Project. Please enter the 21st century kindly

Purpose. The major goals of this semester long workshop were to present students with three key ideas: A graphic designer can be an author. Graphic design can nourish cultural and social value inside or outside the market. Graphic design is a language that can express rich and meaningful visual/written statements; it is a language for the senses, where thinking is not defeated but encouraged.

Assignment. This studio workshop was designed in 2006 for a third-year level class. The question was asked: “If graphic design’s power is often used to sell products or move information, can the same power be used to elicit two characteristics of human nature, namely, to think and to laugh.” Encouraging thought and laughter in order to draw out the user/reader/viewer’s humanity became the objective of all of the students’ projects and the underlying criteria by which the projects would be evaluated.

No specific requirements were established. Even type was optional, although it was often selected by students to play a leading and innovative role.

Format. Open.

Time. 14 weeks. 42 hours total. Workshop held once a week for 3 hours.

Clément Vincent is an Assistant Professor in Communication Design at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. He has been practicing design as a freelance and in-house designer since 1994. In Paris, he worked for the Bibliothèque nationale de France as a graphic designer, and the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle as an art director and project manager. He holds a graduate degree in Visual Communication and a postgraduate degree in Press Publishing from l'École nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs (ENSAD, Paris) where he learned from professors such as Rudi Meyer, Philippe Apeloig, Pierre Bernard and Jean Widmer. As a professor, he taught in France (Ecole Supérieure d'Art et de Design, Reims) and in the U.S. (Oregon State University, Corvallis). His design practice covers different facets of communication design: art direction, corporate identity systems, signage systems, exhibition design, book design, magazine design, information design, packaging and electronic publishing.

www.eciad.ca

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