Final Project/Presentation

Resource Links:

  1. Your goal is to produce an informed documentary presentation focusing on a designer of your choice from any one of the chapters 19 + in the Meggs text.
    • Your final will be presented as a video published to Youtube.
    •  Refer to these tips on using video to tell an engaging story or how to “Advance the Narrative”.
    • You may choose from a variety of software to create the video
        • Powerpoint file exported as a video (you may need to use a program such as Moyea to convert the ppt file to video.)
        • multi-page PDF
        • iMovie
        • AfterEffects
        • Premier
        • FinalCut
    • Video conversion and compression Guide for Mac
  3. You must address the major points of Design Thinking as a context for presenting the information about your chosen designer. (refer to the Design Thinking description for a more complete reference on this).
    •  culture
    •  religion
    • technology
    • geography
    • prevailing style
    • political or social events
  4. Ask questions such as:
    • What other world events were happening at the time?
    • What were the leading technologies?
    • In what part of the world did this designer work?
    • Who were other important/influential people at the time?
    • What were prevailing design styles?
    • What did the buildings look like?
    • What was the music like?
  5. The Chapter Key Word lists and Chapter PPT’s (from course website) should serve as a rough starting points for you to be familiar with.
  6. You will need to supplement the information from your text and the PPTs with additional research material.
  7. This additional material might be found from:slides or video clips
    • CD ROMS
    • magazine or newspaper articles
    • books
    • magazines
    • newspaper accounts
    • interviews with other people
    • objects
    • personal photographs
    • hands-on projects
    • overhead projections
    • display panels, posters, or charts
  8. Sources for research:Pacific library
    • Stockton Library
    • interlibrary loan
    • internet
    • faculty from other areas of discipline                                                                                                                         (History, Language Arts, Sociology, etc)
    • professional design firms
  9. Add credits at the end of your movie. These should include the following information:
    1. your name
    2. ARTH 101 Design Thinking
    3. Department of Art and Graphic Design, University of the Pacific
    4. credit music sources
    5. credit image sources
    6. year

Exploring the notion of Design Thinking is a way to understand past historical design movements or individual designers and their work. It requires an understanding of Zeitgeist (context) to fully realize the meaning that a historical design movement represents. Zeitgeist is NOT an art or design movement itself. Zeitgeist is also NOT the products created by design. Zeitgeist is instead loosely translated to mean “the spirit of the time”. It is the result of all of the surrounding variables effecting the way people think and do things and as a result of that thinking, what they design and make. Examples of some of those main variables which influence how we think and do and design are; culture, geography (where we live), belief systems (religion), and technology (inventions).

We may further break down the concept of Design Thinking into two subsets, “Design Leading” and “Design Following”. Our definition of Design Leading means that the result or effects of the designer’s work or design movement can be seen on areas beyond the art/design world. (The design world would include fine art, graphic design, architecture, fashion, interior design, etc.) Therefore, outside the art world would include any and every non-art/design area. (economics, politics, agriculture, technology, philosophy, sociology, etc.) By default then, “Design Following” means that the artist/designer or design movement did not initiate—but instead followed, was influenced by, or was in reaction to—a development that first occurred in another area or discipline that was considered a non-art area.

The result of Design Thinking, in either case of leading or following, is that  innovation occurs. There is a resulting new direction. Sometimes this is quite radical.—Cubism Sometimes subtle—Italian Renaissance evolving to the French Renaissance. Sometimes it is the result of an evolution taken to it’s logical conclusion—Renaissance to Baroque. Sometimes it is a conscious effort to reject previous modes of thinking/designing.—Dada.

You are to look for evidence of why the new design direction occurred. How is it made apparent? In the music? in the clothing styles? In the architecture? In the technology, etc.? 

You are also to look for the underlying influences or causes. The thinking that went on “behind the scenes”. Was it politically motivated? Socially? Geographically? Culturally, etc?