Brian Anderson and Amir Berbic to present at MAKE Conference

UIC School of Design faculty Brian Anderson and Amir Berbić will present at the upcoming MAKE: 2018 AIGA Design Educators Conference, to be held at the Indiana University Herron School of Art and Design, June 7–9, 2018.

Assistant Professor Brian Anderson will present the aims and experience of a class project that employs horticultural metaphors to ground and structure investigation into historical and future forms of design. Students employ case-study-like probes to broaden their understanding of design as influenced and shaped by contexts and realities ranging from the individual values of the designer to politics, technology, and various histories. Students are then asked to imagine the near future and apply corresponding logics of influence in new designs they develop to early stages of prototyping.

Associate Professor Amir Berbić will discuss pedagogical research and curricular development for a 3D typography class he teaches at the UIC School of Design. Through exercises defined by key action verbs students employ formal methods such as extruding, projecting, folding, layering, and cross sectional morphing to explore material and spatial formulations of typography. The experience of engaging a range of approaches as well as analog and digital fabrication tools require students to learn to negotiate the varying limitations imposed by material and technique with the constraints of letterform anatomy and typographic composition.

AIGA Design Educators Community (DEC) seeks to enhance the abilities of design educators and educational institutions to prepare future designers for excellence in design practice, design theory and design writing at the undergraduate and graduate levels while supporting the fundamental mission of AIGA, the professional association for design. Its 2018 conference is organized according to four areas of focus: make [community], make [curriculum], make [form], make [experiences].