Design Seminar: Contemporary Practice invites designers to share their practice, methods, and references. When asked to describe themselves, these practitioners often list multiple titles—creative directors, art directors, book designers, web designers, interaction designers, industrial designers, programmers, writers, researchers, technologists, ethicists, educators—reflecting the multidisciplinarity in the field today. Their subjects of study range include publishing, materiality, machine learning, sensing, data healing, and more... Through presentations, reading discussions, writing, and weekly engagements with different designers, this semester-length seminar will introduce students to a variety of contemporary practices.
As a class, we will create a group agreement that addresses respect and etiquette in the classroom. Students will be responsible for maintaining this standard throughout the semester. Rutgers is very lucky to have a representative group of students with different backgrounds and cultures. With this comes varying amounts of privilege and awareness, so it is important that we practice patience and empathy in the classroom. We must all continuously learn, be open to criticism, develop a consciousness about these discrepancies, and actively seek equity and allyship in the classroom and beyond.
View Spring 2020 Design Seminar's group agreement
Each visiting designer will assign 1–2 readings or references. Before their visit, you will be required to write a response with excerpts and questions in the weekly Google Doc (g-doc), to be completed by midnight before class. These responses will be read, discussed, and annotated in class by the instructor and your peers. After each week, students will pull from the shared google doc and add text blocks, images, additional references, etc. to our class group on Are.na channel. This channel will be exported as a PDF reader print.are.na. You can choose to print yourself a copy using Lulu pocketbook
Each student will be assigned to 2–3 visiting designers. They are required to create a write-up for each designer's presentation. This summary should live in the respective week's g-doc, with images, links, and references in the class Are.na.
Each class will include one or more of the following:
Grades will be assigned according to the rubric below and will factor into the course grade as follows:
— Presentation Write-Up (25%)
— Discussion, active participation, and annotations (25%)
— Reader (40%)
— Class attendance (10%)
There is a range of services offered through Rutgers Office of Disability Services, including Counseling and Psychiatric Services (CAPS), career services, and classroom accessibility. Please visit ods.rutgers.edu for more information
Rutgers University welcomes students with disabilities into all of the University's educational programs. In order to receive consideration for reasonable accommodations, a student with a disability must contact the appropriate disability services office at the campus where you are officially enrolled, participate in an intake interview, and provide documentation: ods.rutgers.edu/students/documentation-guidelines. If the documentation supports your request for reasonable accommodations, your campus’s disability services office will provide you with a Letter of Accommodations. Please share this letter with your instructors and discuss the accommodations with them as early in your courses as possible. To begin this process, please complete the Registration form on the ODS web site at: ods.rutgers.edu/students/registration-form.
Principles of academic integrity require that every Rutgers University student:
— properly acknowledge and cite all use of the ideas, results, or words of others.
— properly acknowledge all contributors to a given piece of work.
— make sure that all work submitted as his or her own in a course or other academic activity is produced without the aid of unsanctioned materials or unsanctioned collaboration.
— obtain all data or results by ethical means and report them accurately without suppressing any results inconsistent with his or her interpretation or conclusions
— treat all other students in an ethical manner, respecting their integrity and right to pursue their educational goals without interference. This requires that a student neither facilitate academic dishonesty by others nor obstruct their academic progress.
— uphold the canons of the ethical or professional code of the profession for which he or she is preparing.
Adherence to these principles is necessary in order to insure that:
— everyone is given proper credit for his or her ideas, words, results, and other scholarly accomplishments.
— all student work is fairly evaluated and no student has an inappropriate advantage over others.
— the academic and ethical development of all students is fostered.
— the reputation of the University for integrity in its teaching, research, and scholarship is maintained and enhanced.
Failure to uphold these principles of academic integrity threatens both the reputation of the University and the value of the degrees awarded to its students. Every member of the University community therefore bears a responsibility for ensuring that the highest standards of academic integrity are upheld.