In this thesis project, my intention was to integrate diverse high school courses with poignant subject matter to increase the amount of learning students can achieve. This unit plan explored a Prince George High School (Virginia) multi-class cooperative effort involving biodiesel production. The project involved creating a biodiesel refinery built by Production Systems classes according to plans purchased from the Internet. The research for converting used kitchen oil into biodiesel and the titration of the fuel was conducted by Chemistry classes. Graphics Imaging Technology students created a logo, a poster, and designed brochures that described the processes and benefits of this product. Marketing classes conducted consumer surveys and devised a product distribution plan.Graphic Imaging Technology, a Career and Technical Education course, has long been linked to art education. For example, graphic design students incorporate art in many phases of their design projects. Specifically, during their preliminary creative thinking, students sketch thumbnails of possible design solutions and regularly use their drawn or painted illustrations in their printed pieces. Additionally, film photography, which is commonly viewed as a fine art, has been used by graphic design students for several years. This art form has been replaced by digital photography in many design studios and school classrooms, but the principles of balance and composition remain the same.Other teaching strategies such as interdisciplinary study have also been introduced into graphic design and art class curricula. The rise in cross-curricular studies is indicative of the importance of varying the classroom instruction to offer the most diverse learning environment to students. Math and English are most often combined with unrelated classes in multi-discipline education, but regrettably, science classes typically are not. Since few fields of endeavor do not incorporate other disciplines, a multi-discipline class collaboration and unit plan which included high school Production Systems, Chemistry, Graphic Imaging Technology, and Marketing classes was developed.This project sought to establish a working relationship among various high school classes while providing a mutual learning environment. Additionally, disciplines that do not ordinarily interact with each other had the chance to take part in an renewable energy project that inspired new ideas and developed an increased consciousness of the environment.Finally, as students were involved in all facets of this biodiesel project, they experienced a working environment similar to the "real world". Establishing school-to-work programs that facilitate a smooth transition from high school to the work force is one of the main goals of the Prince George High School Career and Technical Education department. Students communicated their thoughts, worked together, and helped one another the same way as if they were employed at a business.

Photography conveys informative data, aesthetic value, and a conceptual message very much like graphic design. In the hands of the photographer, the viewfinder of a camera becomes an editing tool. Editing by point of view, use of color and cropping determines a great deal about the communication made by imagery. In my creative project, I will explore photography as a means to generate form, concept, and content. As a result of this exploration, I expect to find new ways of approaching graphic design problems. My goal is to develop themes that combine aspects of photography and graphic design. Themes could derive from broad issues like social statements, cultural phenomena, or mechanical effects, through the use of the capabilities of the camera, timing, lighting, or framing. Methods of editing photography such as, cropping, retouching, and splitting provide opportunities to experiment with making messages that rely on images alone. Another level of experimentation will be using typography in response to images.

In our journeys on the open road, we travel through a landscape of visual imagery composed of patterns, rhythms and a spectrum of changing colors. Our previous experiences, mental and physical attitudes and expectations, shape our perceptions. By visually interpreting and presenting my experiences of the journey on the open road I hoped to tell a story of how the open road energizes the creative spirit. My goal was to explore how the landscape is altered by motion and speed as we pass through it, and how the journey can be experienced in various ways. I wanted to investigate and interpret how we shift the boundaries of our perceptions.

Employing the designer William Morris as a source of inspiration, this project seeks to explore the call for nature and beauty as a part of our lives. Moreover, it interweaves the necessity for experience of the sensual world (the five senses) with the cerebral world (a requisite to igniting the internal imagination)—a concept embodied in the form of the book. It advocates a redefining of the book as an imagination sculpture (the external and the internal) reflecting this new definition.

This document explores the use of motion within design to defamiliarize a message. The objective is to expand a viewer’s level of understanding through prolonged perception. I experiment with this idea using present-day tools which afford my own movement during the capturing process to create various visual interpretations of motion. I look to László Moholy-Nagy, Aleksandr Rodchenko and Eadweard Muybridge who explored the use of the camera, the new technology of their day, to understand its potential to create a new visual language. They believed the lens of the camera was the eye of the future—and the public’s exposure to the camera’s possibilities an enlightening transcendence. I also believe in exploring newly developed tools; in visually researching their intended and unintended use to discover new perspectives in not only the way we see and represent the world, but the way we understand and represent ourselves in relation to the study of our field.

Mark-making captures movement and preserves gesture. Marks can reveal the motion behind their creation and convey thoughts through non-verbal, non-literal means.

This intent of this project is to explore the importance of handmade objects in the age of information.

My search for creative inspiration often leads to explorations in natural and built environments. Being physically immersed in an environment offers endless vantage points, as well as points of focus; allowing all senses to function as receptors of surrounding data. Observations stimulate thoughts and ideas, which inspire experiments. Projects are born, sometimes out of the smallest details. In a series of projects I explore the possibilities of using physical environments as primary source of inspiration and input in the creation of tools that function in design contexts.

I take a poetic approach to graphic design practice. It is a subjectivist approach, which recognizes our human right to willful interpretation. Designers navigate form, culture, and history like poets through language. We are subjective, exploratory engines drawing formal inspiration from figural and analogical associations. Subjectivity in graphic design practice is complex, however. Subjectivity privileges the interaction between object and individual. When we designers interpret the literal world with the poet’s omni-directional sensitivity, we intentionally and intuitively create objects that accrete inexhaustible, extra-literal value for their audience.

[pt] Na presente pesquisa investiga-se a prática da ilustração e as possibilidades para a construção de uma reflexão de âmbito teórico sobre o assunto. Identifica-se um descompasso existente, na atualidade, entre a prática, de qualidade, da produção de ilustração e a produção de textos críticos sobre a atividade. Entende-se a ilustração, a partir de suas especificidades, como uma arte visual parceira do design gráfico. Apresenta-se uma visão da ilustração contextualizada na história das artes visuais e correlacionada às reflexões próprias da questão da imagem e do campo do design. / [en] The study investigates the practice of illustration and the possibilities for the elaboration of a reflection of theoretical scope. There is a discompass concerning the current quality practice of illustration production and the production of critical texts on the activity is identified. Illustration is understood from its particularities as visual arts associated to graphic design. An approach of illustration in the context of the history of the visual arts is presented and related to reflections proper from image issues design field.