(Image caption: Color analysis of the light in Orange County, California in the Fall of 2020 at the Orange County Museum of Art, Polymode Studio: Silas Munro, Brian Johnson, and Randa Hadi.)
This workshop series aims to introduce students to the use of design justice as tool for fostering community care, imagining just futures for all, and building networks of designers, artists, cultural workers and technologists working at the intersection of racial, social and cultural equity.
Workshop Title: Poetic Research- Explorations in Deepening Design Research with Personal Perspective
Workshop Description:
There are many research traditions across design disciplines—from processes inspired by the iterative nature of the scientific method, the dialogic Socratic method, and ethnographic user-centered methods to the corporate specter of design thinking. In an age of increasingly commodified “design speak” and visual languages that spread worldwide at the speed of the internet, what can a designer do to find their way to meaningful form? One approach is to find a poetic resonance with the subject matter of a design project, brief, or self-initiated endeavor. This workshop will give participants entry points to build a research archive, reflect on their design process, and learn to use poetic inquiry, investigation, and experimentation in their work.
Speaker Bio:
Silas Munro is a designer, artist, writer, and curator. He is the founder of the LGBTQ+ and BIPOC-owned graphic design studio Polymode based in Los Angeles and Raleigh that works with clients across cultural spheres. Commissions and collaborations include: The New York Times Magazine, MIT Press, Nike, Airbnb, the Brooklyn Museum, Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Art Institute of Chicago, Dia Art Foundation, and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Munro is the curator and author of Strikethrough: Typographic Messages of Protest which opened at Letterform Archive in 2022–2023. He was a contributor to W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America and co-authored the first BIPOC-centered design history course, Black Design in America: African Americans and the African Diaspora in Graphic Design 19–21st Century. Munro is faculty co-chair for the MFA Program in graphic design at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Event Information:
Date: Thursday, December 7, 2023
Time: 2PM to 3:30PM
Location: Zoom
This workshop is open to all students.
Register here.
