Art and Design Commons^™

Small Town To The World Wide Web: Designing A Website For A Local Business, Madison Cozzens

Honors Projects

The Raspberry and The Rose is a small business in Medina, OH, and had a multitude of visual communication issues that needed to be solved. But what's an online presence without a website? "Small Town to the World Wide Web: Designing a Website for a Local Business" focuses on fulfilling a local business's need for a strong online presence. It dives into how a user's experience on the website can impact brand loyalty, foot traffic, and overall perception of a business. The ultimate goal of this project is to provide insight into how a non-e-commerce website can impact a business.

Turning The Page: A Design Thinking Approach To Increasing Literacy Advocacy In West Alabama, Justin C. Walters

Masters Theses

Through the problem/solution lens of design thinking, this research critically analyzes the promotional activities and materials used by the Literacy Council of West Alabama (LCWA) to determine their effectiveness in reaching both functionally illiterate populations as well as the fully-literate population aiming to work the advocacy front with this nonprofit organization. Qualitative data was gathered through the utilization of a web heuristic evaluation, as well as the evaluation of current marketing materials for LCWA; these insights were used to guide the design and creation of new print and digital marketing materials for the organization. Results of this research aimed to …

From Eye Sore To Eye Catching: Improving Function And Appeal Of Campus Spaces, Katherine E. Gorham

Senior Honors Projects

An interior space has a lot of power over an individual. It can dictate one’s mood, efficiency, confidence, and more. Most people can recall a time when a room had a negative effect on their mindset and productivity level due to its lack of color, light, or comfort. A functional, well lit, warm space makes for an uplifting and motivating work environment. Throughout my college career, I have encountered several spaces across the University of Rhode Island campus that aren’t the most visually appealing, comfortable, or inspiring, yet they still have plenty of potential. The goal of my project was …

Design For Living Complexities, Peter J. Taylor

Working Papers in Critical, Creative and Reflective Practice

Lectures from a 12-session course that addresses the intersection of design with critical thinking. Design in this course means intentionality in construction, which involves a range of materials, a sequence of steps, and principles that inform the choice of materials and the steps. Design also always involves putting people, as well as materials, into place. This happens by working with the known properties of people, as well as the known properties of material, and trying out new arrangements to work around their constraints (at least temporarily). Critical thinking, as I define it, involves understanding ideas and practices better when we …

Fake Or Visual Trickery? Understanding The Quantitative Visual Rhetoric In The News, Rohit Mehta, Lynette Deaun Guzmán

Journal of Media Literacy Education

In online and video/television spaces, news media discourses incorporate multimodal design as a discursive move capable of steering meaning toward desirable implications. Around the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, while polarized news outlets made their positionality on the candidates obvious, more neutral or central news outlets revealed their preferences through subtle multimodal design choices. One of these design choices is using a quantitative visual rhetoric: persuasive multimodal moves that draw on quantification through visual, spatial, and textual manipulation—involving the choice of data representation, visual images, and illustrations, (im)balance between numeric and alphabetic texts, and general quantitative narrative. This quantitative visual rhetoric …

Hebrew Typography: A Modern Progression Of Language Forms, Shayna Tova Blum

Faculty and Staff Publications

Influenced by studies in traditional Ashkenazi and Sephardi scripts. The typeface had been designed for the printing of the Koren Tanakh, a first edition printed Jewish Bible processed through an all-Jewish collaboration for the first time in centuries. Koren’s project was inspired by the revival of Hebrew initiated by Haskalah writers in the 18th century. Haskalah writers utilized the language and scripts of written and printed literary texts. Influenced by philosophical and political ideologies of the European Enlightenment, the Haskalah explored Jewish identity through language by defining the secular context through traditional Jewish symbolism and narratives. The Zionist movement of …

Retirement Reboot: A Website Redesign, Christina Gillen

Honors Projects

A website could be created with the latest technology, but after a few years it will still need to be updated. This is what happened to Swanton Health Care and Retirement Center’s website. This project is designed to remedy the problem by creating an entirely new website with updated content, images, and interactive features to bring Swanton Health Care’s online presence back to life.

Feminist Theory And Technical Communication, Olivia Duffus

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

This essay explores feminism, socially-constructed norms, and the relationship between feminism and technical communication. It argues that undergraduate technical communication programs should include courses that study feminist history and theories as related to the field, claiming that studying feminist theory will improve user-centered design and broaden students' spheres of influence as professionals.

Usability Simplified: A Basic Guide To Undertaking Effective Usability Testing, Garrison Reeves

Professional Writing and Information Design Capstone Projects

Usability can be complicated but I provide simple guidelines to effective usability. Every product has an intended purpose, and the scope and aim of usability testing is measuring if a product meets this purpose with regards to a user. Testing is used in many fields, but I intend to focus on user-centered interaction design and how to test when designing and developing such a product. I provide a simple head-start to usability testing based off of my research. Usability testing is a technique used for evaluating a product by testing the product on users who are part of the respective …

Through Google-Colored Glass(Es): Design, Emotion, Class, And Wearables As Commodity And Control, Safiya Umoja Noble, Sarah T. Roberts

Media Studies Publications

This chapter discusses the implications of wearable technologies like Google Glass that function as a tool for occupying, commodifying, and profiting from the bio- logical, psychological, and emotional data of its wearers and those who fall within its gaze. We argue that Google Glass privileges an imaginary of unbridled exploration and intrusion into the physical and emotional space of others. Glass’s recognizable esthetic and outward-facing camera has elicited intense emotional response, partic- ularly when “exploration” has taken place in areas of San Francisco occupied by residents who were finding themselves priced out or evicted from their homes to make way …

The Future Of Arabic Music: No Sound Without Silence, Nesma Magdy Khodier Vcuq

Theses and Dissertations

For centuries, Arabic music has been intrinsically linked to Arab culture and by extension bonded to the environmental landscape of the region, reflecting their emotions, moods, and behaviors. Numerous technological advancements in the latter half of the twentieth century, have greatly affected the rich legacy of Arabic music, significantly impacting the natural progression of traditional Arabic musical genres, scales, and instrumentation.

This thesis serves as an introduction to generative methods of music production, specifically music generated through gestures. Through generative music, and its unique ability to map gestures to different musical parameters, music can be produced using computer algorithms.

The …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Aesthetically Designed Maps: Development And Perception, Catherine Wang

Graphic Communication

This research explored the creative element of subway map creation in light of its effectiveness. Printed subway maps, used often for metropolitan cities and areas, are limited in physical dimension and scale, carrying minimal information. The New York, San Francisco Bay Area, Tokyo, Paris, London and Moscow subway maps highlight similar design and abstraction that fulfill the basic necessary elements for subway patrons. Over the years since the first metro map for each city was created, maps have become more simplified by removing physical land features and reference points to make way for expanding and new subway lines, stations, and …

Trends In Logo Design Among Fortune 100 Companies, Juliane Bone

Graphic Communication

Using ten different criteria to rigorously inspect ten logo designs, this paper concludes that conceptuality is perhaps the most important component of a brand’s identity. Graphic Communication students, who are the future of the industry, offered up their conclusions of these logos and the success of the design. With the incorporation of articles and opinions of those in the field, trends in the latest logos are found.

The True Colors Of Trademark Law: Green-Lighting A Red Tide Of Anti Competition Blues, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

The elevation of color to stand-alone trademark status illustrates the unbounded nature of trademarks within the judicial consciousness. The availability of color-alone marks also facilitates the commoditization of color in ways that complicate the development and distribution of products and services that use color for multiple purposes conterminously. The economic case for color-alone trademarks is severely undermined by careful observation of the ways that colors are actually deployed in commerce, which makes it clear that the trademarks of multiple goods and services can utilize the same color to telegraph the same message without confusing anyone or diluting the commercial power …