Design It/Read It

In an increasingly visual world understanding the constructions intertwining image and text are an essential skill. Graphic design explicitly engages these structures, and in this course we will explore its history and practice through the design of a class cookbook. The cookbook format offers a variety of challenges for the beginning designer in its uses of direction, narrative, and illustration. The history and theory of book design will be central to the course. Putting this history into practice, the class will decide on a cookbook format, and students will individually design pages of the collective effort. By term’s end we will have a print-ready project, and in printing the book we will explore the varied mechanics of actual book production.