Browsing by Subject "Graphic design"
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Item Data visualization as craft(2011-05) Rowe, Cathryn Elaine; Shields, David, M.F.A.; Hall, Peter, 1965-For my MFA, I have decided to explore data visualization not as an automated technology but as a craft—a systematic and precise practice done entirely by hand. Though the craft-based approach is not appropriate for all types of data creation and visualization, as an investigatory tool it grants a level of access and intimacy lacking in computerized analyses. I discuss the limitations and benefits of this type of approach, as well as provide an overview of key influences and precedents. I have also included select projects developed over the course of my studies that highlight my use of data visualization for a range of subjects and intents, including reading piano sheet music more easily and investigating a photographer’s compositional process. The report concludes by projecting how this craft-based approach for data visualization may be integrated with an automated method.Item Design toward dialogue : a graphic design methodology(2004) Paredes, Xochitl Angela; Taylor, Chris, 1965-This report emphasizes the social design aspect possible in graphic design. It focuses on creating a dialectical environment where critical thinking can begin and flourish. A methodology of graphic design is presented as it relates to social design. How this methodology was created is discussed by presenting what is contrary, what is analogous to it, as well as, introducing positive design influences. Terms relating to this methodology are defined. Finally, works by the author are submitted as examples of how this graphic design methodology functions.Item A generative methodology for reframing visual culture(2013-05) Willett, Alice A; Lee, GloriaThe purpose of my experimental research in the MFA Design Program has been to develop a working methodology to transfer into a professional graphic design practice upon completion of the program. In my time here, I have built a body of work that clearly expresses my intention, and developed a solid comprehension of the field of design, its discourse, and where my work is situated within it. The intended audience for my work, which tends to fall in the blurred space between design and art, are consumers of image and pop culture in the field, gallery, and public sphere. The projects I’ll present in this report will provide a context for the process by which I arrived at a personal methodology and a narrative for how I came to think about my work up to this point.Item The impotent toolkit : challenges and limitations of co-design for societal value in Southeast Louisiana's landscapes of African American dispossession(2015-05) McDowell, Robin Boeun; Lee, Gloria; Tang, Eric; Lewis, RandolphThis report details a reflexive practice that lies in the emerging field of co-design for societal value. This territory marks a move from user participation to equal empowerment of stakeholders--that is, designers, users, and other project constituents defining objectives and working through design processes together via a shared vision for more just and sustainable ways of living. The body of design work examined in this report is a combination of traditional products of graphic design, participatory design methods, and ethnography. Initiated around a physically demolished and institutionally repressed history of enslaved Africans in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, the value of this work is not found in formal qualities of designed objects or in a groundbreaking process model, but in detailed documentation of consistent reflection on the role of the designer as outsider. This broadened analysis offers an expansion of the repertoire of co-design case studies.Item Into the known(2011-05) Inge, Courtney Lynn; Catterall, KateThis report details a design process that generates new forms from mundane materials and tools. By utilizing a structure of limitations to establish artificial constraints, making becomes a sort of game where the designer must negotiate the rules and objects in order to achieve a solution. The best results come from setting up explicit limitations about the type of manipulation permitted, establishing design objectives, specifying the material or tool to be explored. Throughout the process of designing a structure of limitations affords the designer a critical distance from the assumed uses of common materials and familiar tools resulting in new forms, and often unexpected results. Self-assigned parameters help the designer gain control over rules and constraints established by clients.Item Reading the city : East Austin(2012-05) Ogden, Rowan Matthew; Shields, David, M.F.A.; Olsen, DanMy research trajectory focuses on creating graphic interpretations of the relationship between the urban landscape and the populations that reside within it. I use the term reading the city to indicate the process of selecting a focal point and connecting relevant information to it. By creating experimental mappings that connect the physical experience of the East Austin to relevant information contexts I seek to develop a series of design strategies that are appropriate for fostering a heightened awareness of the dynamics that shape the urban environment. In this context, graphic design functions as the primary tool for expressing these connections. This report explores the development of the reading process by summarizing conceptual precedents and eleven personal works, which were undertaken to explore the viability of the approach.Item Se Busca : graphic design as a tool to shift attitudes about violence in Chihuahua(2014-05) Cano, Mariana; Lee, GloriaSince 2006, the city of Chihuahua, Mexico has been engulfed in a wave of drug-related violence that has resulted in thousands of murders, kidnappings, and "disappearances." Because bloody headlines sell newspapers, violence dominates the mainstream media, which contributes to residents' sense of hopelessness and helplessness. In response, in my graduate work I have investigated ways in which I can use the persuasive tactics and appearance of mainstream commercial graphic design to effect social change: specifically, to shift Chihuahuans' attitudes about their city. Through three interventions (The Graffiti Workshop, the Riberas school identity, and the Se busca project), I have attempted to encourage civic participation, recognize positive contributions within the community, and build an economic engine around local heroes. By doing so, I hope to reverse the prevailing belief that individuals are powerless to confront large, complex social issues. In addition, I hope these projects demonstrate some of the ways in which graphic designers can effectively apply their design skills to social as well as commercial problems.Item Some versions of the fragment, 1700-1800(2014-08) Schneider, Rachel Marie; Bertelsen, Lance; Cohen, Matt, 1970-; Moore, Lisa L; Baker, Samuel; Pagani, KarenSome Versions of the Fragment, 1700-1800 examines the eighteenth-century literary print fragment archive to redefine the fragment as a genre typified by its materiality. Eighteenth-century fragments included not just sentimental poems, but novels, satires, and political pamphlets. They are both long and short; written by famous and anonymous authors; canonical and unknown. This dissertation, in recuperating the eighteenth-century fragment’s rich variety, offers a taxonomy that includes three versions of the fragment: the unintentional, the intentional, and the complete. Examining the fragment in this way not only provides categories that can help us better understand how fragments fit within various social and cultural conditions in the eighteenth century, but also how these ways of understanding the fragment can help critics account for its evolutions today. Previous analyses of the literary fragment have emphasized its metaphorical qualities and its formal dimensions. This dissertation argues that the genre is defined no less by its materiality: prefaces, punctuation, and page arrangements are the common constitutive elements shared by all three versions of the fragment. By paying attention to the eighteenth-century fragment’s materiality, critics today can better account for the fragment’s role in the period’s generic developments, as well as its evolving literary marketplace.Item The speaking world, tarab and iPod alchemy : The Sensuous Terrain, for mixed chamber ensemble and percussion(2010-05) Stamps, Jack W.; Sharlat, Yevgeniy; Antokoletz, Elliott; Pinkston, Russell; Grantham, Donald; Perzynski, BogdanThe Sensuous Terrain, a work for violin, clarinet, piano, cello and two percussionists is a 28-30 minute commission for the SOLI Chamber Ensemble of San Antonio. The goal of the work is a hybrid, or reconciliation, of Sufi devotional music and Western, jazz-inspired impulses and continues my interests in weaving pop idioms through a post-modernist canvas. It is also reflective of my ongoing research and exploration of the application of extended graphic design to score mechanics and construction. The work is inspired by the melodic structures, phrasing and voice-exchange concepts found in the music of the late Pakistani composer and singer, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The preliminary plans for the piece included the piano prepared to mimic the sounds of traditional Middle Eastern percussion instruments such as the dumbek, a tabla-like instrument. This idea quickly evolved into the incorporation of two percussionists whose parts consist of nearly all Middle Eastern instruments or their closest Western equivalents. These percussion parts, which are notated in a purely Western style and evoke many traditional Middle Eastern rhythmic modes, are symbolic of the aforementioned “reconciliation” of the Eastern and Western styles found in the piece.Item Visual rhetoric : a critical practice in image communication(2013-05) Barela, James John; Lee, GloriaThis report provides an understanding of the complexities involved in communicating through imagery. I've asserted in my research that the dissemination of images has changed significantly because of recent digital technologies. Social networking, in particular, has allowed for an intertextual web of communication to be created by exponentially increasing the visibility of images. By bringing these recent developments into my work, my design practice has focused on advancing social and political equality by exploiting digital reproduction. As part of my toolbox in image communication, the report focuses intently on two general methods of production: image-text relationships and visual tropes. By using these methods, I have been able to establish a critical practice that highlights the most recent possibilities in advancing social and political equality in the age of digital reproduction.