Digital Commons Network^™

Returning To The Third Place: For Mental And Spiritual Well-Being, Angela M. Creason

Masters Theses

This study investigates the impact of Generation Z’s (Gen Z’s) digital immersion and post-COVID lifestyle patterns on their interpersonal relationships. The literature shows that anxiety, continuous online connectivity, and pseudo-relationships developed through social media hinder their ability to form and maintain face-to-face connections. Using case studies, visual analyses, and research-grounded graphic design, the project examines how Gen Z utilizes coffee shops as a hybrid space for work and selective social interaction. The analysis shows that this generation is open to in-person engagement when environments feel convenient, low-pressure, and aligned with their values. These findings inform the development of Percolate, a …

Silent Invaders: Stopping The Spread Of The Spotted Lanternfly, Sloane Z. Hall

Masters Theses

The Spotted Lanternfly, an invasive insect originating from China, has rapidly spread across the United States, harming agriculture, forestry, and surrounding ecosystems. It’s destructive feeding behavior severely impacts grapevines, fruit trees, and hardwoods, which directly affects wine production, farm communities, and local environments. The aim of this research was to investigate the biological, ecological, and economic stakes of the infestation, as well as the methods currently used to monitor and control its spread. Specifically, it examines how communication frameworks, design practices, and extension approaches influence producers’ adoption of recommended Integrated Pest Management (IPM) protocols. Through the research, a literature review, …

Exploring Visual Literacy Strategies To Improve Interpretation, Critique, And Artmaking In A High School Art Classroom, Abby Stallbaumer

Art 895 Research Papers

Visual literacy is an essential competency for secondary students as they navigate a world saturated with images and visual media. Intentional instruction of visual literacy enables students to analyze, interpret, and evaluate artworks while developing critical thinking and communication skills that transfer across disciplines. This Mixed Methods research study explored how the implementation of varied visual literacy strategies affects students’ ability to interpret, discuss, and create artworks in a high school level art classroom. Over a period of four weeks qualitative and arts-based techniques will be used to evaluate the outcome of the research through field notes from the researcher, …

Art Foundations In Student Digital Game Projects Within Online Learning, Isabelle John

Art 895 Research Papers

This qualitative study examined how traditional art foundations are reflected in student-created digital game projects developed within an online learning environment. As digital game-making becomes increasingly prevalent in art education, students engage in complex, visual decision-making that extends beyond technical execution. Through the analysis of student digital game artifacts, this study explored the presence of foundational art concepts, such as composition, color, spatial organization, visual hierarchy, and visual culture. Using a constructivist qualitative approach and visual artifact analysis, the study identified patterns in how art foundations were applied within online learning contexts.

Findings indicate that while art foundations were consistently …

Constructed Care: Stitching Patient Journeys Through Quilting And Healthcare Design, Ashley D. Moberly

Graduate Final Projects

This thesis investigates how healthcare environments can better support patient experience through improved wayfinding, spatial clarity, and human-centered design strategies. Contemporary healthcare systems are often complex and difficult to navigate, placing additional cognitive and emotional burdens on patients, particularly those traveling from rural and underserved regions. Drawing from both professional experience in healthcare facilities planning and a comprehensive review of literature on spatial perception, wayfinding, and patient-centered care, this research identifies key challenges in how patients' access, interpret, and move through healthcare environments.

In response, the study introduces the Quilt Logic System, a conceptual framework that translates principles derived from …

Illustrated Children's Book: "The Adventures Of Mr. C", Anne-Marie Wadsworth, Joanne Whitcombe

Honors Capstones

"The Adventures of Mr. C" is a children's book written by Anne-Marie Wadsworth and her grandmother, Joanne Whitcombe. It was illustrated by Anne-Marie Wadsworth, 2026 NIU graduate, as her honor's capstone project. The book was presented at NIU's 2026 Visual Communication Senior Show on April 30th. It is a christian-inspired true story about an abandoned bird (Mr .C) that becomes part of Joanne's family. Mr C. flies away from his home and is lost for many months, until Joanne experiences a timely, unexpected miracle that only God and his angels can take credit for.

Unity In Design: Life As An Immigrant In The Built Environment, Julia Sainz

Interior Design Capstones

In the United States, Latinx immigrant communities often face social and systemic challenges that contribute to heightened levels of stress, anxiety, and displacement. While the built environment plays a critical role in shaping emotional and social well-being, architectural and interior design practices frequently overlook the lived experiences and cultural identities of these populations. This study explores how culturally responsive and participatory design strategies can foster safety, access, and empowerment for Latinx immigrants. By examining the intersection of migration, identity, and the built environment, this project proposes design as a tool for community resilience, cultural expression, and holistic well-being.

Spring 2026 Title Of Blueprints For The Mind: How The Design Of Public Built Environment Impacts The Mental Health Of Youth, Faith Holton

Interior Design Capstones

Blueprints for the Mind investigates how public built environments influence the mental health of youth, with attention to rising rates of anxiety, depression. Through a multidisciplinary approach bridging environmental psychology, public health, interior architecture, and usercentered design, this project identifies the environmental factors shaping young people’s emotional well-being. Findings reveal that sensory conditions such as lighting, acoustics, layout, materiality, and predictability directly affect youth comfort, focus, and emotional regulation. Field research with students (ages 13–15) and an expert interview with licensed social worker Carmen Ortega-Cline further demonstrate that overstimulating, crowded, or unclear environments heighten stress, while semi-private, naturally lit, and …

Artistic Embodiment: The Role Of Art-Based Research In Communicating Disability Experiences, Juliana Scheopner

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Visual art has immense potential to communicate complex experiences of disability. As a disabled artist, I am interested in how disability has been portrayed in artwork, particularly in how other disabled artists choose to represent their lived experiences. Through art-based research, this study explores how disabled artists have used portraiture to depict their disability. Selected art includes work from Frida Kahlo, Deborah Padfield, Persimmon Blackbridge, and the author. Following an analysis of literature, selected artworks, and salient disability scholarship, emergent themes were identified. The focus on the complexity of disability experiences demonstrated the importance of considering a wide range of …

Foundations Of Art: Materials, Methods, And Meaning, Elizabeth Mellott

Art OERs

This course provides an introduction to the tools, materials, and processes used across a wide range of artistic media. The focus is on understanding how different materials shape the way art is created and experienced. Attention is given not only to what artists make, but also to why particular media are chosen to communicate specific ideas, emotions, or perspectives. The physical qualities of materials, the methods used, and the cultural meanings attached to them all influence artistic decision-making.

The course surveys several major categories of artistic media. Pigment-based practices include painting, drawing, and printmaking, where color and mark-making form the …

Sae What? Magazine - Issue 1 - 2026, Sae University College

SAE What? - Student Magazine

No abstract provided.

Innovator - Fall 2025

Innovator

06 - Message From the President

08 - Time Machine

10 - News

24 - Nureed Saeed ‘99

28 - Cell Mates

32 - Robert C. Sergott, MD

36 - Working Smarter

42 - Question & Innovate

44 - Alumni Impact

48 - Leeor Gal ‘19

50 - Class Notes

56 - In Memory

58 - Trivia

Branding Through Semiotics, Minimalism, & Branding Psychology: The Eurekafit Brand, Torri Salem

Theses

This paper examines how the combination of minimalism, semiotics, and branding psychology work seamlessly together to create an inclusive brand with an emotionally resonate visual identity system-- a brand that is cohesive and bridges the sub-brands of EurekaFit and Eureka CrossFit. What initially started as a logo redesign of Eureka CrossFit has now expanded into this dual-branding visual system, that communicates approachability, a sense of belonging and fitness, without being intimated, to its audience. This study investigates visual signifiers like color, typography and imagery, through a semiotic analysis and approach. I reduced clutter and visual noise and was able to …

Petals Of The Mind: A Digital Floral Interpretation Of Mental States, Corine D. Arrington

Theses

Petals of the Mind is an applied studio art project that explores the use of symbolic floral imagery to visually represent internal emotional states, specifically depression, anxiety, and ADHD. This project consists of six large format digital posters created in Procreate. Each emotional category is represented by a pair of flowers selected for their symbolic and structural characteristics: Blue Poppy and Black Rose for depression, Tulip and Aster for anxiety, and Honeysuckle and Wildflower Mix for ADHD. These flowers are intentionally deconstructed through layering, fragmentation, and motion cues to mirror common internal experiences such as emotional heaviness, vigilance, cognitive scattering, …

Edges That Touch, Tommi Bonomo

LSU Master's Theses

Gender, a social construct, exists on a spectrum that is shaped by social, cultural, and embodied experience. Edges That Touch examines the instability of gender through the lens of combat sports, focusing on the way the hypermasculine environment abstracts femme identities. Informed by my lived experience, the work investigates the paradox in which empowerment and alienation coexist and destabilizes gender binaries.

Edges That Touch uses experimental graphic design processes and mixed media to recreate the psychological landscape and emotional realities that I navigated as a cisgender woman in the world of combat sports. I use visual techniques that obscure legibility …

Selling The Impossible: A Critical Study Of Nostalgia, Persuasion And Ethical Implications, Francois Elmaleh

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the psychological, cultural and iconic influence of mid-20th-century comic book advertising and its enduring influence on modern marketing. With a concentration on adolescent readership, it examines how advertisements in comics shaped consumerist behavior through aspirational discourse, gendered address and emotional manipulation. Through literature reviews, visual analyses and case studies—such as the Charles Atlas bodybuilding campaign, Sea Monkeys and X-ray glasses—this research investigates the rhetorical strategies and ethical ramifications of advertising to children.

The objectives are fivefold: (1) to inventory and analyze dominant advertising strategies employed in comic book ads, (2) to explore how they reinforced cultural and …

Brute Force Branding: Variations & Repetitions Of The Almighty Dollar Banknote, Rui-Long Monico

Artl@s Bulletin

Abstract: This paper examines the U.S. dollar as a global brand and mythic icon, revealing how its stable aesthetic asserts dominance and infiltrates daily life. Through visual analysis and global comparison, it shows how banknotes are battlegrounds where art, identity, and geopolitics collide—currency as a weapon of soft power and cultural hegemony. The dollar’s visual inertia—ritualized, repeated, reappropriated—cements its supremacy as a symbolic force, where repetition enforces authority and variation sparks both resistance and conformity. Banknotes emerge as tools of statecraft and vessels of collective memory, as reflected in the author’s bespoke creation accompanying this study.

Résumé: Cet article analyse …

Art Heals Chicago: Murals On The South Side Of Xicágo, Brenda Rodriguez

Pomona Senior Theses

Mural making as a collective art form is a tool for healing, resistance, and cultural pride in Black and Brown communities. With my focus being on Mexican American communities on the South Side of Chicago, specifically Pilsen. I make ties to indigenous motifs and the history of Mexican Muralism to show how it has evolved and how murals in the 1960s and 70s were used for healing from violence and the revolution. Murals that include images that reference the Mesoamerican past and preconquest life are a powerful way of reclaiming one’s identity and asserting one's indigeneity in the present and …

Designing Intentionally: Color Psychology In Graphic Design, Savannah Jons

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This study will explore the role of color in graphic design and the psychological processes behind viewersʼ emotional and perceptual responses. Research will investigate how color psychology is influential on design, how the selection of color guides design appeal, and how it can alter commercial messaging.

Representation And Cross-Cultural Mediation Of Contemporary Ink Art In New York’S Primary Art Market: A Case Study Of Fqm Gallery, Mengtian Melody Yang

MA Theses

This study investigates the representation and cross-cultural mediation of contemporary Chinese ink art within New York’s primary art market. Using Fu Qiumeng Fine Art (FQM) as a core case study, the research adopts a qualitative methodological framework that integrates document analysis, visual analysis, and semi-structured field interviews to examine how the gallery operates as a cultural intermediary. It explores how FQM defines and frames “Contemporary Ink Art,” selects and presents artists, and translates the aesthetic and philosophical foundations of this tradition for Western audiences. The findings show that FQM positions ink art not merely as a medium-based practice but as …

Will You Let Me In?, Irene Piazza

Theses and Dissertations

Imposed borders are everywhere: The borders created by stanchions during bureaucratic lines, the borders of a country, the borders of a page. Humans are forced to follow them. Borders are imposed structures that dictate a way to move, a way to write, a way to be confined. But what happens when those borders aren’t followed? What happens when someone decides to walk through the stanchion belt by crouching under it or sliding its buckle open? What happens if a person decides to walk outside of the paved pathway? What happens if someone crosses a border or writes beyond the page …

How Expert Designers Foster Expertise: A Study Of Professional Visual Communication Practice, Grant Ellmers, Marius Foley, Juliana Peloche

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

While design expertise has been widely studied across domains such as industrial design, engineering and architecture, visual communication design has received limited attention. Earlier research examined novice designers’ development of reflective capability, and its link to expertise progression. This study extends that work by investigating how expertise manifests and is fostered among experienced designers within visual communication design practice. Through in-depth interviews with five experienced designers (20–35 years’ industry experience), this qualitative case study employed thematic analysis grounded in Schön’s reflective-practice theory and Lawson and Dorst’s (2013) design-expertise model. This approach enabled close examination of how reflective processes, mentoring structures …

Understanding Barriers To High School Teen Self-Expression, Connection & Inclusion., Susana Estes

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates the invisible barriers that prevent high school students from expressing their identities, forming meaningful connections, and experiencing a sense of belonging within school environments. Drawing on research in adolescent development, school climate, psychology of belonging, and participatory design, the study identifies structural, emotional, and social factors that contribute to student disconnection. Through a review of key theorists and three case studies, the research reveals that teens need structured opportunities for safe self-expression, visible affirmation of their identities, and accessible spaces for reflective interaction. In response, this thesis presents a research-informed interactive design solution: a two-part installation titled …

Design With A Purpose: An Introductory Faith-Integrated Graphic Design Textbook For Christian Higher Education, Rosealine Lemette

Masters Theses

This thesis project addresses the absence of faith-informed graphic design curriculum available to Christian higher education programs creating a curricular gap that limits students’ ability to draw meaningful connections between their profession and Christian identity. The proposed solution in this project is an introductory graphic design textbook that combines foundational design theory, historical context, and hands-on skill building from a Christian worldview. This educational resource will guide students and faculty to view their profession as a divine calling, engaging in the creative process as an act of worship while developing an ethical and spiritually grounded design process. The comprehensive literature …

Exploring The Potential For Data Storytelling Practices In Healthcare Communication, Shafaq Zehra, Naomi Jacobs, Dan Richards

IASDR Conference Series

The key challenges associated with the design of doctor-patient communication mainly include time constraints, cultural and language barriers and health literacy of the patients accessing care. The implications of the gaps in effective doctor-patient communication may lead to lack of compliance to treatment, weakened rapport building and lack of trust in the healthcare services. This paper qualitatively explores the context of the challenges associated with doctor-patient communication from a health care provider perspective. The main themes identified by in-depth interviews with clinicians were issues related to lack of trust, validity of patient’s information, lack of patient engagement and empowerment, and …

Designing For Interprofessional Collaboration: Integrating Data And Communication In Health Care Teams, Tzu-Ling Huang, Ko-Chiu Wu

IASDR Conference Series

As holistic health care gains momentum within medical systems, interdisciplinary collaboration has become crucial to improving the quality of patient care. In practice, however, cooperation among professionals is often hindered by fragmented information, differences in professional language and logic, system discontinuities, and the lack of structured processes. This study investigates the needs and challenges of information integration and task tracking in interdisciplinary teams through qualitative interviews and a card-sorting method with seven types of healthcare professionals— physician, nurse, medical social worker, clinical psychologist, dietitian, physical therapist, and dentist. The findings highlight issues such as insufficient information integration, fragmented goal-setting and …

Place Branding And The Dynamics Of Co-Creation: An Activity Theory Study Of A Creative Marketplace In Chengdu, Mengge Huo, Angus Donald Campbell, Mairi Gunn, Michael Davis

IASDR Conference Series

This paper introduces the concepts of creative marketplaces, place branding, and co-creation. Focusing on Jiaozi Market in Chengdu, China, the authors use third-generation Activity Theory (Engeström, 2001) and Digital Ethnography (Pink et al., 2016), to map the roles of market organisers, vendors, and consumers. This reveals contradictions between place branding motives and outcomes across the activity system - tools, rules, community and division of labour - within the creative marketplace. The findings suggest that although creative marketplaces promote a perception of curated place branding, stakeholder participation often remains symbolic, resulting in disjointed and in authentic experiences for all involved.

Human-Ai Collaboration In Interior Design Education: Gpt-Assisted Creativity And Innovation, Mariam Al Baker, David Kirk, Mark Blythe

IASDR Conference Series

How AI tools, specifically prompt-based image generators, can be used in interior design education to support early-stage concept development has been under explored. To address this, we conducted an exploration of the role of AI in interior design practices. Our study focused on how these tools can assist, rather than replace, students in generating spatial ideas. The research involved a case study with 20 interior design students across different academic levels who engaged with a GPT-based interior design assistant and a custom-designed worksheet to explore design prompts and reflect on their process. The study highlights the importance of interpretation, adaptability, …

From Screen To Street: Insights For Autonomous Mobility Design From Movies, Xinyan Yu, Tram Thi Minh Tran, Marius Hoggenmüller, Martin Tomitsch

IASDR Conference Series

Fictional media, such as movies, offer a rich speculative lens for exploring people’s interaction with and the societal implications of future technologies. In this paper, we apply this lens to the domain of autonomous mobility, mapping a speculative landscape to inspire the design of future autonomous mobility systems. We systematically examine 36 autonomous mobility systems depicted across 31 movies and construct a speculative landscape that reveals how these systems are imagined in terms of interaction design, agency, and their embeddedness within broader societal contexts. This analysis offers design researchers a resource for inspiration and critical reflection, highlighting opportunities to reimagine …

The Impact Of The Visual Fidelity Of Externalized Ideas On Participants' Cognitive Actions And Co-Evolution: Focusing On Generative Ai-Supported Multidisciplinary Co-Design, Yeongsong Lim, Younjoon Lee

IASDR Conference Series

This study investigated the impact of the visual fidelity of externalized ideas, particularly when supported by generative artificial intelligence (GAI), on cognitive actions, co-evolution, and knowledge exchange in multidisciplinary co-design workshops. Although sketching has long served as a mediating artifact for collaboration, empirical validation is required to understand how GAI, as a visualization tool, reshapes design cognition and collaborative dynamics. A multidisciplinary co-design workshop was conducted, and data were collected through pre- and post-workshop surveys, video recordings, and post-interviews. A protocol analysis was conducted based on the participants’ verb aliz at ions during the workshop sessions, and the survey data …