The Miami Graphic Design Program capped off the 2011-2012 year with a reception in honor of our BFA senior thesis exhibition. Each year, I work with the seniors to develop their projects. This year’s theme: Junction: Where Design Meets Social Change. Many thanks to our 2012 thesis critics: Mike Weikert and Ellen Lupton. Good luck [...]
Participatory Design Workshop at University of Tennessee
Last week I traveled to Knoxville, Tennessee, to lead a participatory design workshop with University of Tennessee juniors. The assignment: Find 20 people who have something unusual in common. Construct a flexible identity and supporting system through which the 20 users, and others like them, can coalesce as a community. The original 20 users supplied [...]
Miami Design Students Collaborate with Poets from the University of Mississippi
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 [...]
Type Bits: A Modular Experience
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. [...]
Design Double Feature Book Launch
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 [...]
The Lolita Cover Project
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 [...]
Design for Social Change—Miami seniors are ready to go. Thanks, Andrew
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 [...]
Back from Sunny Phoenix. Pivot: the 2011 AIGA National Conference
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 [...]
Custom Editions of Your Favorite Novel
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 [...]
Design for Social Change During Senior Year.
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 [...]
Helen Armstrong
Designer. Writer. Educator. Helen Armstrong views design from across the spectrum of a practicing designer, a college professor and as a published author. Currently she works an assistant professor of graphic design at Miami University. In addition to teaching, Armstrong also works as principal and creative director of her company, Strong Design. Her first book, Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field (Princeton Architectural Press), came out in spring 2009. Her second book, Participate: Designing with User-Generated Content , co-authored with Zvezdana Stojmirovic, is now available. To learn more about design at Miami University, visit graphicdesignmiami.org
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