Undergraduate Fine Arts and Design Spring 2020

Cultures of Making (DSGN317)

Instructor: Orkan Telhan

Cultures of Making (and Unmaking) is studio/seminar hybrid which investigates the designers’ responsibilities towards the environment and the climate crisis. The students work with contemporary technologies— sensors, indicators, sequencers, mapping devices— to learn about different ways to sense, image, and construct knowledge about the physical world around us. The course is divided between different strategies of analysis and design work that show how to act towards pollution, biodiversity loss, and the climate change on individual, communal, and planetary scales. The coursework will involve field trips, design workshops, and interaction with domain experts in environmental sensing and visualization.

Graphic Design with Creative Technologies (DSGN266)

The aim of this course is to introduce student’s to creative ways to use color, typography, and layout across new materials and media, ranging from print to physical objects. Students will explore visual design through a set of assignments and projects that are geared towards exploring the role of design in visual arts, interaction design, media design and architecture. The course introduces a number of design concepts such as content organization, navigation, interaction and data-driven design and show ways to develop new design metaphors, presentation techniques, and imagery using old and new technologies. course is structured as a combination of lectures and hands on workshops where students will have the chance to work both individually and collaboratively to realize their projects.

Functions for Form and Material (DSGN328)

Instructor: Joshua Mosley

This studio course will introduce methods of material selection and fabrication with the goal of developing evocative and effective designs. We will learn parametric modeling techniques that allow visualization to begin before all of the requirements of a design are known. We will implement techniques that allow us to structurally test and optimize forms to be stronger, lighter, to fail more predictably, or to function efficiently. The class will work identify to materials with properties that introduce new structural or conceptual possibilities for our designs. For each project, we will use a broad range of fabrication techniques for metals, natural and synthetic materials. The goal of the course is to develop a creative approach towards learning to work with unfamiliar tools and materials.

Information Design and Visualization (DSGN337)

Instructor: Mahir Yavuz

Information Design and Visualization is an introductory course that explores the structures of information (text, numbers, images, sounds, video, etc.) and presents strategies for designing effective visual communication appropriate for various users and audiences. The course seeks to articulate a vocabulary of information visualization and find new design forms for an increasingly complex culture.

Designing for Mobile, Web and Public Media (DSGN378)

This course introduces advanced topics related to contemporary media technologies, ranging from social media to mobile phones applications and urban interfaces. Students learn how to use new methods from interaction design, service design, and social media and work towards prototyping their ideas using new platforms and media. The class will cover a range of topics such as such as online-gaming, viral communication, interface culture, networked environments, internet of things and discuss their artistic, social, and cultural implications to the public domain.