First Group Meeting Jan 21, 2010

How to rebrand an existing community?

What are the pros and cons of rebranding a neighborhood?

-Reference older neighborhoods, focus on one neighborhood.

-Liberty Village

-Research on past neighborhoods, look at how to

Why are some areas better than others, why can you cross a street and find a pocket of crappy neighborhood.

How effective is the rebranding of neighborhoods and how does it effect the residents already living there.

Research Portion:

History of Rebranding neighborhoods in Toronto, have they been successful.

-Case studies of successes and failed compare and contrast.

-Look into rebranding of liberty village.

-Original history of liberty village.

-General process of rebranding.

-steps taken to reconstruct and what it looks like today.

-Who Toronto Hires to rebranding?

-Do they do the research?

-What area do they choose to get rebranded

-How do peoples ideas change after the rebranding.

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/689148

http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20090901/090901_dangerous_neighbourhoods/20090901/?hub=CP24Home

http://www.toronto.ca/revitalization/regent_park/pdf/regentpark_sdp-part2_sept_16.pdf

Thesis Topic

The Study Of Body Language and how Human Interaction relates to Graphic Design.

I had a meeting with Keith Rushton today. It went well we discussed that I need to come up questions surrounding my thesis:

How do humans interact?
How can humans interact without words?
How does body language get across certain meanings?
How do animals interact?

With print becoming less and less relevant and web based media becoming more popular, the human body and human interaction are becoming obsolete. I want to start looking into social media, such as facebook, MSN, twitter and blackberries.

People communicate through, sight, smell, hearing, feeling and touching. How can designers communicate to our best ability using only sight. How will human interaction change as web based media takes over.

Some topics of research I will be exploring will be:
Psychology
Visual Learning
Ethnography
Human Development
Animal Interaction

Vegetable art= AWESOME!

http://fruitpics.weebly.com/

Research Methodologies Reading No.2

Investigating Design: A Review of Forty Years of Design Research

by Nigan Bayazi

Design research is systematic inquiry whose goal is knowledge of, or in, the embodiment of configuration, composition, structure, purpose, value, and meaning in man-made things

and systems.” 1

Design research tries to answer the obligations of design to the humanities:

1. Design research is concerned with the physical embodiment

of man-made things, how these things perform their jobs,

and how they work.

2. Design research is concerned with construction as a human

activity, how designers work, how they think, and how they

carry out design activity.

3. Design research is concerned with what is achieved at the

end of a purposeful design activity, how an artificial thing

appears, and what it means.

4. Design research is concerned with the embodiment of

configurations.

5. Design research is a systematic search and acquisition of

knowledge related to design and design activity.

The objectives of design research are the study, research, and investigation

First Generation

-During the 1960s, it became evident that designers no longer could rely solely on their ability to focus upon the product as the center of a design task.

- The methods were very simple

-Design methods people were looking at rational methods of incorporating scientific techniques and knowledge into the design process to make rational decisions to adapt to the prevailing values, something that was not always easy to achieve.

-People like Churchman had warned at least eight or ten years

earlier of the consequences of the illegitimate simplifications of the

first generation design techniques.

Second Generation

-These second-generation design methods began

to compensate for the inadequacy of the first-generation design

methods. User involvement in design decisions and the identification

of their objectives were the main characteristics of the second-

generation design methods.

“All design research reports are related to the history or past activity of the subject area under study. Studies of the present are part of the past because every research report has to prove its roots in the past.”

Method Designing: The Paradox of Modern Design Education

Jessica Helfand

“…it was all about a kind of stripped-down emotional honesty. If you could achieve this honesty, your performance would resonate with a kind of pitch-perfect humanity and you had a far better chance of truly engaging your audience as a result.”

You cannot make your work understood only by yourself. Graphic Design is meant to be about communication and you cannot just communicate to yourself.

The Problem: The Heart of the Research Process

Paul D. Leedy

Leedy is discussing how to pick a thesis topic:

-Should not be a ruse for self enlightenment.

-Should not be picking this topic just to fill a gap in your knowledge

-You cannot compare two sets of data

-Yes or No questions are not suitable research questions

Finding a Legitimate Problem:

-Look around you: Questions need to be answered

-Read the literature

-Attend the professional conferences

-Seek the Advice of Experts

-Choose a topic that intrigues and motivates you

Stating Research Problem:

-State problem clearly and concisely: Anyone should be able to read it

-How feasible is the project

-Say what you mean

-Edit Your work

The Landscape of Graphic Design Education

Meredith Davis

AIGA Design Education Conference

Schools of Thoughts 2

Poised Toward the Future of Graphic Design Education

March 4-6, 2005

Designers must evolve within the field and also it's place in society. It is not the time spent in class, but the experiences that each student gains and also the immersion within the work discipline. This article argues what distinguishes a professional graphic design education from a pre-professional graphic design education. Art and design courses only cover about 65% of the curriculum. It is considered a "professional lite curriculum". Students who have strong backgrounds in liberal studies have interesting perspectives on audiences and context within design.

Graphic design has witnessed change over the decades. There are more students than jobs available. Graduate studies are not that different from undergraduate studies and master students are often put in the same class. The need is now greater for students to complete 4 year programs instead of colleges that offer 2 year programs. There is a greater need to incorporate liberal studies into the design programs.

Part 1 The Fundamentals: What is research

Leedy/ Omrod

-Suggests an activity that is removed from everyday life.

What research is not:

1) not mere information gathering

-going to the library may be information discovery.

2) Not the transportation of facts.

-such as writing an essay

3) Not rummaging for facts

4)Not a catchword to get attention

What research is:

- collecting analyzing and interpreting information in order to understand what we are interested in

1) originates with a question or problem

-looking at things in everyday life. Asking why they are or are not the way they are.

2) research requires clear articulation of a goal

3) requires a specific plan for proceeding

-plan overall research design

-specific search methods

4) research usually divides the principal problem into more manageable sub problems

-main problems to sub problems

5) guided by the specific problem question or hypotheseis

-hypthesis logical supposition, a reasonable guess, they are constant

6) accepts certain critical assumptions

7) requires the collection and interpretation of data in an attempt to resolve the problem that initiated the research

GD Education as a Liberal Art: Design and Knowledge in the University and the "Real World".

Gunnar Swanson

Schools are training for GD's

-gd has potential because of it's lack of specific subject matter to connect to many disciplines

-reconsider graphic design as a liberal arts subject

-concept of liberal arts was first delineated by Aristotle

-LB has four point

1) they are not mechanical

2) they are not utilitarian - they have intrinsic calue

3) there must be no specializing that would would restrict the mind

must be undertaken for its intrisic value, not merely to earn a living or to impress others.

-harvard instituted the elective system, with the purpose of allowing students to move in the direction of their future careers

-main purpose is the production of college teachers with doctoral degrees while producing scholarly research that is not solely utilitarian.