The synthesis of old and new, analog and digital, and hand- and computer-based methods provides designers with an opportunity to work beyond the constraints of the computer and take advantage of the aesthetic effects that actual materials bring to visual communication. Designers who choose to actively participate in their process – bringing the aesthetic effects of working materially into the realm of the digital – will likely learn to reject an approach that relies too heavily on passive digital tools. Active participation in the design process can extend our creative vocabulary and humanize visual communication.

Alain De Botton writes in The Architecture of Happiness, that “any object of design will give off an impression of the psychological and moral attitudes it supports.” Interpreting design then is done by understanding the attitudes of the designer, which either will or will not resonate with the viewer. I may consider the formal and conceptual merits of an object of design, but ultimately my attitudes determine whether the object will have resonance with me. These “attitudes” are, anthropologically speaking, values: what a person finds most good, proper, or desirable in life. Values are the key to the creation of objects of design that resonate. The purpose of this study is to gain insight into my values and refine their manifestation in my work. By defining those values, I can examine how my work might resonate with others.

The ubiquity of technology has mediated the means of receiving content through digital networks; users have complete control over receiving, shaping, and sharing information. In contrast to the inherent elasticity of these networks, physical pieces of communication often manifest through a closed and highly controlled process. However, the increased prominence of user-interaction with media provides an opportunity to evaluate the design process as it applies to the creation of physical objects. Throughout much of my work, I investigate the potential for unloosening the control of designed objects by inviting others into the design process. By considering the audience as active participants, rather than passive receivers of communication, the designer becomes a facilitator for communication. Through the design of frameworks, the designer relinquishes some control of form or content, allowing author and audience to coalesce.

Social connection is an essential human need. Personal connections exist at a variety of depths and within different types of relationships. Small daily choices determine the strength of those connections and their impact on our well-being as individuals and as a community. Modern society and technology have altered the speed and channels of connection, increasing communication but decreasing meaningful connection. It is critical to understand how the methods of communication affect the depth of connections. Through a series of participatory graphic design projects, I analyze the strengths and weaknesses of one-on-one, small group and community connections within an established taxonomy of the levels of connection, to identify the factors that contribute to strong social relationships.

Points of Contention, an MFA exhibit, features fifteen works of relief-printed images from carved linoleum and layers of type printed with antique letterpress wood type. The work constitutes a visual exploration of dissatisfaction and disenchantment presented through the context of odd stories in the news and major current events, such as election politics and the closing of Hostess bakeries, as well as, NSA data collection and gun violence. This supporting thesis explores the conceptual and physical processes of creating the pieces, including researching other artists who have wrestled with similar topics and produced their own unique reaction and resolution through art. The paper also discusses the technical and mechanical side of the artistic process, especially the anachronistic attraction to the methods of letterpress and printmaking in a digital age. Finally, this thesis chronicles the artist’s sources of inspiration from cartoon monsters and brand mascots during childhood to letterpress printmaking.

The artist discusses the work presented in The Secret Life of Things, her Master of Fine Arts exhibition held at Slocumb Galleries, East Tennessee State University, from March 18th through 22nd, 2013. The exhibition consists of sixteen illustrations (four of these are digitally enhanced photographs) and one animation that show the artist’s interest in bringing household objects to life. Pieces in the exhibition can be characterized as humorous with a strong narrative and attention to details. Savić’s ideas are based on traditional education with contemporary influences. All printed work is twenty inches wide, sixteen inches tall, framed, and hung in one side of the gallery. The other side was reserved for an animated artist statement projected onto the gallery walls. This thesis discusses the most important influences and doctrines about art that support and further explain the presented work.

Within a practice founded on both typographic form and language, I have continued to push myself to make work that is more sensitive to place, more contextual, more (hopefully) generous toward a public audience. These pieces might serve as useful instruments of institutional critique, resources for comprehension, or moments in which to interrogate preconceived modes of seeing. I deploy original texts in public spaces in order that they might force viewers to decide how to personally resolve the content they encounter. Is it language or object? Literal or figurative? Graphic design or art? The further I develop this body of work, the less interested I am in providing answers to those questions. The questions themselves are enough.

In this work, I discuss how global products/ identities are made, transported and consumed, and the inevitable ‘mis-’ in acts of transmission. This research ranges from the miscommunication in languages and linguistics, to the gap between production and consumption. I investigate how things and humans are misread, mispronounced, misfit and mistranslated when they traverse social and cultural borders, arriving at a place in between languages, holding on to and letting go of things that are familiar to neither and both cultures. This work explores diverse media such as publications, videos and installations, and examines how they maybe used to address such contexts as factory production, global trade, circulation and tracking of commodities as well as identities.

Auras is a series of illustrations of Carlos Fuentes’s novella, Aura, a horror love story about memory, obsession, desire, corporeality and immortality. Defying narrative conventions, the story is told through second person. You are the protagonist, Felipe Montero, and are employed by a 109-year old widow to edit her husband's memoirs. Inside the pitchblack house, you fall in love with her beautiful and bizarre green-eyed niece, Aura. The gradual discovery of the true relationship between the young woman and her aunt propel the story to its extraordinary conclusion. The story seems to take place within the confines of the widow’s mind. The plot mimics the obsessive, hypnotic quality of nostalgia and memory. Much of my illustrative content and artistic process reflects a personal obsessive nostalgia I have for my grandmother and her life. It is her image, young and old, coupled with the complex and repetitive processes of printmaking, both traditional and current, that inform my illustration and personal interpretation of Aura. My thesis research conculs a series of artistic processes and theories behind image-making that relish the synthesis of new and old. I look at early horror illustration by Harry Clarke and Francesco Goya, and analyze images and practices in early digital graphic design and April Greiman, reappropriated inkjet and woodblock prints (Anselm Kiefer), and my own lasercut woodblock prints.

Tendo como campo de estudo o Brique da Redenção, um dos mais importantes pontos de comercialização de artesanato em Porto Alegre-RS, esta pesquisa teve como objetivo geral mapear o contexto atual da utilização de identidades visuais por artesãos que ali expõem seus produtos e a possibilidade de inserção do design gráfico junto ao artesanato em ações de comunicação visual. A base teórica aborda o design gráfico vernacular e o institucionalizado, o artesanato, a identidade visual e sua importância para a atividade artesanal. Junto aos artesãos, foram coletados materiais gráficos, nos quais se realizou uma análise dos elementos visuais que representam o nome comercial de seus produtos. Com o intuito de compreender melhor estas identidades visuais, efetuou-se uma análise comparativa com os princípios e normas de composição visual estabelecidas pelo design gráfico institucionalizado. No artesanato, percebeu-se a predominância de linguagem visual vernacular que, para o design gráfico institucionalizado, não é satisfatória de acordo com os padrões tidos como de qualidade. Por meio de entrevistas, buscou-se diagnosticar a percepção que os artesãos têm sobre a comunicação visual de marca, a sua satisfação em relação àquelas que utilizam, bem como investigar se ocorre ou não a participação de profissionais de design gráfico na promoção do artesanato comercializado no Brique da Redenção. Para transcrição, codificação e análise destes dados, os mesmos foram agrupados por temas correspondentes, identificando enunciados em comum e codificando-os. Os resultados apontam uma carência de projetos consistentes de identidades visuais para os artesãos, indicando um rico campo de atuação para o design junto ao artesanato em ações que visem à melhoria da comunicação visual deste segmento. / Having Brique da Redenção as the field of study, which is one of the most important points of handicraft commercialization in Porto Alegre - RS, this study aimed to mapping the current context of the use of visual identities by artisans who exhibit their products there and the possibility of insertion of graphic design along with handicraft in actions of visual communication. The theoretical basis approaches the vernacular and the institutionalized graphic design, the handicrafts, the visual identity and its importance to the handicraft activity. Along with the artisans, graphic materials were collected, in which an analysis of visual elements that represent the commercial name of their products was made. In order to understand better these visual identities, a comparative analysis was done with the principles and rules of visual composition established by the institutionalized graphic design. In the handicraft activity, a dominance of vernacular visual language was perceived, which, for the institutionalized graphic design, it is not satisfactory according to the standards taken as quality. Through interviews, the perception that the artisans have regarding the visual communication of their brand was sought as well as their satisfaction with regard to the ones who use them and investigate if the participation of graphic design professionals occur to promote the crafts commercialized at Brique da Redenção. For transcription, coding and analysis of these data, they were gathered by their correspondent themes, identifying statements in common and coding them. The results point a lack of consistent projects of visual identities for the artisans, indicating a rich field of work for design along with the handicraft in actions which aim the improvement of the visual communication of this segment.