Overview

As designers, we often seek to influence behavior – whether it's encouraging a purchase, promoting a healthy habit, or fostering civic engagement. This project challenges you to move beyond superficial aesthetics and strategically apply advanced psychological principles and behavioral economics to design a system that ethically encourages or discourages a specific human behavior. You will focus on the why and how of human decision-making, designing interventions that guide users toward a desired outcome through thoughtful system design.

Project Goal

To design a multi-faceted system (e.g., app feature, public campaign, interactive installation concept) that ethically leverages cognitive biases, habit formation models, and persuasive design principles to influence a specific human behavior, demonstrating a deep understanding of human psychology in design.

Ethical Imperative

This project carries a significant ethical responsibility. Your design must be transparent, empower user choice, and genuinely benefit the user, society, or both. Designs employing "dark patterns" or manipulative tactics are strictly prohibited and will result in a failing grade.

Deliverables

You will choose one specific human behavior to influence (e.g., reducing food waste, encouraging daily meditation, promoting local community engagement, improving digital well-being, fostering sustainable transit choices). Your system should manifest across at least two interconnected touchpoints (e.g., a mobile app feature + a public poster campaign, a website component + an email notification system, a digital interface + a physical interactive element).

Overview

Many of the most impactful design challenges in the real world are not single artifacts but intricate systems – multi-platform, multi-touchpoint experiences designed to solve complex problems or serve diverse audiences. This project challenges you to identify a significant, real-world problem or opportunity (e.g., a public health crisis, a community initiative, an educational gap, a large non-profit's communication challenge, a systemic issue requiring awareness) and design a comprehensive, interconnected design system to address it. You will apply strategic thinking, advanced information design, and a deep understanding of how various design elements function together to create a cohesive and effective solution.

Project Goal

To independently identify a complex problem, develop a strategic design solution that addresses it across multiple channels and touchpoints, and execute a comprehensive design system that demonstrates advanced conceptual abilities, strategic thinking, and technical mastery in integrating diverse design components.

Deliverables

You will choose one real-world complex problem or opportunity and design a multi-faceted system to address it. Your system should ideally leverage different media (e.g., print, digital, environmental, motion) to create a holistic solution.

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Overview

Brands often evoke emotions, but what if an emotion were the brand? This project challenges you to transcend conventional branding by creating a comprehensive visual and experiential brand identity for an abstract emotion (e.g., "Serenity," "Urgency," "Curiosity," "Nostalgia," "Awe," "Frustration," "Whimsy," "Tranquility"). This requires a deep understanding of how non-tangible concepts can be translated into a cohesive, impactful, and memorable system across various sensory touchpoints (visual, auditory, perhaps even kinesthetic or olfactory conceptually).

Project Goal

To develop a full, multi-faceted brand identity system for an abstract emotion, demonstrating an advanced ability to conceptualize, visualize, and apply a cohesive brand language that evokes and defines that emotion through strategic design.

Deliverables

You will choose one abstract emotion and build a complete brand identity around it. Your brand should extend beyond a logo, encompassing a holistic sensory experience.

Overview

The Senior Portfolio is the culmination of your entire design education and the most critical artifact for launching your professional career. This project is about strategically curating, refining, and presenting your best work in a professional and compelling manner. You will develop a cohesive personal brand, design a responsive portfolio website, and create a supplementary print portfolio or leave-behind. This is your opportunity to demonstrate your unique voice, conceptual abilities, technical mastery, and design process to prospective employers or clients.

Project Goal

To curate, design, and present a professional-quality design portfolio that effectively showcases the student's conceptual abilities, technical skills, and design process across diverse projects, demonstrating readiness for entry into the professional design industry.

Deliverables

You will create a comprehensive professional portfolio package.

Advanced Graphic Design is a somewhat experimental course. The purpose of this course is to focus on systems of design. However, it is also paramount to examine the role of the designer as problem solvers - those who critically think as a design thinker rather than a decorator. The solutions may be 2d, 3d, interactive, augmented, or experiential, but the method of solving the problem and the outcome are more important than "a pretty picture."