Above: Stills from Ryan Quigley’s lyrics-only video of Gang of Four’s “Natural’s Not in It.” Though Ryan’s treatment of the type is relatively simple, his aggressive misspelling of words helps to drive home the song’s rebellious message. Watch it here on YouTube.
Pick a song. Make a video for it using only words from its lyrics.
This assignment is from the class Typographic Research. It was completely inspired by a project from John Gambell.
Above: Gabrielle Tigan devised a code that involved the intervals between letters in the alphabet. She used it to send her partner encrypted letters from famously separated lovers. The project took its final form as a collection of quotations from these letters in postcard form.
Find a partner and design a code, ideally one suited for a specific purpose. Pass messages back and forth throughout the week. Bring the code, your messages, and the key to class next week.
This assignment is from the class Typographic Research.
Above: Scott Kellum’s initial modular typeface design became the foundation for a modified Rubik’s Cube in which the alphabet could be more easily and more playfully produced. At Scott’s site, you can buy your own Typecube or download the font whose characters serve as its basis.
Working in small groups, construct an alphabet (A–Z, 0–9) out of repeated modular elements. Letters should be a minimum of 5x5 feet. Document your results.
This assignment is from the class Typographic Research. It is completely inspired by I ♥ Typeworkshop’s fantastic “Manual Pixelism” workshop.
Above: Gabrielle Tigan became fascinated with the way that photocopy machines softened, garbled, and desanitized typefaces. Her experiments were finally catalogued in a self-initiated zine whose primary text was drawn from Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
Take a photo or find a photo in which type does not behave as you’d expect. Use this photo as the basis for a new typeface. Come to class with the photo, your sketches, and a specimen of the typeface in use.
This assignment is from the class Typographic Research. It is completely inspired by the article “Experiments in Type Design” by Tobias Frere-Jones, the majority of which is visible on Google Book Search here.
Above: Joanne Chew’s project played off the supposed neutrality of Helvetica by injecting it into our national political discussion. Splitting the typeface vertically, she produced “Helvetica Left Wing” and “Helvetica Right Wing” and set comments on health care from Democratic and Republican candidates on a large silkscreened broadside. Printed in reverse on the back in black is the full text of the broadside, which shows through to complete the characters and make them legible.
Make a new weight of Helvetica that is not simply a bold or italic, extended or condensed. Your weight should add to, complicate, or personalize Helvetica in some way. We will review your progress in next week’s class.
This assignment is from the class Typographic Research. It is completely inspired by David Reinfurt’s Helvetica Neue R project for Contructs magazine. A few of the weights can be seen on the Constructs website. More weights by Project Projects and Apirat Infahsaeng.
In conversation with a friend the other day I was reminded of the following assignment, which I used in a Senior Thesis class at Parsons not long ago. As students go back to school and begin working on new projects, it seemed worth sharing here. —RG
Now that you’ve done some basic reading and research, I’d like you to begin synthesizing some of your ideas in written form. For those of you who feel comfortable writing an academic paper or scholarly essay, this format is perfectly fine. However, I’ve found students sometimes struggle with this form, especially in describing their own projects and processes. If this is the case for you, you may want to try some other strategies for generating the text required for next week’s class. I’ve outlined five options for you below.
As part of my teaching at Parsons, every so often I get asked to be a part of or help with student projects or exhibitions. One of these opportunities crossed my desk a few days ago, and read in part:
I am emailing you all on behalf of the Senior Thesis Exhibition Core Team. As a result of tonight’s meeting the students decided that their objective is to represent all senior students in the design of the card and therefore agreed upon creating a collaborative opportunity for all students to participate in the creation of the visuals for the post card. We ask each of you to decide upon a 1x1 inch icon/image that would represent yourself and/or your work. This image will become part of a larger grid.
I must admit, if I were a student, I would have had a really tough time with this particular assignment. For one thing, trying to encapsulate a senior project, especially midway through the process of making one, is pretty difficult for my students, many of whom are making a long-form, large-scale project for the first time. I also wonder—though it’s certainly well-meaning—how truly “collaborative” a grid of 1x1 inch images is. Sure, it gives you a cross-section of styles and approaches and everyone gets equal play, but it seems like saying my sock drawer collaborates with my underwear drawer to form a dresser, or my car collaborates with the car next to mine to form a lot of parked cars. Yes, they show parts of a whole, but a “collaborative” whole, to me, it’s not.
A senior project seems like an ideal time to question such things as what collaboration is and isn’t. It also is a really good time to challenge oneself and one’s peers in terms of how things get made, both alone and together. In that spirit, I decided to give myself the assignment that I was directed to give my students. But who to collaborate with on this critique of collaborative endeavors? The best partner I could find was chance, so I grabbed my Magic Eight-Ball and gave it a shake. “What should I do here?” I asked. “Concentrate and ask again,” it replied. It seems like I’m telling my students to do that all the time.
Above: Detail from the cover of “This is Not a Manifesto.”
Work together to produce 16 copies of a printed journal. Each of you will get 1 copy. Send 1 copy to me at the address below by the due date. The remaining copy will be filed with the office.
The journal’s pages will be in 6 x 9 inch format, tape- or glue-bound. Each student will be responsible for 12 pages plus a short contributor bio with email/contact info. The content of your pages must include at least 2 and not more than 6 of your individual assignments from this class. You may also use portions of your reading responses, graphic/visual experiments from other classes this semester, and other students’ assignments from this class with their consent.
Above: Michael Trovela’s response to the assignment, which made use of on-screen PDF footnoting software. Spread from “This is Not a Manifesto.”
Using one of the essays from this week, add 50 footnotes (or annotations) derived from your personal experience of design education at RISD. Your notes may be visual, verbal, sonic, cross-referential, etc.
This assignment is from the class Graphic Design & Critical Thinking.
Above: Meg Dreyer’s response to the assignment, in which she compiled the data on the designers and then put the same questions to a professional attorney. His answers were often surprising. Spread from “This is Not a Manifesto.”
In 2 days, work together to compile 100 responses to Milton Glaser’s 12 steps. Ask for yes/no responses and ask respondents to provide additional comments where they’re willing. Prepare a results report using the quantitative data, an condensed set of qualitative responses, and supporting real-world examples of Glaser’s hypotheticals.
This assignment is from the class Graphic Design & Critical Thinking.
