culturalboundaries

excerpt: From Bruce Mau Design

Bruce Mau, of the design firm BMD, has been busy teaching kids how to be better design citizens at the Academy for Global Citizenship. This is a pilot school located in Chicago that helps students think of diverse methods to spread design to impact their local communities.

Mau has co-authored a book with OWP/P and VS that explores the link between how we learn and where we learn – the physical environment. Italian educator Loris Malaguzzi is called the Third Teacher (by adults and peers). The book examines the relationship between the physical environments in which kids learn, and the knowledge, insight, abilities and joys they gain.

As part of an ongoing series sponsored by NY chapter of the AIGA, Pablo Medina recently presented student work from his Experimental Type Design class at Parson School of Design where he has taught for more than ten years. The project titled, “How Can Type Help Haiti,” was presented at Museum of Art and Design in NYC. Medina’s students showed six projects to an audience of design and industry professionals, at the end of the presentation the audience voted for the best of the six groups. “A Small book for Heros, was voted the most effective project. Now, Medina’s  next step is to get this project in front of  UNICEF in hopes to get it produced. One big suggestion from the audience was for Pablo to identify other non-profit foundations to get the other five projects produced.

As reported on Black Design News:

Call to Action: Students respond Graphically to the Haiti Earthquake

by Steve Jones

We were all shocked and saddened to bear witness to the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti January 12, 2010. After seeing the aftermath, I knew, as a designer and instructor, I had to respond.

I always regretted not doing a project with my students in response to the U.S. invasion in Iraq. I knew after the Haiti quake, I couldn’t stand by on the sidelines—the event demanded a graphic response. Upon returning from my Winter Break, I assigned the students in my Typography class (San Francisco State University), the task of designing a response to illustrate the aftermath of the earthquake.

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This experimental project was from my Visual Process class at Fashion Institute of Technology. Students explored a set of learning processes combining imovie, garage band that utilized video techniques to create a visual narrative project designed with icons, symbols and visual images. They used ipods as a device to first record sound, then import it into garage band to create video solutions. The final projects were created as quicktime movies.

Featured above is the work of two students Nori Inoue and Brian Aquaria who worked as a team to create a project that documents the identity system of three different Olympic Games.

Featured student work from A Fading Tradition
Figure 1: Two solutions for tikam tikam (a game of chance). Packaging for a t-shirt concept store by Han Zi Rui (left). A mix-and-match system for Singapore character figurines by Bryan Lim (center & right)

Iridescent: Icograda Journal of Design Research is a peer-reviewed online journal, inviting researchers and scholars world-wide to submit papers and essays for publication on site. The aim of the journal is not only to select high quality research and make it available for a broad international audience, but to establish a benchmark for design research in the process.

Iridescent was established in keeping with Icograda’s strategic aim to support the development of communication design education (theory, practice, and research). It is an online international research journal advancing Icograda’s goals and objectives, fulfilling the vision of the Icograda Design Education Manifesto.

Art Against Empire, is a collection of over 100 political posters shown in the LACE galleries spanning 60 years of opposition to U.S. Intervention in the domestic affairs of sovereign nations. The show is curated by Carol. A Wells features posters from the archives of the Center for Study of Political Graphics. Featuring works by Josh MacPhee, Corita Kent, Jay Belloli, Cedomic Kostivic, Stephen Kroniger and more.
Check out a video of Adolfo Mexiac talking, in Spanish, about his “Freedom of Expression” poster.