"Currents: Heterotopias" asks how we as designers critically engage with and challenge conventional power structures and ideologies in our environments. Participants will be invited to consider, explore, imagine and generate systems for speculative, shapeshifting, and liberating spaces and experiences. Beyond a solutions-focused tool, in this course, Graphic Design will be approached as a mode of inquiry and advocacy. The curriculum involves studying alternative histories in theory, art, and graphic design, with a focus on activism, gender, sexuality, and culture. Students are encouraged to create work that acknowledges the limitations of solutions, questions the reliability of ideologies, and appreciates nuanced thinking. The course's ethos, 'designing the impossible,' reflects a commitment to exploring alternative structures and independent production methods, aiming to cultivate more inclusive, reflective, and diverse spaces. Throughout the semester, students will undertake experiential, site-specific research, including visits to archives, events, and exhibitions. They'll engage with philosophical, theoretical, and critical texts, applying this knowledge in self-directed, research-driven projects. Covering various communication design lenses like 'Classical Design,' 'Design Thinking,' and 'Computational Design,' students will create projects that question traditional design norms and explore expansive aesthetic subjectivities. The course allows students to collaborate on a wide array of projects based on their interests, including publications, posters, garments, websites, and videos. These projects aim to amplify diverse narratives using design as a tool. Students will have the opportunity to delve into the interaction between otherness and form, contributing to the development of new histories, practices, and pedagogies.

While designers may wish that the size of their canvases was limitless, in reality, the larger the image, the slower it travels through the digital ether. By contrast, as Hito Steyerl has argued, a smaller, compressed image is made for circulation: You can download it speedily, it takes up little server space, requires little ink, and can be texted or displayed on a cell phone screen with ease. How, though, do designers go about altering their work so that it moves more readily through these different channels? In this course, we will examine compression as an essential component of all communicative acts—after all, one compresses every time one fits a letter to an envelope or uses an emoji instead of typing out an entire word. Through readings in media theory and a series of design exercises culminating in a self-directed project, students will learn to treat compression as a core component of their design practice.

Artists have long ago used the practice of chance to generate work that is less reliant on control. However, chance is not necessarily used in design practice because the key goal is to produce solutions posed by a problem in efficient ways. In this class, students will explore strategies to expand their thinking in unpredictable ways by engaging in chance operations to generate ideas. The quality that makes design work stand out is its provocative point of view that elicits a positive response from others, including the client. This Currents class aims to develop the designer’s subjective voice in order to lend their work distinction. Design that suppresses that voice becomes merely a dry exercise in problem-solving. Projects include The Designer As A Cultural Nomad—a process of looking critically at a familiar yet often unfamiliar environment, eventually developing a relationship and understanding of what was initially foreign territory. As we evolve, we continually assess our role and place in the world. With this process, the students are given an alternative perspective on the role of design... that it is not merely a way to sell a product, but an opportunity to enlighten, pose questions and interact with, and understand the world. This course is taught by Lucille Tenazas, Henry Wolf Professor of Communication Design. Her work is at the intersection of typography and linguistics, with design that reflects complex and poetic means of visual expression. A cultural nomad herself, she is originally from the Philippines, having practiced in the United States for close to 40 years, a trajectory that included living in San Francisco, Rome, Italy and New York. Lucille is an authority in the evolving state of design education and has conducted workshops throughout the United States, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

Typesetting—the arrangement of letters into words, words into lines of text, and lines of text into paragraphs—is a fundamental practice in typography. This research studio will explore interventions in the technology of typesetting with the goal of creating new visual forms or ways of working. The course is organized around three areas of inquiry: How does programming enable new ways of approaching con- ventional typesetting? How can alternative interfaces suggest new conceptual models for thinking about the arrangement of language? How does the malleability of text on screens allow for more interactive or dynamic type compo- sitions? The course will combine collective research into historical and contemporary precedents and self-initiated projects exploring new ideas and techniques.

“Cut” – a part or quantity of text deleted or omitted. “Copy” – an imitation, reproduction, or transcript of an original text. “Paste” – to insert copied text or images to a surface. In this course, students will draw inspiration from late 19th through early 20th century American print media, by cutting, copying and pasting from historical references. The course will provide an overview of select design works spanning from 1865–1965, to showcase the evolution of typography in the public sphere during this 100 year period. A critical focus of the class is centered on the evolution of typographic form, as it was adapted for a variety of social and political contexts. Students will have an opportunity to explore multiple strategies for design construction, that encompass appropriation, photocopying, scanning, pattern-making, collage and détournement. Through this engagement, students will be asked to think conceptually about historical typographic material in the making of new experimental posters (broadsides), handbills (flyers), rudimentary motion graphics and interactive websites. Students will be encouraged to work across print and digital modalities to produce unconventional design forms.

This course consists of a series of three workshops, which explore contemporary positions in Communication Design, taught by specialists / working professionals from industry. Each workshop is 5 weeks long and examines a specific topic in detail. Topics include (but are not limited to) type in space; digital typography and prototyping; and design systems. Further details of the individual workshops will be posted soon. Students are expected to engage in all three workshops and must be present for the duration of the semester.

This course consists of a series of three workshops, which explore contemporary positions in Communication Design, taught by specialists / working professionals from industry. Each workshop is 5 weeks long and examines a specific topic in detail. Topics include (but are not limited to) type in space; digital typography and prototyping; and design systems. Further details of the individual workshops will be posted soon. Students are expected to engage in all three workshops and must be present for the duration of the semester.

In the current media display landscape, design has to be expressed via multiple channels: Print, Digital (for Desktop, Tablet, Mobile), and native social formats (1:1, 9:16). Each medium has to maintain their identity across platforms through carefully considered visual and typographic systems. How do you create a core campaign idea and concept that can be carried through different visual systems? By drawing from prior knowledge in typography and interaction, this studio course explores the principles and contexts of graphic design concerning message delivery across diverse visual mediums and channels, while ensuring an authentic viewer experience. Students will grasp the significance of constructing and experimenting with advertising campaign frameworks that tell cohesive stories or “campaigns” across numerous platforms simultaneously. Beyond visual interpretation, the course delves into translating content into conceptual frameworks.

This course consists of a series of three workshops, each explore contemporary positions in Communication Design, taught by specialists and working professionals from industry. Each workshop is 5 weeks long and examines a specific topic in detail. Topics of the individual workshops will be posted as they become available. Past workshop topics include a survey of visual culture of 2010s, voice commands and interfaces, generative identity systems, speculative platforms, typography in and out of buildings, and what makes a bad design. Students are expected to engage in all three workshops and must be present for the duration of the semester.