Donald Pollack

Image Studio is a course that challenges students to interpret, critically read text, conceptualize, and assess project parameters to implement design solutions. The creative process is a core focus throughout the assignments. The goal of this course is to explore the process of creating original imagery and visual information.

We utilize digital and analog means to create design solutions to projects that also require fundamental explorations with typography. We explore a diverse means of image construction from paper collage to photography and Photoshop manipulation.

Form studies examine design basics such as juxtaposition, repetition, and progression as well as the use of metaphor, analogy, and semiotics. The introduction of design context, audience awareness, and sequential narrative is also addressed.

Image Studio is a course that challenges students to interpret, critically read text, conceptualize, and assess project parameters to implement design solutions. The creative process is a core focus throughout the assignments. The goal of this course is to explore the process of creating original imagery and visual information.

We utilize digital and analog means to create design solutions to projects that also require fundamental explorations with typography. We explore a diverse means of image construction from paper collage to photography and Photoshop manipulation.

Form studies examine design basics such as juxtaposition, repetition, and progression as well as the use of metaphor, analogy, and semiotics. The introduction of design context, audience awareness, and sequential narrative is also addressed.

Image Studio is a course that challenges students to interpret, critically read text, conceptualize, and assess project parameters to implement design solutions. The creative process is a core focus throughout the assignments. The goal of this course is to explore the process of creating original imagery and visual information.

We utilize digital and analog means to create design solutions to projects that also require fundamental explorations with typography. We explore a diverse means of image construction from paper collage to photography and Photoshop manipulation.

Form studies examine design basics such as juxtaposition, repetition, and progression as well as the use of metaphor, analogy, and semiotics. The introduction of design context, audience awareness, and sequential narrative is also addressed.

Image Studio is a course that challenges students to interpret, critically read text, conceptualize, and assess project parameters to implement design solutions. The creative process is a core focus throughout the assignments. The goal of this course is to explore the process of creating original imagery and visual information.

We utilize digital and analog means to create design solutions to projects that also require fundamental explorations with typography. We explore a diverse means of image construction from paper collage to photography and Photoshop manipulation.

Form studies examine design basics such as juxtaposition, repetition, and progression as well as the use of metaphor, analogy, and semiotics. The introduction of design context, audience awareness, and sequential narrative is also addressed.

Experiments in visual communication challenge the student to further refine visual thinking and integrate basic studies through applied problems. The importance of flexibility of approach is stressed at this level. Through experimentation, the problem is defined and organized; imagery and message are manipulated; awareness of potential solutions is increased. A student's portfolio must be pre-approved by the visual communication department for enrollment in this course.

This course will allow students to further explore the immense world of scientific illustration, from the historical to the contemporary, and how it can enhance communication within design structures-including publication, mapping, and other forms of visual narrative-in the museum context. Classes will meet at the Field Museum of Natural History, where both the public and private research collections of Botany, Invertebrate, Mammology, Mycology, Ornithology, and Zoology will be utilized.

As part of our inquiry, we will study and discuss the work of historical scientific illustrators such as Ernst Haeckel, Genevieve Jones, and Maria Sybilla Merian, which will be further complemented with a visit to the Field Museum's Marie Louise Rosenthal Library's Rare Book Room, housing an extensive collection of scientific illustration material dating back to the 15th Century. Furthermore, we will explore contemporary artists working at the intersection of science, illustration, and design, like Mark Dion, Nicholas Feltron, William Kentridge, Zachgari Logan,Greg Oakley, Alice Tangerini, along with other members of the American Society of Botanical Artists (ASBA).

Students can expect to create a comprehensive project illustrating a biological system (eg. Anatomical Function, Metamorphosis, Pollination, etc.) with a focus on observational drawing from museum specimens and inclusion of diagrammatical, narrative, and applied typographic strategies for design communication. Working individually and in teams, projects will be taken from the study stages to polished compositions-creating innovative solutions for design challenges and focusing on legibility and navigability for a specific audience.

This critique seminar explores the structure of storytelling. Students review traditional dramatic form, incorporate methods of collaging content and explore experimental narrative structures and physical configurations. The course begins and ends with targeted design+writing projects utilizing non-linear narrative methods such as circular or never-ending, list formats, and multiple perspectives. Here, students focus on new forms as a means of driving narrative. In between, a longer investigation with a more expanded process focuses on analogy and its relationship to narrative. Using analogy, students deploy various research strategies and novel mapping techniques, fashioning stories out of the strange or incongruous, prodding connections that push against cliche. Each project in this seminar reconsiders basic tenets of reading?flow, dramatic pacing, the capacity to be entertaining.

This critique seminar explores the structure of storytelling. Students review traditional dramatic form, incorporate methods of collaging content and explore experimental narrative structures and physical configurations. The course begins and ends with targeted design+writing projects utilizing non-linear narrative methods such as circular or never-ending, list formats, and multiple perspectives. Here, students focus on new forms as a means of driving narrative. In between, a longer investigation with a more expanded process focuses on analogy and its relationship to narrative. Using analogy, students deploy various research strategies and novel mapping techniques, fashioning stories out of the strange or incongruous, prodding connections that push against cliche. Each project in this seminar reconsiders basic tenets of reading?flow, dramatic pacing, the capacity to be entertaining.