R.E.M. Ephemera, Athens and Archives Last Year, I added eight newly researched and documented items from the University of Georgia Special Collections Libraries to the People’s Graphic Design Archive (PGDA), a crowd-sourced digital repository dedicated to preserving and expanding access to graphic design history. These contributions build on my earlier work as a UGA Special…
Design of the Mundane: Bad “design” wastes time. Last summer, I found myself at the DMV trying to get a state ID for my kid, who needed it for travel. Naturally, I was prepared: I had completed the online application portion ahead of time, and printed and organized all the required paperwork. We waited in…
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…
I recently attended UGA’s Academic Affairs Faculty Symposium that focused on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance teaching and learning. So it seemed fitting to ask Chat GPT, an artificial-intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by OpenAI, to write this post about the experience (in the style of David Sedaris.) As I sat in the audience at…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…