Topic

academia

A collection of 25 issues

Stagnate or innovate?

Are universities where designers go to die? Sometimes I worry about this, especially when one of my old professors writes to me and says about trading the commercial design pursuits for academic ones: “It’s hard to stay relevant.” But then, the next Sunday, I read this article in the

Back to school.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. And this is the hallway where I’ll be spending the immediate future: the Visual Arts department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. See all those posters? Student work. But my crit walls will be filled with iPad

On N.W.A., truth in journalism, and free speech.

I don’t know why I am so interested in social justice. I don’t know why I am so sympathetic to the plight of African-Americans. I think it started when I was in grad school and read Random Family while researching the War on Drugs for a design project.

On touching data.

Touch interface design guidelines dictate that the more simple and limited the gestural language used to control a system, the better. Use only these gestures when designing for touch devices: slide, pinch, zoom, tap, double tap. The reasoning goes that first of all, there are little to no affordances in

On Learnability Theory and gestural interfaces.

How do humans learn to speak the language of machines? In order to communicate with computers, interfaces embody a set of semantics and grammar that humans must learn in order to command the machine to do his or her bidding. Microsoft Gestures, Manipulations, and Interactions Learnability Theory attempts to define

What would Gropius do? On how design education is like a bloated OS.

Multicultural typographic interpretations of the 2011 Icograda Design Education Manifesto. In her essay “Relevance In a Complex World” for the 2011 Icograda Design Education Manifesto, Meredith Davis speaks about agility and resilience in education systems, imploring design educators to embrace change, flexibility, and modularity: Platforms for resilience: Creating flexibility and

Isabel Uria: Paper Engineer.

The term paper engineering refers to artists and designers who work with precisely detailed paper constructions to create pop-up and interactive books and other objects. Paper engineers combine cutting, folding, pasting, and assembling to make a predetermined shape and form that can be contained flat within a closed condition, but

Jocelyn Robert: Experimental Sound and Video

One of the coolest parts about my job is that I sit on a committee to pick visiting artists and designers for our lecture series each semester. I get introduced to talented sound and video artists like Jocelyn Robert. I especially love his Ground Station project: Ground Station produces music

On a designer embracing the fine arts.

I hate it when people call me an artist instead of a designer. But maybe I shouldn’t. Because art + technology, art + engineering, art + science, art + design are what lead to disruptive innovation. I often view art as perplexing and navel-gazing, wondering in vain what its purpose is. For me,

How Steve Jobs got me through grad school.

Will is an engineer. I am a designer. When we first got married, I was a Mac, he was a PC *. My goal was to change that. In February 2004 while I was finalizing grad school applications, he switched, ditching his ugly Dell for a 17″ aluminum PowerBook. He used