Art and Design Commons^™

Red Rope Magazine: A Sustainable And Creative Model For A Magazine For Chinese Students In The U.S., Kexin Zheng

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Last year, China surpassed India for the first time and became the leading country of origin of all international students studying in the United States. With the increasing number of students from China, American students are getting used to the amount of Chinese faces on campus, and the growing Chinese community has created a comfort zone for the newcomers to live a familiar life within their native language. However, the fundamental issue lies in the need for a stronger sense of empowerment.

Red Rope magazine, with red symbolizing happiness and rope symbolizing binding, will be the first general-interest magazine in …

The Small Overlooked Hindu Street Temples Of Madurai, Elina Berzins

Honors Capstone Projects - All

When I first walked around downtown Madurai, down its narrow and dusty streets that led into more lanes and alleys, I noticed a trend of small street temples that were usually built outside stores and apartment houses. When I asked an older man who sat next to a one of these temples that was modest in size and consisted of a Ganesha, Hindu elephant god statue, he told me that as a Western woman, I shouldn’t waste my time studying these small insignificant temples. He insisted that I focus on the grand and large Meenakshi Temple, which Madurai is famous …

Suitcase Magazine, Victoria Wolk

Honors Capstone Projects - All

For my Honors Capstone Project, I chose to create an original magazine. Our campus has many publications, but there is no travel magazine for students to contribute to. I decided to create a campus travel magazine, one that would focus on trips in the general area of Syracuse. I want to be a magazine writer and editor in the future, so this project was a great way for me to gain experience in the field.

I asked friends to help with writing some of the articles, taking photographs, creating original artwork, and helping me to design and layout the magazine …

Branding And Web Design For Inkululeko: With Freedom Comes Hope, Allison Clark

Honors Capstone Projects - All

My Honors Capstone Project is entitled “Branding and Web Design for Inkululeko: With Freedom Comes Hope.” I worked with a Syracuse native, Jason Torreano, who recently started up an education nonprofit in Grahamstown, South Africa. This program is called Inkululeko, which, in the local Xhosa language, means “freedom.” The organization seeks to combat the inequalities in education that are a result of Apartheid in South Africa. They operate under the belief that anyone deserves a quality education, and that education is the key to success in a place where people have been denied it for so long.

This project allowed …

Reimagining The Visual Communications Of The Westcott Community Center, Kathryn Jean Marren

Honors Capstone Projects - All

I sought to redesign and reimagine the visual materials produced by the Westcott Community Center, a nonprofit organization that serves the local Westcott area as well as the entire metropolitan Syracuse area. The Westcott Community Center is a venue for classes, dramatic performances, celebrations, community meetings, and more.

The Westcott Community Center has many diverse programs and events and is truly an asset to the community. I wanted to update their materials to convey a sense of cohesiveness as well as a more sophisticated and organized design aesthetic. I redesigned the Center’s logo and volunteer application, created a stationery system, …

Syracuse Spotlight: Building A Greater Performing Arts Community, Alison Rose Mierzejewski

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Syracuse Spotlight is a performing arts magazine created in part to build a stronger performing arts community for the Syracuse University campus. Since the campus lacks any sort of regular coverage of live performance, I wanted to provide a resource to fill this void in student publicatons. For the most part, the coverage was not in depth, and most of the coverage was solely of the work done by the Syracuse University Drama Department.

With the creation of Syracuse Spotlight, I bring to the university community an outlet for respresentation of all performing arts – both of majors and …

What The Health Magazine Redesign, Sarah Glaser

Honors Capstone Projects - All

I was art director for the Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 issues of What the Health magazine, a student-run publication on campus at Syracuse University. To put together the issues I oversaw an entire design department consisting of photographers and graphic artists. Photography assignments often came in late leaving little time for design work, and I did not feel satisfied with the ultimate layout design of the magazine. For my capstone project I took on the challenge creating a final book combining the strongest pieces from both original issues in a redesigned layout. I wanted to overcome the inconsistency that …

Cycling Without Spandex: A Transdisciplinary Approach To Design, Jess Garnitz

Architecture Thesis Prep

"Engaging with other disciplines is important to designers today as the nature of problems and issues are becoming more complex."

"The problem of integrating bicycles into our city streets is inherently a problem that requires transdisciplinary work. This is because of the complexity of the problem and the numerous areas affected through the integration. The problem is like an interconnected web of relations. There are issues relating to wayfinding and understanding how to get from destination to destination, which relate to issues of speed and non-verbal communication."

Gary’S Sneakers: A 3d Animated Short, Kelsey Adams

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Gary’s Sneakers is a 3D animated short that I made with my collaborator, Meghan Grube, for the Honors Capstone Creative Project. It is a narrative featuring three main characters: a teenage boy named Gary and his two sneakers. In this animation the large clash with the small as the lazy Gary finds himself at odds with his sneakers. It is a battle of inactivity versus dynamic movement, as the sneakers fight the sedentary lifestyle choices of their owner.

Based in the world of 3D animated shorts, Gary’s Sneakers was inspired by many other works in the genre, particularly those from …

Visualsthesia: Complex Music Visualization For Live Performance, Tracy Lee Dendy

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Visualsthesia is intended as an interactive visual experience made for the musicians who have influenced my studies while I've been attending Syracuse University. I offer these musicians a gift that I have imagined and created in honor of them, using the medium I desired to grow in. Visualsthesia is a visualization of a live musical performance generated in real-time. The concept is based on Synesthesia, a neurological condition that mixes up the senses. One common type of synesthesia is seeing a color when one hears a note or instrument. Visualsthesia turns that psychological connection between color and music into an …

Lost And Found: Stories From London (A Graphic Novel), Brianna Collins

Honors Capstone Projects - All

My Honors Capstone project falls under the Creative project category. It is a sixty-four page graphic novel entitled Lost and Found: Stories from London. It is a collection of stories and moments from my semester abroad in London in the spring of 2009, when I was a second semester junior. I kept a series of journals during my time abroad, and the content from those journals eventually became the stories that I transformed into the pages of my book.

In essence, the research for my project was my everyday life. From going on weekend trips to other countries like Ireland, …

Gary’S Sneakers A 3d Animated Short, Meg Grube

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Gary’s Sneakers, a collaboration between Kelsey Adams and myself, is a 3D animated short about a young boy and his sneakers. The short features Gary, an unmotivated individual who has no other apparent interests aside from playing video games. Unfortunately, his unused pair of running sneakers are very bored and, upon being inspired by a magazine advertisement, conspire to get Gary up and in action.

To create this, Kelsey and I covered the entire animation production pipeline. We began with a story, and proceeded to create an animatic that further developed and clarified out storyline. We chose to created …

Meet Pig Guy: An Animated Character Study In 3-D, Michael Lebson

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The 3D animation, “Meet Pig Guy,” is an introduction to the character Pig Guy, who I have designed over the past year and a half. Pig Guy is a world renowned super-hero that is enormously successful in his professional endeavors, but has flaws, shortcomings, and imperfections that make him very human. In this one minute and 20 second long animated short, we get a glimpse into his behaviors through a candid situation of himself in his basement. “Meet Pig Guy” presents us with a problem of his, the abuse of his superpower to eat anything he wants.

My work over …

Naked Truth Soap For Men: Brand Identity, Jenna Passmore

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The essential idea of this project is to develop an entire brand identity for a fictional soap company for men that I created called Naked Truth. A brand identity encompasses visual components like logo, color and design aesthetic that help a brand stick in a consumer’s mind. In the real world of advertising, the concept of a brand identity at the forefront of any advertising a company releases. Consumers are inundated with hundreds of ads everyday, so it is important for a company to know who they are and whom they want to sell their products to in order to …

The Stand, Kelsey Boyer

Honors Capstone 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

Honors Capstone 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 …

A Place Apart: Myth And Sacred Space, Diana Hazel

Honors Capstone 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 …