DMI Newsletter

Spring 2006 Thesis Presentations

DMI celebrated five graduate thesis presentation in the spring of 2006 including:

Kate Nazemi :: Through Hand, Through Mind
Multi-Sensory Approaches to Form, Interaction And Language Through Objects and Dynamic Media

Karolina Novitska :: forWordPlay
Experiential Learning of a Foreign Language via Interactive Play

Lauren Bessen :: Visualizing Visuality
Interactive Tools for Visual Literacy

Mei-Fen Tsai :: Intimacy in Dynamic Media

Elizabeth Lawrence :: Ancient Divination Parallels New Media
Cartomancy in an Interactive Context

A written thesis document is a vital and substantial part of the DMI graduate experience.

Why write? Writing requires both intellectual rigor and careful reflection that influences enormously how and what students think about their work. Writing can unearth connections, expose weaknesses, reveal strengths, confirm suspicions, and inspire brilliance. Ideally, writing can fuse thinking to making, enrich design work, and create authentic knowledge. Writing is the visible expression of language.

We'll feature one graduate thesis in each newsletter. This month, Lauren Bessen.

Lauren Bessen
Visualizing Visuality: Interactive Tools for Visual Literacy

To become literate and articulate in the domain of images, to be competent in understanding the nature and structure of visual messages, is to be keenly aware of one's vision. It also means mastering a common set of terms attached to what one sees and creates. Attaining this comprehensive understanding of visual form is the task of a design student.

Drawing on analog pedagogical precedents, this thesis sets out to examine the ways in which dynamic media can be used as a unique aid to vision, a means to impart greater insight into the designer's vocabulary. Through two interactive tools, RandStudio and LetterForm, my thesis investigates how using motion and the principles of interactivity to visualize information can complement traditional approaches to teaching visual literacy.

RandStudio is a system designed to help students analyze the work of master designer Paul Rand. By letting users manipulate practically all of the visual elements in a classic Rand poster, the project guides them to discover the formal mechanics behind Rand's refined simplicity. LetterForm is an interactive tool that illustrates typographic terminology and allows students to explore the elemental formal properties of the letterform. Both case studies help students to become more aware of the communicative potential of formal decisions-of the dynamic correlation between form and communication-by providing the opportunity to drive dynamic transformation of form on screen.

For More Information:

Visit Lauren's web site:
http://www.laurenbessen.com