About this course
This course presents you with in-depth knowledge of, and professional skills within the field of graphic design. Develop your graphic sensibilities through analysis of existing examples of real-life visual identity, branding, and communication along with project-based studio assignments. You work in physical and digital media, and are challenged to use these media in each of your projects throughout the semester. Studios are taught vertically, combining students of different levels. Expectations relate to you as an individual student.
Syllabus
Pre-requisites
One drawing course at university level. Knowledge of one or more programs in Adobe Creative Suite.
Long Study Tour
Short Study Tour
About this tour
Core Course Week, including this short Study Tour, forms an integral part of your studio curriculum by broadening your understanding of the social and physical context of Danish design. Not only will you discover the qualities that make a design quintessentially ‘Danish,’ you will also experience Danish culture, traditional cuisine, art, and music. You will study graphic design at all scales but with a focus on visual identity and way-finding in the built environment, through examples including significant religious architecture, innovative museum designs, historic and contemporary urban environments, and other graphic design related sites.
The two-day seminar in Copenhagen and three-day Study Tour to western Denmark will provide you with the opportunity to develop your critical observation skills and diagrammatic and representational proficiency. Simultaneously, you will be equipped with a vocabulary of design concepts, strategies, and materials, which you can apply in your own creative work in studio and beyond.
Learning outcomes
- Study graphic design as manifest in contemporary and traditional sites within the built environment of Denmark
- Gain an understanding of Danish history, geography, and culture outside the Copenhagen region
- Develop sketching and note-taking skills for recording impressions of sites in a journal
Possible activities
- Comparison of different systems of visual identity and way-finding in spaces for art museums, including the Trapholt and ARoS museums
- Visiting a traditional Danish church with centuries old iconic chalk drawings
- Studying Brandts Museum in Odense, with an extensive graphic design program covering building identity and communication
About this tour
As a full-year student, the Berlin study tour forms an integral part of your studio curriculum and is an opportunity to continue to develop your skills in visual analysis of design themes, and spatial and sensory impressions. As experienced architectural travelers, you have the challenge of investigating Berlin as a historically-layered urban entity and as a composite network of zones, spaces, and sites. The way the old city fabric has been reworked through constructed interventions and contemporary planning will be evident through your sensitive and critical view, and cultural experiences with the city.
You will advance your critical observation skills and diagrammatic and representational proficiency by studying the sites on the tour. Simultaneously, you will be equipped with a vocabulary of design concepts, strategies, and materials, which can be applied in your own creative work in studio and beyond.
Learning outcomes
-
Study the city as a complex amalgam of historic and modern spaces and functions
- Analyze how urban development and design expression have reacted to political events and social movements
- Develop sketching and note-taking skills for recording impressions of sites in a journal
Possible activities
-
Studying how planning and architecture connect the present to the past in areas such as Potsdamer Platz, the Kulturforum and former East German neighborhoods
- Visits to Neues Museum, Neue Nationalgalerie, and Bauhaus Archive
- Tour of the former Reichstag, now the German Bundestag