from archives > to > (the people’s) archive

In spring 2024, I asked my ARGD 3060 students to explore UGA’s Special Collections library archives to select items of visual communication they believed would be valuable contributions to submit to the People’s Graphic Design Archive (PGDA). The PGDA is a crowd-sourced virtual archive of inclusive graphic design history that aims to “stand guard for…

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micro/macro typography

Last spring my colleague Moon Jang and I co-taught ARGD 4030, Advanced Typography, each designing a complementary half of the course. Moon’s portion focused on letterforms (micro) through the design of a partial custom typeface while my part focused on typesetting and design of larger bodies of text (macro).

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Archives & Old Type Specimens

This past May I spent time perusing UGA’s (extensive) Special Collections Library archives through the Special Collections Faculty Fellowship, which provides support for the development of archives–centered pedagogy. Along with five other faculty from various disciplines, we planned student activities and archives interactions for our courses. Topics ranged from disaster preparedness to investigative reporting to…

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AI Wrote This Post

I asked Chat GPT, an artificial-intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by OpenAI, to write this post (in the style of David Sedaris) about the recent UGA Academic Affairs Faculty Symposium I attended that focused on Artificial Intelligence in teaching and learning: As I sat in the audience at the UGA Faculty Symposium, listening to the speakers…

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an image of an extremely anxious student trapped behind the blue lines of notebook paper

Un-Grading

Last year I was part of an informal faculty group interested in learning more about alternative assessment models. We consulted various resources but started with the book, Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning then we redesigned our fall 2021 course(s) to integrate non-traditional assessment models such as labor-based, opt-in, or speculative grading. For ARGD 3060 Type & Image, a junior-level…

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And…2021 and we‘re still doing this.

Well, there ya go, over a year has passed since I last posted, and little has changed. Seems like that time just fell into a black hole. To sum up last year: mandated to teach hybrid with no technological support. Exhausting. This year: back to normal with zero health and safety measures: no masks, no…

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Designing and Teaching a Dedicated e-course

Even before covid-19 sent us all ‘pivoting’ to online we had a fairly new typography course for non-majors approved to have a dedicated online format. I ended up teaching the course, ARGD 2030e Introduction to Typography in Visual Communication, during the summer term. It was both a new course preparation/design as well as the challenge of learning…

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Snail Mail During a Pandemic

It’s crazy to think that aside from a few trips to pick up pre-ordered groceries I’ve pretty much been in my home since mid March and it’s now July. During this lockdown I’ve gotten out my Prisma colors and markers in an effort to do some lettering while making some snail mail cards. It’s quite…

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Senior Capstone in the Age of Covid

This spring I taught our Graphic Design Senior Capstone course in which senior design majors focused their efforts on issues related to local food systems, food sustainability and insecurity. Of course, when we parted for spring break we didn’t know that we wouldn’t see each other again except online, and that these graduating seniors wouldn’t…

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Design of the Report of the Ad Hoc Committee

As a designer, participating in exhibitions does not necessarily feel like quite the right fit for much of the work we do, since we tend to create highly functional or ephemeral work for a particular context that is not particularly precious, unlike the work more typically found in galleries. But exhibitions are the tradition in…

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Fieldwork on a Research Vessel: Hanging with Scientists

This past weekend I was fortunate to accompany a colleague in Marine Science and some of her students aboard the research vessel, R/V Savannah, that docks at UGA’s Skidaway Island Oceanographic Institute near Savannah. We stopped at five locations (stations) from the estuary out to the gulf stream where the students were able to sample…

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Poster Show 4: AIGA Atlanta

Book Cover as Poster: I was excited to have my poster chosen for inclusion in the 4th Annual Poster Show Poster Show: Chapter 4 by the Atlanta chapter of AIGA, which requested designs book cover designs in poster format. Submitted posters were curated with the winning entries displayed at the 4th Annual Poster Show in Atlanta this June.…

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