We have gathered the following pages to archive our time here in Richmond, Virginia. We have been here for two years, growing slowly, moving when needed to new anchorholds to avoid detection or arrest. We scrutinize the urban environment like modern archeologists. We collect stories and speculate about new uses of old things. It is imperative to be resourceful here, and we do so out of necessity but also in the spirit of practice. These pages were made en route, each an exploration of the tools at hand when on the move. The method of creation is just as important as the creation as the story itself. The ancients invented stories about the constellations in order to track their routes across the earth. A cluster of stars exists called the seven sisters. Only six are visible. According to myth, the sisters leave to look for the seventh sister and disappear below the horizon for a month. Their return to the sky signals the end of the planting season. The story becomes allegory, told to educate stargazers about the growing cycle. Like those sisters, we come and go. We tell stories to teach. We tell stories survive.

What are ‘educational typefaces’ and why are they needed today? Do Arabic beginners need special typefaces that can simplify learning further? If so, what features should they have? Research findings on the complexity of learning Arabic confirm that the majority of language textbooks and pedagogic materials lead to challenging learning environments due to the poor quality of book design, text-heavy content and the restricted amount of visuals used. The complexity of the data and insufficient design quality of the learning materials reviewed in this practice-based research demand serious thought toward simplification, involving experts in the fields of graphic communication, learning and typeface design. The study offers solutions to some of the problems that arise in the course of designing language-learning books by reviewing selected English learning and information design books and methods of guidance for developing uniform learning material for basic Arabic. Key findings from this study confirm the significant role of Arabic designers and educators in the production of efficient and effective learning materials. Their role involves working closely with Arabic instructors, mastering good language skills and being aware of the knowledge available. Also, selecting legible typefaces with distinct design characteristics to help fulfil various objectives of the learning unit. This study raises awareness of the need for typefaces that can attract people to learn Arabic more easily within a globalized world. The absence of such typefaces led to the exploration of simplified twentieth-century Arabic typefaces that share a similar idea of facilitating reading and writing, and resolving script and language complexity issues. This study traces their historical context and studies their functional, technical and aesthetic features to incorporate their thinking and reassign them as learning tools within the right context. The final outcome is the construction of an experimental bilingual Arabic-English language book series for Arab and non-Arab adult beginners. The learning tools used to create the book series were tested through workshops in Kuwait and London to measure their level of simplification and accessibility. They have confirmed both accessibility and incompatibility within different areas of the learning material of the books and helped improve the final outcome of the practice. The tools have established the significant role of educational typefaces, bilingual and graphic communication within visual Arabic learning.

My practice involves leveraging analog and digital techniques from many disciplines, but especially graphic design, craft/material studies, and sculpture. I embrace reproduction and repetition as both tools and means to visualize what is often unseen, and to recognize not only what is made, but what supports making— from the straightforward and immediate to the complex and conceptual.

For my MFA, I have decided to explore data visualization not as an automated technology but as a craft—a systematic and precise practice done entirely by hand. Though the craft-based approach is not appropriate for all types of data creation and visualization, as an investigatory tool it grants a level of access and intimacy lacking in computerized analyses. I discuss the limitations and benefits of this type of approach, as well as provide an overview of key influences and precedents. I have also included select projects developed over the course of my studies that highlight my use of data visualization for a range of subjects and intents, including reading piano sheet music more easily and investigating a photographer’s compositional process. The report concludes by projecting how this craft-based approach for data visualization may be integrated with an automated method. / text

„Woman pride“ – project of feeling vision. The album „Woman pride“ – project of feeling vision was prepared and predicated according to art, design theory (knowledge of artistic and composite expression means) and evaluation criteria of design creation (aesthetics, functionalism, solid style and availability). The conception was formulated and it was grounded by philosophical and social aspects. Creative work organisation, general statistics, colouristics, constructional and other decisions were concretized with reference to prototype analysis and examples. Creative work span is planned and design decisions of concrete parts are formulated. The hypothesis is based with work results that synthesis of painting, graphics, drawing and photography enable to create subtle and modern product.

The Taro cards are the theme of the work. The point of work is to create the classic Taro deck of cards, containing all 78 cards, decompounding of 22 senior arcades and 56 cadence using traditional taro card system and sustaining with symbolisms of the Baltic tribes. The target of work: 1. To scrutinize the history, structure and symbolism of Taro cards. 2. To scrutinize the string of Taro cards with the magical world. 3. To scrutinize symbolic meaning in philosophical aspect. 4. Sustaining on the analysis of prototypes to concretize the volume and organization. 5. Designing (the generation of the idea for the work, sketching, projecting with a computer programs). There is the analysis of the literature and other sources of information used in the work. The photography and computer graphics are used in the magisterial work. In pursuance of the best quality there was the photography session with the reselected models organized. The pictures were processed with Adobe PhotoSHOP and Corel PhotoPAINT computer programs, later the results were processed with CorelDRAW computer program. Appearance and in abstract a growth of human mind gain abstractness, gets some new names, newer the less the target remains the same ��� to find the very point of reference, which could lead the life in harmony. Primitive minded people understand the ambience more in prominence to the parts that are important to their empathize which are important to experience, it is its harmony with nature... [to full text]

This study researched the question as to whether reading goals and organizational signals interact to affect comprehension. Organizational signals are literary instruments that make the topic structure more salient and increase the recall for the majority of the topics in a text. Readers have specific goals that they wish to accomplish during reading. Participants read one of two texts, which contained one of three levels of signals: no signals, half signals, and full signals. The participants were assigned a specific goal from one of two main categories of goals: reading for school or reading for pleasure. Significant Text and Goal differences were found, but there was no effect of headings. Participants with the school goal recalled more than did the participants with the pleasure goal. It appears that reading goals do have an effect on the processing characteristics that people use while reading, which affects the amount recalled. / Department of Psychological Science

This practice-led, project-based research charts, simultaneously, my disenchantment and re-engagement with graphic design. By it's dissemination I hope to articulate: 1. How an evolving understanding of my sense disenchantment emerged from the research, and enabled the process of re-engagement. 2. The role, and importance, of provocation and doubt in creative practice generally, but specifically in practice-led research. The difficulty of provoking one's self, and the strategies through which I have tried to enact a disruptive reframing of my practice. 3. That through the highly reflective nature of practice-led research and the greater sense of self-awareness that inevitable comes from that I have been able to re-engage with graphic design. That this re-engagement has, for me specifically, had much to do with my ability to begin to negotiate my own personal terms of reference, so as to be able to locate myself within a community of practice, and to begin to take part in a discourse that has a certain resonance for me. Central to this research are questions about professional practice, dislocation/disinterest, research, resonance and reinvention. As disenchantment is common, perhaps pervasive, within professional practice, my account of this research will propose that a more general understanding of practice-led research-highly reflective, self-initiated work-is essential if graphic design is to support and sustain imaginative, innovative, and inventive practitioners. Rather than target graphic design's inability to support provocative practices (the studio, or the industry), my research focuses on the potential of the individual practitioner to motivate and design a more generative and engaged practice. As such any observations and/or discoveries are not presented as quantitative 'findings', but should be seen rather as generative understandings that promote future possibility and potential for the practice.

The locus of this project is in the field of type face design, with the origins of the project based on an appreciation of the Letraset brand1 dry transfer system (instant lettering and other elements included in the system) and the way they were used and/or mis-used. The project investigates the autographic ‘craft’ nature of the use of Letraset, the fact that if used carelessly it could create accidental applications and that these accidental applications could lead to serendipitous effects. The project explains how reflection on these effects led in turn to some users of Letraset devising their own unconventional techniques for its use and it proposes that it is possible to replicate some of these effects and to use them as the inspiration for new type face concepts. It further proposes that it is possible to use Letraset elements (rules, dots and squares for example) in ways other than originally intended as the raw material of the basic structure of new type face designs. The methodology used in the project combines narrative inquiry, self inquiry and the generation of ideas through creative reflection and the use of ‘tacit knowledge’.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2008. / Title from file title page. Susan Richmond, committee chair; Maria Gindhart , Glenn Gunhouse, committee members. Electronic text (102 p. : col. ill.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed July 24, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-102).