🌐Design History and Practice Week 4 Notes

💬 Something Old, Something New Discussion


  • Communication for designers:
  • is purposeful (leads to or qualifies action in a design context)
  • is not random, speculative, a work of art, self-contained, self-justifying

  • Norman Potter, What is a Designer: Things, Places, Messages


Even when we’re curating or editing content, we’re still thinking like a designer. All of our decisions should be intentional. What are you showing us and why? What kinds of comparisons can we draw based on your decisions?


Design Idea

Here is an incomplete list of what graphic design is:


  • Intentionality with decisions
  • Understanding information and communicating messaging
  • Expression of an idea or topic through specific aesthetic choices
  • Using technology to communicate and produce something
  • A visual abstraction of a thought
  • Asking questions, solving problems

it is not:

Just a tool (photoshop)
Just a facet of capitalism (branding, shopping things, ads)
One way of looking at things

With these definitions in mind, let’s evaluate a few projects and evaluate their designs.

  1. What do you think the design idea is here?
  1. Why does this look the way it does?
  1. What parts of the design are stylistic and what parts are utilitarian?
  1. How do you think the designer came up with this design?
  1. How do the type, materials or interactions help communicate the concept?


Sara Cwynar, Rose Gold, 2017

Sara Cwyner, Glass Life

Cyberfeminism Index



Vacation Sunscreen