Skip to content
  • Research
    • Community-based practices.
    • Interactive, immersive experiences.
    • Experimental making.
  • Research
    • Community-based practices.
    • Interactive, immersive experiences.
    • Experimental making.
  • Teaching
  • Teaching
  • Travel
  • Travel
  • Research
    • Community-based practices
    • Interactive, immersive experiences
    • Experimental making
  • Teaching
  • Travel
  • Research
    • Community-based practices
    • Interactive, immersive experiences
    • Experimental making
  • Teaching
  • Travel
Cat Normoyle

Beyond the Surface: Transforming Typography into Embodied Experience

While typography is often associated with flat pages and screens, designers and artists have long explored how language and letterforms can become spatial, embodied, interactive, and performative experiences. Scholar Johanna Drucker argues that visual and typographic forms are not neutral containers for information, but actively shape interpretation and perception through...

  • June 8, 2026
  • Teaching & Student Work
  • 3D Form, Analog and Digital Processes, Computational Design, Design Pedagogy, Dimensional Typography, Embodied Typography, Environmental Typography, Experiential Design, Experimental Typography, Foam Core Construction, Graphic Design Education, Immersive Media, Installation, Interactive Typography, Letterform Construction, Materiality, Movement and Perception, Physical and Digital Making, Rule-Based Design, Spatial Design, Spatial Typography, Time-Based Media, Typography and Space, Typography Installation, Visual Communication

Visualizing Our Story: An Interactive Exhibition of LGBTQ Oral Histories

This October, Our Story opened at Emerge Gallery as a regional exhibition featuring 24 oral history interviews collected over the past year and a half. The exhibition centers LGBTQ voices from Eastern North Carolina and aims to expand how regional histories are documented, shared, and experienced. Our Story project began...

  • November 8, 2025
  • Interactive-Immersive Experiences, Research
  • archives, digital storytelling, Eastern North Carolina, exhibition design, interactive media, LGBTQ, oral history

Mapping Communication Design Research Trends Through Data Visualization

This project analyzes keywords from Design Incubation’s colloquium research archive to track trends in communication design research over the past decade. Since 2014, Design Incubation has hosted public colloquia where academics and practitioners share and discuss research and creative practice. The archive offers a snapshot of communication design research from...

  • June 16, 2025
  • Interactive-Immersive Experiences, Research
  • communication design, communication design research, data sets, data visualization, keywords

Gathering LGBTQ Oral Histories of Eastern North Carolina: An Open Call to Share Stories and Shape History

The LGBTQ Our Story project began in 2022 as an investigation into the university and community archives to discover an important and relevant historical narrative from our community,...
  • May 31, 2025
  • Community-based Practices, Research
  • archival project, archives, community engagement, Eastern North Carolina, LGBTQ, oral history, special collections, storytelling

Creating mixed realities and designing for the “physdigital” experience in graphic design

Graphic designers work with materials, tools, and systems in all kinds of ways. Being hands-on with both analog and digital tools helps students expand how they think about design and what’s possible in their practice. This project was co-taught across two senior-level studios in a cross-classroom collaboration. My colleague, Megan...

  • August 23, 2024
  • Interactive-Immersive Experiences, Research, Teaching & Student Work

Now & Next Exhibition showcases typographic futures with augmented reality (AR) and immersive, interactive experiences

The Now & Next project asks students to consider current and emerging themes in typography to design a poster that communicates their perspective on where type is now and where it is headed next. Students examine intersecting issues such as technology, accessibility, inclusion, representation, and style to frame their perspectives...

  • March 6, 2024
  • Interactive-Immersive Experiences, Teaching & Student Work
  • 2D type, 3D type, AR, augemented reality, blended experience, digital type, East Carolina University, graphic design, immersive experiences, student work, typography

Cat Normoyle is an Associate Professor of Graphic Design at ECU whose work explores community engagement, storytelling, spatial interaction, and emerging media through exhibitions, installations, research, and design pedagogy.

Check out my Instagram

I’m a designer, writer, and educator interested in community-based practices, interactive experiences, and experimental making across physical and digital materials. Community is central to my work and I think about it in terms of people, places, and making.

I’m especially interested in how space and place affect how we connect, interact, and share, and how tools and technology shape what we make. Whether physical, digital, or somewhere in between, the spaces we create and the things we make should reflect, support, and connect with the communities we’re part of.

Check out my Instagram

I’m an Associate Professor at East Carolina University, where I teach communication design, typography, user experience, and interaction design. I emphasize critical thinking in the design process and in learning. I work with communities to challenge bias in design making and explore how tools and systems can be used or built or reimagined to shape different outcomes through experimentation and play. I love learning alongside my students and am always open to creative collaborations in teaching or research.

Find me on LinkedIn
Interactive-Immersive Experiences

Visualizing Our Story: An Interactive Exhibition of LGBTQ Oral Histories

This October, Our Story opened at Emerge Gallery as a regional exhibition featuring 24 oral history interviews collected over the past year and a half. The exhibition centers LGBTQ voices

Read More »
November 8, 2025 No Comments
Interactive-Immersive Experiences

Mapping Communication Design Research Trends Through Data Visualization

This project analyzes keywords from Design Incubation’s colloquium research archive to track trends in communication design research over the past decade. Since 2014, Design Incubation has hosted public colloquia where

Read More »
June 16, 2025 No Comments
Interactive-Immersive Experiences

Creating mixed realities and designing for the “physdigital” experience in graphic design

Graphic designers work with materials, tools, and systems in all kinds of ways. Being hands-on with both analog and digital tools helps students expand how they think about design and

Read More »
August 23, 2024 No Comments
Interactive-Immersive Experiences

Now & Next Exhibition showcases typographic futures with augmented reality (AR) and immersive, interactive experiences

The Now & Next project asks students to consider current and emerging themes in typography to design a poster that communicates their perspective on where type is now and where

Read More »
March 6, 2024 No Comments
Interactive-Immersive Experiences

Creative Code as a Medium for Making: Typographic installations

Graphic design graduate students at ECU completed interactive design concepts for large-scale, immersive typographic installations to be on view during the upcoming fall semester.

Read More »
June 29, 2023 2 Comments
Interactive-Immersive Experiences

Designers and Dancers Collaborate to combine Motion Graphics with Live Performance

Students partnered together across design and dance to interpret, respond to, and visualize the same piece of music, but through different media.

Read More »
April 10, 2021 No Comments
Interactive-Immersive Experiences

Mixed Realities as Design Intervention for Communities: Blending Digital and Physical Experiences

Design interventions that merge both real and virtual worlds, where physical and digital experiences co-exist and interact in real time, can result in particularly engaging mixed realities within the built

Read More »
February 25, 2021 No Comments
Interactive-Immersive Experiences

Designing Mobile Applications that add to Greenville’s sense of place: How can mobile applications engage community?

In this project, we discussed concepts of UX (user-experience design) and UI (user-interface design). We worked through analog and digital prototyping phases to develop function and usability and tested multiple

Read More »
January 12, 2021 No Comments
Page1 Page2
Instagram Linkedin

Loading Comments...