GD 490: Graphic Design International Studio

Instructor: Matěj Chabera
Credits: 6
GEP: Elective

Course Description

Graphic Design is an intense and demanding course for students who are interested in a career in graphic design or related fields. The course focuses on giving students an opportunity to deepen their conceptual and practical expertise in graphic design and all its sub-categories. The general aim of the whole course experience is to show the students how graphic design integrates with a broad range of other disciplines and how its powers and its relevance get multiplied through these combinations.

The term will be filled with a number of smaller projects that will follow an exact brief. The aim of each project will be to apply graphic design thinking and creativity to a wide variety of situations, for example, graphics as a final layer on a product, graphics as an integral part of architectural spaces, graphics as the main tool in interface design. Each smaller project will address certain themes, skills or problems within the field and will give students an opportunity to execute and test the knowledge, overview and instructions that are presented in the lectures.

In this course students will deal with the following key graphic design subjects: applying graphic design and judging opportunities and roles, researching in preparation for graphic design work, exploring wide possibilities and making choices to be effective, picking the right approach to a brief or a problem, understanding the effect of various types of media, typography and type design, icon and pictogram design, print and its essentials, designing one concept and one graphic language that can be applied to a wide variety of media and outputs, creating quality work that is relevant and lasting, guiding client-based projects and ensuring a great result every time, creating an ever-growing personal library and using all past work as the foundation for all next projects, dealing with time and using time effectively for professional graphic design work.

This class is recommended to College of Design students. Students coming from other colleges will be asked to submit a portfolio of their past work.

Previous experience in the field of art and design is required, this class may be too difficult and demanding for students with a limited skill set.

Learning Outcomes

Real course result
Students will conclude the course with a series of designs responding to the three initial project briefs. Their output will be in the form of research, sketches, prints, digital files or any media appropriate to their concept. For each project, the focus will be to culminate the term’s work with a high-impact presentation that shows depth and quality of work. Students will learn to guide their way through all three key phases of graphic design project work – the initial briefing, research and ideation, followed by the development of specific ideas into process versions, models and prototypes and then the final stage of concluding the entire process with the strongest result and executing that in the best way possible. The instructor will guide each student through this journey and will be addressing all their possible weaknesses. The final work together with selected process work from each student will be exhibited and presented to a general audience. Students who go through this process will have gained insight into professional graphics design work and will be a step closer to being able to handle an internship or professional position in the field.

Individual approach to students
This course focuses on multi-level personal development and independent creative strategic thinking. Every student gets enough opportunity to show their individuality and everyone will get tailored responses to ensure their best progress and a good use of time during the course. Experiencing this course will give each student an effective boost in their skills and ability to apply the skills in a relevant way. Next to that each students’ weaknesses will be addressed and developed so that everyone can grow to their best potential.