Graphic Design Commons^™

An Escapist Utopia, Sara Eh Denney

Theses and Dissertations

As an active pursuit of avoiding excellence, my work acts as a space for failure, play, experimentation and imperfection. This document and final installation acts as a pause along a lifelong journey of object-making, creation, and spirituality. My work, specifically my working practice, rather than any one object or moment, is an escapist utopia for myself. My work is the process, the journey, not the ending or the completion of any one thing. The repetition, distortion, and production that I engage throughout my working practice acts as a spiritual exercise of meaning—making through creation. I fall deeply in love with …

Straight Through My Heart, Raul A. Aguilar Canela

Theses and Dissertations

Straight through my heart is an exhibition that explores the concept of heartbreak as a socio-political phenomenon. Through the affect of sadness the thesis analyses the way in which subjects are formed under cognitive capitalism. Paying particular interest to the collateral effects of neoliberal culture —hyper-stimulation, self-exploitation, competition, and obsession with productivity—and the pathologies they create —depression, anxiety, body aches, fatigue— this work shifts the burden of sadness from the individual to the community. By doing so it proposes heartbreak as a public feeling.

Reimagining Abandoned Community Space In A Post-Pandemic Environment, Julia Drooff

Scripps Senior Theses

Earlier this year, the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the demise of the Great American Mall by forcing temporary and permanent closures across the country. The low-end malls that remain are dealing with crippling debt and the closing of key department stores like JC Penney and Neiman Marcus[1]. With only super-luxury malls thriving, many of the standard malls set up in the eighties are just abandoned parts of a community. So, what should happen to these abandoned malls? And what role does that space now play in the post-pandemic community? Since malls began to shut-down pre-Covid-19 did the need for …

Gratitude, Elizabeth Reimer

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

Gratitude is a concept that has impacted my life in an enormous way. Along with being a key element in this exhibition, it blends in well with me as a person and my personal life. I am extremely blessed to have the heritage that I do from both sides of my family. Gerdy’s Community Market was built on that same family concept. The gratitude celebrated after a harvest with family and community is the foundation that Gerdy’s was built on. I wanted each of the pieces I designed to support that same foundation and highlight the culture surrounding my family’s …

Combat Artist, Delvin Goode

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

The integral bond that unites the American citizen with the selfless men and women of the Armed Forces will be strengthened through my juxtaposition of uncommonly complementary crafts. “Combat Artist”, featuring high-quality ceramic mugs, unique packaging, pristine painted panels, and kindred graphics will bridge a gap that enhances relationships between these two worlds through a shared love of country and shared culture. The resultant works create fantastic windows into my military life communicating messages full of humor, patriotism, and love. I aspire to masterfully unite ceramic techniques with proven principles of design distributed across all mediums within my work, culminating …

With Love, Greta Conley

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Greeting cards are an important piece of communication that people don't often utilize as much they can. This paper explores many aspects of these small paper cards including the looks of the current greeting card market, an average consumer's relationship to greeting cards, and how professionals create them. With technology and social media as a distraction, it can be more difficult to remember to send cards, and their great impact can be forgotten. The project got its origins after reflecting upon how much greeting cards have had an impact on my own life and wondering how they affect the lives …

Cleo’S Crown: An Original Illustrated Children’S Book, Rachael Mion

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

As children, our imagination is extremely vast and unpredictable, and the

books we read influence how we view the world. As we grow, many people slowly

lose the ability to get lost in their imagination. With Cleo’s Crown, I wanted to bring

back some of the magic that inspired me as a child, and the art is heavily influenced

by physical representations of magic and creativity. This project was created to spark

others imagination and remind them of their childhood. Even after the book and my

exhibition is completed, I am determined to share and hopefully publish Cleo’s

Crown. I …

Typemaking, Rebekah Sorensen

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The objective of this project is an exploration of typemaking—an analysis including the development of letterforms to the various methods in printing these forms, including the rich history behind these developments—which ultimately results in the form of communication known as graphic design. Research begins with the history of print processes and evolving typographic styles, providing a comprehensive understanding of how typography has been applied as a means of communication, and the benefits to society throughout time. The information is then applied through the digital design of letterpress type, followed by the physical production of these pieces using a range of …

Bridging The Gap: A Guide To Help Design Students Become Design Professionals, Sarah Westholm

Honors Program Theses

In talking with many professional designers in the last year, I have noticed how much time they spend talking about their process, research, and planning. All of this comes before the visualization of the actual design. Design is truly becoming more human-centric and is used as a tool to solve problems. This means that many things must be considered beyond color, typography, and composition. Traditional design education gives students the tools they need to know how to create visually successful designs. However, students also need to understand how to use those technical skills and apply them to a design that …

Visual Infrastructures Of Covid-19 Messaging, Julia Ross, Claudine Jaenichen

Art Faculty Articles and Research

Infecting more than two hundred and nineteen million people internationally as of September 2021, SARS-Cov2 (COVID-19) remains a major health crisis despite the availability of vaccines in many countries and publicized guidance on effective preventative measures (WHO, 2021). To combat the spread of the virus, governments worldwide have found themselves relying on their ability to exert control over health behaviors in public and private spaces. Visual communication, which includes both graphics and text, is an integral component of how these behavioral advisories are communicated to the public. Authorities translate scientific information into digestible designs for the public to achieve effective …

Yolkkh: The Story Of My People, Amna Zelimkha Yandarbin

Theses and Dissertations

The name of my project is: Yolkkh, The Story of My People. With this project I present a series of scarves each one bearing an illustrated scene in order to tell a story – my story and the story of the Noxci people. Noxci are the people who are referred to as “Chechens” by Russians and are generally known by that title. As a Muslim, I have witnessed the way Western media tend to dehumanize my community. In order to contrast this dehumanizing process, I thought that telling the story of my family would help reverse Islamophobic tendencies and raise …

Playing At The Crossroads Of Religion And Law: Historical Milieu, Context And Curriculum Hooks In Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This chapter presents the use of Lost & Found – a purpose-built tabletop to mobile game series – to teach medieval religious legal systems. The series aims to broaden the discourse around religious legal systems and to counter popular depiction of these systems which often promote prejudice and misnomers. A central element is the importance of contextualizing religion in period and locale. The Lost & Found series uses period accurate depictions of material culture to set the stage for play around relevant topics – specifically how the law promoted collaboration and sustainable governance practices in Fustat (Old Cairo) in twelfth-century …