Cat NormoyleThe type specimen poster project is a favorite project among graphic design students at East Carolina University.
This semester, with the uncertainty of available resources for large-format printing, we introduced a new assignment, the interactive type specimen poster. This project included a hands-on prototyping activity to conceptualize the visual design, layout, and interactive features of the interactive poster. Instructional videos for working through this process are included below.
Students design digital products for mobile application that add to or expand on Greenville’s sense of place through additional programming (or activity). Students choose a local partner to work with and define goals and frame project for conceptualization and development. Students must consider the needs of their partner as well as the end user of their application (often these are not the same people).
In this project, we discuss concepts of UI (user-interface design) and UX (user-experience design) and work with digital prototyping tools such as Adobe XD. Additionally, concepts and techniques for designing for digital environments such as wireframing, prototyping, and user-testing are introduced to support design development.
Work was completed by junior graphic design students at East Carolina University, Graphic Design, School of Art + Design.
Access to Healthcare Campaign by Chelsea Davis. Seeks to shift behaviors and attitudes towards equity in healthcare sectors.
Graphic design and visual communication can be a powerful tool to affect change, shape culture, and persuade opinions and actions of audiences across social, cultural, economic, and/or political circumstances.
This project introduces students to graphic design as a tool for action and social impact. Students develop messaging campaigns that build awareness, educate and inform on overarching themes and topics with a shared intent to reach a broad audience and shift behaviors and attitudes among people.
Students work across digital and physical platforms and must consider how their campaign functions cohesively across media from social media / digital environment to print (OOH – Out of Home) media / physical environment.
Students work through research and framing phases to develop unique campaigns within the overarching assignment parameters. Before design phases begin, students outline impact objectives they wish to achieve via their campaigns. Students then begin design development and upon completion, implement their campaigns with participating audience members and stakeholders. Students are asked to collect data during implementation based on their impact objectives, and then report on these findings in conclusions.
This work was completed as part of senior studio ART 4200, graphic design at ECU, which sought to teach students how to measure impact in social design projects. Additionally, work from this project was featured as an exhibition at the ECU Student Center Gallery this spring. It is currently on view through February 2021. The exhibition features the work of 24 graphic design senior students (listed below) with over 75 pieces in the show.
Work by:
Madison Wicks
Hannah Rowerdink
Chelsea Davis
Edwin Averette
Imani McCray
Carter Jewell
Jordan Crass
Myiah Nueman
Sarah Brock
Sabrina Fink
Desteney Hopkins Edwards
Tiana Robinson
Adriana Cadorniga
Andrew Crane
Savannah Durham
Ty Huff
Graesyn Lockhart
Casey Parker
Natalie Pray
Athena Ratzman
Joshua Smith
Hannah Stevens
Shelby Scott
Kat Tayar
Hunter Winslow
The Pitt Pirates Robotics Team (PPR) participated in a two-day workshop to learn about and build drawing robots. The drawing robots are tools with basic moving capabilities (forward, backward, right, and left) that draw on a large canvas via a web browser interface. The students from PPR were highly engaged with the technology and system of tools under investigation in this workshop. They represented middle school and high school students from Pitt County schools, North Carolina who are specifically interested in robotics, programming, and technology.
The workshop activities included building a drawing robot, which was programmed using a raspberry pi. The pi was flashed with our drawbots software package which is available via github. The students built the robots and then used terminal to access their robot via its IP address, which was assigned by our access point/network.
For the remaining duration, participants worked with the tools to explore, experiment, and play with the different digital and analog making activities to understand the technologies in use. Through this process, they were encouraged to build beyond the steps provided to construct and contribute their own ideas.
The workshop was designed and implemented to address the socio-technical systems that emerge when people work collaboratively ‘through and with’ augmented technical tools in a design making process. The workshop attempted to (1) foster new ways of thinking and making through play and experimentation (2) affect social interactions and empower people to become producers (3) affect relationships between collaborators and the technologies in use through transparent processes.
The results of this investigation were submitted as part of a new publication called “Critical and Collaborative Making with Augmented Tools” in the conference proceedings of DRS 2020 (Design Research Society) Conference that will be held next August in Brisbane, Australia.
For additional information about this research, see a previous investigation with the robots in a museum setting and a previously published paper. This research is completed in collaboration with Rebecca Tegtmeyer, Associate Professor in Graphic Design at Michigan State University.
