schedules, product labels, freeway signs and ballots are all critical elements of our designed society. In these experiences there can be no righteousness. They are, importantly, neutral. Nevertheless, they require skillful design—just as the most mundane products and incidental experiences must also be designed. Collectively these fabricate the visual landscape of our culture.”

Christopher Simmons, Just Design p. 4

“Creative for the sake of being creative is fine, but here, the creative has to serve the mission.”

Diana Berno, [in: Just Design by Christopher Simmons, p. 186, 2011]

“I want designers to rewrite the rule book, cut back on the idle talk and engage the world as creative citizens.”

Emily Pilloton, [in: Just Design by Christopher Simmons, p. 76, 2011]

“We need to learn and see designers as creators in the service of society, where — according to contemporary sociology — ‘everybody is a designer’” …

Ezio Manzini, Alternatywne światy, “2+3D” nr 13, p. 52

Useful links

https://vimeo.com/6536249

http://creativemornings.com/talks/jennifer-daniel/1

http://www.emigre.com/Editorial.php?sect=1&id=13

http://www.designishistory.com/1960/first-things-first/

http://mappingsocialdesign.org

https://mappingsocialdesign.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/social-design-report.pdf

http://www.howdesign.com/design-creativity/design-change/

Tampopo
Babettes Feast
Supersize Me
Food, Inc.
Big Night
Chocolat
Eat Drink Man Woman
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and her Lover

And just FYI, via the RISD library, MOVIES!!!
Entire criterion collection + more!
http://0-risd.kanopystreaming.com.librarycat.risd.edu

NYT/ BEES and FOOD
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/business/energy-environment/a-dangerous-cycle-in-food-production-bees-pollination.html

KARA WALKER – On Subtlety
http://creativetime.org/projects/karawalker/

In preparation for Hammett’s Unit on Monday:

Using this week’s info design exercise as inspiration, please gather data around some aspect of your daily food rituals: where you eat, what you eat, where it comes from, who you eat with, etc. — and create a visualization for Monday. On the wall by 1:10.

Size is open, media is flexible, but please make something tangible that can be on the wall or on the table.

Please read in preparation for Felton Workshop

https://infoactive.co/data-design