Ethical Design for Social Impact
What makes design ethical? By exploring the real-world factors and practical circumstances in which design emerges, this course will consider the ethics of how people make and rely on the products and services that shape our experience of the modern world. Our examination of theoretical approaches to designs social impacts, our discussion of case studies that illuminate designs role in the pursuit of social justice, and our reflections on our own responsibility to design things ethically will provide a comprehensive picture of the conditions that both catalyze and thwart ethical design. Students will leave this course with concrete ideas for how they might play consequential roles in developing ethical designs that positively impact society.
Tech Tools for Playful Learning
This course explores the design and use of new technologies for learning and engages students in current debates around educational technologies, computational thinking, coding and robotics. Students will learn how to develop, implement, and evaluate technology-rich curriculum and will design their own computational meaningful projects. They will visit K-2 classrooms to implement technology-rich curricula, will learn how to use video to document their experiences and will become researchers to assess the thinking and learning fostered by the different tools.
Urban Design for Complexity and Sustainability
Urban Action Lab
Urban Action Lab is a semester-long class that provides students with first-hand experience in real estate and urban action, working on projects that advance affordable housing and access to opportunity. Students pursue research projects in partnership with mission-driven organizations from across the region. Each project is completed in collaboration with a partner organization and selected based on its potential to make a high-impact contribution to the organization. Project components include research, evaluation, interviewing, and writing. Students will work in close collaboration with partner agencies and fellow students. The class will meet once per week and may occasionally require students to attend off-campus meetings.
Sustainable Futures by Design
This 4-week summer study abroad is based in Copenhagen, Denmark with trips over the Øresund bridge to Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city. Both Malmö and Copenhagen offer opportunities to study design at its forefront, integrated into the rhythm of every day life from products design to resilient urban planning. Students will live in Denmark, Copenhagen’s capital city, which offers a sleek mixture of historic, modern, and cutting edge. From Michelin-star and farm-to-table restaurants, bikes as far as the eye can see, and a harbor so clean you could swim in it, Copenhagen will both inspire and invigorate. Treating the city as our lab, this course will explore the emergent practices of Scandinavian design, which is known internationally for its functional simplicity, attention to detail, and refined aesthetic as well as it’s future-forward approaches. Rooted in social democratic concepts, modern Scandinavian design will be observed, experienced, and reflected on through urban and environmental planning, architecture, industrial and product design, and graphic design, with an emphasis in the systematic understanding of sustainable and regenerative design at a variety of scales and forms.
Imagemaking with Photoshop and Illustrator
This is a course to explore, critique and produce 2D digital media projects. Through critical research, students garner insight into what specifically intrigues them about an artwork, and how to utilize these ideas in their own work. The class will focus on design and production in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Students will become familiar with digital illustration, design, photo manipulation, compositing, and printing. All assignments must be accompanied with evidence of research, and the class will be treated as a portfolio class.*Does not fulfill Arts Core requirement.
Architectural Design I
Graphic Design
This course is an immersive project-based introductory overview of concepts, contexts, tools, and techniques useful in solving a wide range of contemporary design problems, including logos, business cards, propaganda posters, multi-page documents, data visualizations, web page designs, app wireframes, and proposals for site-specific graphics. Beyond the necessary focus on software, including Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop, the course will incorporate discussion and application of typography, color theory and other 2D design concepts affecting how subject matter is perceived. Students will solve problems on behalf of themselves and choose one or more other clients whom they’ll strive to serve.
Designing Space: Rhino 3-D
The computer is one of myriad facilitators of the output of intellectual design ideas, but is by no means a creator of digital design content. This course begins with that notion and will work as a hybrid: equal parts digital skills workshop – where software skills are tested and evaluated — and artist’s atelier – where design ideas, both articulated and ineffable, seek meaningful expression.
Course content will draw from the fields of art, photography, film, graphic design, industrial design and architecture. In addition to works of two dimensions, this course will explore the translation from digital design to physical object.
