Color & Materials Design

Graduate Seminar
Foundations of Global Thinking

Seminar I brings together the full cohort of CCS graduate students where they are exposed to key contemporary issues influencing the design professional. Students will attend lectures and workshops with visiting artists, designers, as well as related industry and academic leaders. Graduate Seminar I serves to advance both the investigative and critical writing skills of students. Social context, sustainability, and ethics will be some of the themes addressed, possibly structured within a colloquial format. This Seminar requires extensive reading, research, and short, fast-paced assignments set in the various workshops. Students participate in individual and group presentations in the Seminar.

“Think globally, act locally” is a catchphrase that’s been used since the early 1970s in a wide range of contexts, from management theory to environmental and social activism. But just what does it mean? This seminar provides a foundation for thinking about economic, political, cultural, and aesthetic issues in a global context, especially as they might inform the student’s local action, i.e. individual design practice. The seminar begins by examining the process of exchange and in particular the way humans interact with one another through market transactions. Students then examine various ways of understanding globalization as an economic and cultural system. Subsequent classes focus on the mechanisms of the global market and the increasingly important role design has come to play. Of particular concern are the aesthetic and informational values built into production and consumption practices. This further entails consideration of questions of sustainability and ethics. Provisions are made to accommodate the exploration of individual and group interests as the semester progresses.

Graduate Color Lab
Color is Open to Interpretation

This course is built on the understanding that we never see a color as it actually is. Color is more than a spectrum of reflected light frequencies with given names. Color is open to interpretation and students will learn how to observe, use and talk about color effectively. Students will discover through hands-on exercises and keen observation that color deceives, is elusive in nature, and always acts in context.  Visual perception can be increased and refined and when utilized can lead toward discovery and invention. Students will learn how this experience can be expansive and how it can impact other disciplines. Above all, this is a course in learning to think and solve problems with your eyes. Reading outside of class will be expected to achieve a deeper understanding of the principles and subject matter that will be covered in class. Students will develop skills in Color Lab that will be essential to work in subsequent design studios.

Materials and Processes
A Comprehensive Study through Lecture and Field Experience

This class will be broken into separate sessions, each covering a variety of materials, processes, and applications. The students will be exposed to class lectures, visiting speakers and manufacturing field trips to gain first hand knowledge of materials and processes. They will also be introduced to resources they can draw upon to locate manufacturers and material suppliers.

Contextual Design Research I
Business, Customer and User Research Methods

This course introduces the methods, tools, and techniques of research that are relevant to designing with people in mind for product, experience, space, or service. The methods and tools fall in the categories of 'what people say,' 'what people do,' and 'what people need.' Business, Customer and User Research methods will be primarily lecture-based, but will also include a variety of hands-on learning activities that are applicable at all points along the design process. Students will practice developing and conducting surveys, interviews, field observational research, and focus groups to identify unmet needs that are both articulated and unarticulated 

Contextual Design Research II
Trend Forecasting and Future Scenario Planning

In this course, students will learn how to identify, assess, and forecast both long-term and short-term trends that can be researched through a variety of information sources, consumer demographics, developments in technology, manufacturing and the sciences as well as cultural, social, environmental  and economic influences. Students will explore how trends shape values and behaviors that lie deep in all of us; and, as importantly, how these values and behaviors influence the ways we perceive and adopt new ideas. Uncovering these insights in a rapidly changing world is an increasingly important challenge for all professional designers.

The ability to understand and identify trends and their impact on consumer behavior is an important skill that will be utilized within the structure of the color and materials design courses.

Graduate Thesis I

This course is designed to help students articulate and execute a body of work that is the culmination of his/her graduate study experience. Students should be able to synthesize external factors – such as technological, global, environmental issues and trends, including social change – translate them into a form that is meaningful in a business setting, and create relevant design solutions. “Relevant” in this context requires that students’ design solutions resonate with an identified market segment, from all design and functional standpoints.

Graduate Thesis I is a self-driven, studio course where each student will follow a design development path that commences with a rigorous research phase. A business case and/or a creative brief will grow out of the research findings and will serve as the plan of work for the completion of the Thesis. Students will be expected to work through the subsequent phases, each phase resulting in a high-quality set of deliverables, culminating in a final presentation that will be either digitally created or hand-built as appropriate.

Graduate Thesis II

This course is designed to help students articulate and execute a body of work that is the culmination of his/her graduate study experience. Students should be able to synthesize external factors – such as technological, global, environmental issues and trends, including social change – translate them into a form that is meaningful in a business setting, and create relevant design solutions. “Relevant” in this context requires that students’ design solutions resonate with an identified market segment, from all design and functional standpoints.

Graduate Thesis II is a self-driven, studio course where each student will follow a design development path that commences with a rigorous research phase. A business case and/or a creative brief will grow out of the research findings and will serve as the plan of work for the completion of the Thesis. Students will be expected to work through the subsequent phases, each phase resulting in a high-quality set of deliverables, culminating in a final presentation that will be either digitally created or hand-built as appropriate.

The Thesis deliverables will consist of: