News & Events

Previous Events

Phillip Thurtle (Comparative History of Ideas, University of Washington)
Goth Biology: The Lore of the Biomedical Body
December 10, 2023

This talk places Phillip’s most recent work, what he has been calling “goth biology,” into context with his older work on the experience of space and time in the emergence of genetic rationality and the use of grids for envisioning organisms. It begins by asking, "What happens to bodies, or parts of bodies, that don’t easily fit into the grids of biomedicine?" We all know these bodies well, as they are our bodies. These are the bodies in pain, the disabled body, the dying or aging body, and the bodies deeply scarred by trauma. It turns out that imperfect bodies help us find vital meaning and a sense of place as we traverse the haunted ruins of an increasingly abstract biomedical vision of embodiment.

Phillip Thurtle researches the affective-phenomenological domains of media, the role of information processing technologies in biomedical research, and theories of novelty in the life sciences. His most recent work, Biology in the Grid: Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), analyzes the cellular spaces of transformation in evolutionary and developmental biology research and the cultural spaces of transformation in popular culture.

Career Resourcefulness in Creative Fields
A panel discussion for design students moving into the creative world.
November 19, 2025

VCD Students, how do you turn your creative interests into a sustainable career? This panel will offer real-world insights into what it means to build and balance a creative life after graduation. Join five inspiring creatives from our Visual Communication Department—working across illustration, digital expression, curatorial practice, museum collections, and design education—as they share how resourcefulness, adaptability, ingenuity, skill, and luck have guided their professional paths. Hear stories from their transdisciplinary design experiences, and gain practical tips on how to navigate your own path in today’s changing design world.

Panelists include Michal Janicki (Senior Design Lead, IDEO + VCD Lecturer); Lauren Johnson (Assistant Collections Manager, Mammals Department, Field Museum of Natural History + VCD Lecturer); Jen Lobo (Research Affiliate, Field Museum of Natural History + VDC Lecturer); Michele Washington (Designer, Researcher, Critic, Curator, Podcast Host + VCD Lecturer); moderated by Mark Addison Smith (SAIC Associate Professor + VCD Undergraduate Coordinator).

Design in Practice: Visual Communication Design BFA + MFA Alumni in Conversation
November 11, 2025

Four Visual Communication Design alumni—Sandra Hsu (BFA 2017), Nicole Lun (MFA 2017), Patrick Stoltman (BFA 2013), and Tifa Zhou (MFA 2013)—will share their experiences as designers post-SAIC, the evolution of their careers, insights into their fields, and much more in this panel discussion.

Jacek Mrowczyk (Rhode Island School of Design and Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Katowice, Poland)
Typography and Space: A Journey from Micro to Macro
October 22, 2025

Jacek is a graphic designer, editor, curator, researcher, and educator. He currently works at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Katowice (PL) and RISD in Providence (RI). In his talk, Jacek Mrowczyk will explore the relationships between micro- and macro-typography in connection to medium and place. The presentation will begin with an examination of the smallest spatial relationships within and around letterforms, drawing on his professional practice in book design. It will then move on to examples of spatial illusions in typography, and finally to how typography in public space helps shape a place’s identity, tells its story, and serves as a tool for way-finding.

Tomoko Ichikawa (Institute of Design at Illinois Tech)
What's this thing we call Visual Communication?: An ID perspective
October 8, 2025

What defines Visual Communication design? The answer varies dramatically across designers and institutions. This talk examines how the Institute of Design (ID) at Illinois Tech approaches this question through our distinct philosophy and practice. Situated within a technology university while rooted in the Bauhaus history of humanizing technology, ID applies systems-level thinking and rational design methodologies to visual communication challenges. Ichikawa will highlight ID's program legacy, current pedagogical approach, and how their functional design perspective differs from—and complements—other interpretations of the field. In the background, we shall acknowledge that our complex, diverse world is made richer for having these varied approaches to visual communication, in turn making it indispensable in our visual landscape.

Adam Nocek (Arizona State University)
Philosophy in Design
April 23, 2025

Philosophers love to tell others what to do and what to think. Philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and even philosophy of design—in these and other instances, philosophy stands outside of a practice in order to conceptualize, direct, or otherwise ground it. The preposition of tells the story of philosophy’s (transcendent) relation to what it theorizes: it remains at a distance from its objects of contemplation. But what if practices generated their own philosophical content? Indeed, what if philosophy was already in design, architecture, fashion, etc., it just needed to be nourished and cultivated? In this talk, that’s precisely what Nocek will argue: that the designed world is already philosophical, and that it’s always given expression to philosophical propositions—vis-à-vis how one might live, how we perceive the world, who or what should be included/excluded. What’s at stake, however, is ensuring that those expressions are ethically and politically just.

David Skopec (Berlin University of the Arts)
Infoklasse
March 19, 2025

The Infoklasse is a specialized program for Information Design within the Visual Communication department at UdK Berlin. The lecture offers an insight into different approaches within the Infoklasse curriculum and how these have been applied in specific projects.

Matthew Terdich (Morningstar, Chicago)
From Dinosaurs to Design
November 20, 2024

A five-part story of his career in design: what he thought he knew, what he didn't know, what he still doesn't know, and what he's learned. In his current role at Morningstar, Matthew Terdich leads the Corporate Design Office team, a group of global designers supporting employee experience, internal communications, work space and environmental graphic design, and corporate sustainability and financial reporting. He received a BFA and MFA in Graphic Design from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an MAS in Visual Communication from the Basel School of Design/FHNW, in Basel, Switzerland.

Jacek Mrowczyk (Rhode Island School of Design and Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Katowice, Poland)
Polish Poster Art in the Context of Global Design
November 15, 2024

The distinctiveness of the Polish Poster School and its metaphorical language (sometimes even overused) allowed creators to juggle meanings and craft complex messages. This was especially evident in cultural posters, where the message was usually reduced to the title of a film, play, or exhibition. The Polish Poster School is often seen as an alternative trend to international modernism, with the value of the posters themselves perceived in purely artistic terms.

Nontsikelelo Mutiti (Director of Graduate Studies for Graphic Design at Yale School of Art)
October 29, 2024

Nontsikelelo Mutiti is a Zimbabwean-born visual artist and educator. She is invested in elevating the work and practices of Black peoples past, present, and future; those whose narratives have been under-recognized, whilst also acknowledging all our interconnected histories. Mutiti’s work appears through a conceptual approach to design, publishing, archiving practices, and institution building.