Summer 2021 Courses by DESIS Faculty

DESIS faculty are pleased to share a series of special topics courses in the summer of 2021:

Bi-scriptual Typography (COMD 350) will explore the relationship between language, typography, culture and diversity in the context of contemporary communication design. Through a combination of discussions, readings, informal exercises, out-of-class activities, walks and observations, students will explore the possibilities of working in an inter-lingual and inter-generative space of communication design. In particular, students will explore how an idea can be expressed and modulated across different languages, scripts and cultures. A series of projects will draw upon past learning in typography and communication, with students expected to investigate various ways of gathering, assembling and analyzing visual materials and urban typography. [Reyhan Yazdani]

Decolonizing Design’s Material Practices (INDD 350) This exploratory, interdisciplinary, course invites students to reconsider assumed prototyping strategies and production processes commonly used in Design. Drawing on insights from decolonial scholarship and applying embodied making as means of reflection, students will identify and consider their own individual affinities for particular aesthetics, materials, and modes of assembly. Collectively they will propose and develop strategies for delinking from aspects of material practice that bolster longstanding and arguably problematic colonial/modernist strategies embedded in Design and the design process. Asking: how do we do? why do we do? what is needed? The aim of this investigative summer studio is to find new ways to make – meaningfully. Insights from this body of work are intended to be shared with the Emily Carr Design Community – to seed further ongoing iterative development of new Design approaches that directly address the concerns of our time. [Hélène Day Fraser, with Marcia Higuchi]

Practicing Neighbourly Responsibility (CCID 201, 301 + HUMN 300)  Learning within the context place – that is, within active social, institutional and ecological dynamics on unceded territory – how might we collectively determine our learning space; critique and trouble hierarchical and exploitive structures; and take up the work of neighbourly and place-based responsibility? Drawing from mutual aid practices – responding to the immediate needs and concerns of a community, in conjunction with social movements demanding transformative change – this class is intended to be emergent and responsive, extending over the summer to better respond to needs and pace of community work, taking up the following questions:

  • What are our responsibilities, reciprocities and commitments to the land that we are guests on?
  • How can we as individuals and also as a collective take up the responsibility of contributing to the places where we are? What can each of us offer?
  • What would a design practice look like if it were in service of relationships?

[Jean Chisholm, Laura Kozak, Mickey Morgan]

Outdoor Practices (INDD 350) This roving* field school will take Emily Carr students to local green spaces to engage in a range of design activities that supports wellbeing, attention to nature, place-based making, and openings to land based practices. Making outdoors can inform us of our relationships to the natural world, but a practice outdoors will inherently impact everything about our way of life. Including the decisions we make and the designs we continue to privilege in our day to day. Dirty hands, wet knees, deep observation and a panoply of sensory experiences will be encouraged. Sitting, walking and movement practices will be explored. Students will create many projects, that may include earth art, Earthbound Prototyping, Design for Biodiversity**, and storytelling/story-sharing. Students will be given the opportunity to work beyond the disciplines of graphic, industrial, and interaction design. Collaborative projects are encouraged, but optional. [Zach Camozzi]

* with gratitude to the ECUAD collective, the Roving Designers for this framing.

**a long-running project of the DESIS lab, see posts on Project pages