Art and Design Commons^™

Mobile Exhibition System, Sanford Jillian Columbus

Theses and Dissertations

Through the development and design of a Mobile Exhibition System (MES) in this thesis, I will demonstrate the benefits and possibilities of a flexible and mobile system within an exhibition environment. A flexible system will be able to adapt to a wide range of content, while at the same time, maintaining a synergy between its form and function. By the reuse and reappropriation of shipping containers as the exhibition envelope, the goal of mobility can be achieved, reaching out to those who might not otherwise experience learning through an exhibition environment.

Design By Accident, Mengfu Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

Accident is a metaphor for life. From an arbitrary point in time, we potentially preview the entirety of existence. There is a Chinese idiom called “ blessing or bane,” which implies that a misfortune may perhaps soon turn into a blessing. Focusing on accident as a design method implies making the best out of a bad situation. An accident reveals invisible circumstances and potentialities in the world, both familiar and unfamiliar. Looking into the unpredictable world, I can begin to release my control, take a breath, and see what might happen if I do not fight the situation. I am …

Crafting Authenticity, Allison N. Schumacher

Theses and Dissertations

Authenticity is what we want from the world around us, from others, and crucially from ourselves and what we make. As it relates to graphic design, I define authenticity as a perceived match between form and purpose. For the designer, its quality is found in the process of simultaneously developing a concept and crafting the design/object.

Forming Process : Design Through Layered Visual Systems And Multiple Collection Methods : A Thesis, Jen Magathan

Masters Theses

"Do not hide the structure, celebrate it in the form" ; "Approach design from multiple points of view."

These adages, so important in my architectural training, reverberate with intricate practicality in my work as a graphic designer, both as a way of building my design and as a means of developing a design process which explores multiple ways of organizing content through visual systems. Forming Process is defined by three conditions: celebrating the visual systems which organize the design, archiving content from multiple ways of collecting, and creating work by which the process of design is implicit in the design …

In Pursuit Of Harmony: Calligraphy & Typography, Feifei Fan

Theses and Dissertations

Chinese calligraphy and Western typography have been evolving for around five thousands years. During this time, they have developed quite different characteristics. Compared with the geometrical form and precision of Western printing types, Chinese calligraphy features abstract shapes and spontaneous strokes. These differences result in a gap that prevents a harmonious and organic relationship between them. This project explores the possibilities of combining these two historical visual systems, demonstrates specific methods and approaches for creating compelling formal relationships, and endeavors to establish a friendly, organic and harmonious dialogue between Chinese calligraphy and Western typography. The outcome of this project is …

Vernal, Jason Orvis Dilworth

Theses and Dissertations

Culminating with a dream, this project transverses theoretical and geographical boundaries with explorations into the message-carrying potential of video, sound, performance, print, and web. Stories and content are extracted from an autobiographical history of one small western town turned boomtown. That town, the center from which the project emerges, is Vernal, Utah.

The Dismissive Actually, Alexander Egner

Theses and Dissertations

This project is about giving in to the impulse of ideas. My mind is a little messy and cluttered, swirling with bits of stimuli. The spark of an idea happens when the bits collide. I prefer not to initiate or control the process so much as keep it fed and active. Through graphic design, I bear witness to these ideas, giving them form as a series of visible, tangible objects. Viewed comprehensively, the work establishes an ongoing chronicle of my creative life and mind.

Design For Conspicuous Transit, Peter Bain

Theses and Dissertations

My creative project explores design for transit advocacy; aimed at shifting a car-dependent society into one where transit helps meet climate change, energy, and land-use challenges. It incorporates my research into aspects of designing for transit, an understanding of urbanism in Richmond and New York, and an appreciation of planning.

Modes Of Participation: Co-Creative Approaches To The Design Process, Carissa Henriques

Theses and Dissertations

This project explores the notion of participation within the graphic design and problem-solving process. Through projects using generative tools and collaboration, I explore ways to instigate controlled participation from designers and non-designers. I observe and document how the methods and means of participation affect the creative process during these projects.

The Stand, Kelsey Boyer

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Concept Statement

The Stand is based on the concept of creating a new alternative source of information and news specifically for the South Side community of Syracuse, New York. The new publication will improve upon the existing small-format local newspapers, creating a vibrant new media source. It will focus exclusively on the people of this community and serve as a visual connection for the members of the South Side. Its monthly production will create an awareness of recent events and happenings of the community that currently often go unheard and unseen. This will in return help community members become a …

Syracuse Grows: Grassroots Communications, Sarah Marshall

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Small budgets, overextended staff, and inaccessibility of design software can prevent non-profit organizations from having successful communications. This project is an examination of sustainable communications through creating a marketing system for Syracuse Grows, a grassroots network cultivating a just foodscape in the city of Syracuse. The goal was to provide a successful communications program for Syracuse Grows that represented their needs, reflected graphic principles, and promoted the organization. But more importantly, this plan was designed so that it can be updated and utilized following the completion of this project.

The five requirements for this plan were: (1) to develop a …

Find Meaning Make Meaning, Karen Stein

Theses and Dissertations

Employing the designer William Morris as a source of inspiration, this project seeks to explore the call for nature and beauty as a part of our lives. Moreover, it interweaves the necessity for experience of the sensual world (the five senses) with the cerebral world (a requisite to igniting the internal imagination)—a concept embodied in the form of the book. It advocates a redefining of the book as an imagination sculpture (the external and the internal) reflecting this new definition.

The Open Road, Bryan Condra

Theses and Dissertations

In our journeys on the open road, we travel through a landscape of visual imagery composed of patterns, rhythms and a spectrum of changing colors. Our previous experiences, mental and physical attitudes and expectations, shape our perceptions. By visually interpreting and presenting my experiences of the journey on the open road I hoped to tell a story of how the open road energizes the creative spirit. My goal was to explore how the landscape is altered by motion and speed as we pass through it, and how the journey can be experienced in various ways. I wanted to investigate and …

Human Behavior Centered Museum Guided Tour System, Yenmin Chen

Theses

As new technologies appear, many devices or tools become more and more powerful. New technology also gives us more options to choose from in our daily lives, not only in ways used for school, but also with the devices used to surf the Internet. Certainly, we have more variety available in the various aspects of our lives, such as entertainment, education, work etc.--but new technology brings with it more problems, too. If new technology doesn't come with new thinking, life may not be better than before.

Some designers focus on human factors too much; they forget to consider how people …

Self-Reference Through White Space In Graphic Design, Can Birand

Theses and Dissertations

In the graphic design, successful use of white space provides the designed object with a strong reference to its material quality and internal structure. Showing the paper breaks the wall between the design and the viewer, and gives the audience a better understanding of the construction of graphic design. White space is devoid representation, which leads the work to become completely honest about its materiality. This project explores different methods and processes for creating aesthetic/conceptual integrity in graphic design by using white space as a primary device.

After August: Museums As Mirrors, William Pinholster

Theses and Dissertations

The After August Museum collects and exhibits an open, user-generated body of content. Its primary objective is to help heal the post-Katrina Lower Ninth Ward community. It is respectful and considerate of the area's established traditions, present concerns, and future goals. The museum assumes multiple shapes and plays multiple roles as it acts as the center of the transitioning community.

Making Time, Christine Coffey

Theses and Dissertations

We are living in an age where the quantity of information has exceeded its quality. No doubt the digital and information revolutions have provided the world with countless positive improvements, but they have also increased the speed at which we live and work to the detriment of the heath of our world. This project explores ways in which designers can aid in an effort to slow down in order to reinvigorate a more sustainable graphic design product.

Typography As Performance: Bringing The Stage Into The Design Process, Ann Ford

Theses and Dissertations

Graphic design is historically a visual language consisting of text and image composed for the purposes of sending messages in print format. The voice of graphic design is typography—structuring and arranging letter forms into visual language. Over the past two decades, new communication formats such as motion and interaction have frequently been related to performance. My intention, however, is to explore how performance can influence typography in two and three dimensions, and even in digital environments.

Fundamentals In Nature, Andrea Quam

Theses and Dissertations

This project explores innovative methodologies for design education. It is an investigation of teaching design fundamentals in an outdoor classroom.

Voice By Design: Experiments In Redistributing Media, Bizhan Khodabandeh

Theses and Dissertations

In this project I conduct two experiments in redistributing media power and reflect upon how successful they were. The experiments include a poster campaign specific to Richmond and a project dealing with educating people about guerrilla media techniques.

Argent Sound Recordings: Multimodal Storytelling, Matthew L. Klimas

Theses and Dissertations

ARGENT SOUND RECORDINGS explores the integration of visual, written and sonic elements to tell a story. "The Silver Bell," a fairy tale, is delivered through the internet – providing users an opportunity to experience and interpret a constructed narrative under the guise of an independent record label website.

Design With Benefits : Combining Healthcare Step Programs And Design Tools To Make A Difference In Community Health, Emily E. Frye

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

I am aware that there is increasing emphasis being placed on designers pro actively designing services as opposed to simply creating artifacts. Looking past “selling” and moving toward enabling solutions that are for the greater good, this paper makes use of ethnographic contexts of communities involved to guide design. My thesis project designs a service plan and a program with artifacts. It is aimed at helping rural West Virginia Clinics intervene with unhealthy patients to help them prepare for a pro-active lifestyle. This program, named BeneFIT, was designed with user-centered methods and incorporates the Transtheoretical Model (TTM) developed by James …

Gaining Attention And Encouraging A Response: My Criteria For Successful Graphic Design., Kerry Scott Jenkins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As a graphic designer, my goal is to clearly express my clients' message to their intended audience. Based on the diversity of my clients and their products and services, finding a consistent style in my projects might be difficult, although there are usually some typical traits. With examples of my work and dialogue from leaders in the graphic design industry, I intend to point out a common thread that runs through all successful design projects, regardless of the projects' designer, era, or individual design elements (e.g., typography, copywriting, color, layout, imagery). Success comes from graphic design's ability to gain attention …

Tolerance: Challenge, Perception, And Social Stigmas Defined Through Visual Communications., Ursula Moore Bryant

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My explorations and journey through life have led me to discover a connection in my work and responsibility as a visual communicator. My objective of communicating challenge, perception, and social stigmas through informed stories of individual lives is to provoke questions and spark moments of awareness in viewers. With this supporting manuscript, I hope to inform about my motivations through time including my personal, artistic, and historical influences. I will define graphic design as a fine art through the evaluation of artistic movements. I also intend to discuss design as a language and build a case for social awareness. Evaluating …

Catalysis., Mary Barton Nees

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses the process of discovery that led to her Master of Fine Arts exhibition at Slocumb Galleries, East Tennessee State University, from March 19 to 23, 2007. Investigations in printmaking, mixed media, and symbol are highlighted. The work for the thesis show consists of nineteen, 30" hand pulled works on paper. All works are oriented vertically and floated in the frame. Of this collection, thirteen are monotypes, four are collographs, and one is a collage. Insertions include intaglio, brayer marking, encaustic wax, paper, oil paint, pen, and sumi ink. Topics included are the artist's thinking into the nature …

The Artist's Hand In The Digital Age, Jamie B. Mahoney

Theses and Dissertations

For the first ten years of my career I practiced my craft — advertising art direction — exclusively by hand. To help me in the design process itself, I hired specialists. For typography, for instance, I chose a firm I admired in Minneapolis where the typographers would hand cut the film negatives letter by letter.

In those days — the 1980s — each area of design had master craftsmen. I can remember one day walking into a warehouse with thirty-foot ceilings. On the back wall I saw a large horizontal canvas. The artist was suspended from scaffolding and covered in …

Dynamic Force, Motion, And Life In Digital Design., James Michael Livingston

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this paper is to explore specific works that I have created as it relates to digital art and design. My works include abstract, organic objects that exist within surrealistic environments. First, I explain the dynamics of the imagery that has emerged from my career in broadcast television, my coursework in the Department of Art and Design at East Tennessee State University, and the works of fantasy, surreal, and abstract artists. In conclusion, the images discussed impose an idea of abstraction and surrealism with a sense of force, motion, life, and dynamic action.

A Place Apart: Myth And Sacred Space, Diana Hazel

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

“When old myths are lost, new ones are needed. Myths flourish and fade and die, but new myths are born, old ones are resurrected, and hybrid forms combining new and old emerge when times change or cultures mingle” (Graves: 1959, 9).

The original concept of this project was to create a CD-ROM database of mythology from various cultures and time periods throughout history. The first few months of my work were carried out with this end in mind. Since then, the project has taken a more personal turn. Instead of presenting the mythologies of other people, I have created my …

Artwork: Art At Work In The Gdso, Carolyn Louth

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Legibility: How Precedents Established In Print Impact On-Screen And Dynamic Typography, Heidi Specht

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The printed word has been commonplace in society for over 500 years; the written word has been in existence for thousands. The primary intent of the written or printed word has historically been to be read. With that goal, rules and formats have developed over the centuries as aids to legibility. Naturally, these guidelines have been developed for the printed, or static typographic page. As our sophistication with and acceptance of technology grows, however, we increasingly turn to the computer or television screen for written information. Additionally, graphic designers and artists are questioning the role of the printed word as …