1.Conceive of idea and learn to narrow and direct energies towards something that makes sense.
In order to document my ideation process, I kept a diary of my thesis class leading up to the conception of Learning Outcomes.
Diary in the Learning Outcomes book.
The diary is written as a subjective personal narrative of my struggles, judgements, and desires that led me to the project at hand, serving as an introduction to the rest of the responses.
Scanned spread.
Alongside this internal monologue, this document divulges personal interactions with professors and classmates, the drafts and development of early thesis coursework, and the research into art history and design education that informed my final thesis concept.
The diary is written as a subjective personal narrative of my struggles, judgements, and desires that led me to the project at hand, serving as an introduction to the rest of the responses.
Alongside this internal monologue, this document divulges personal interactions with professors and classmates, the drafts and development of early thesis coursework, and the research into art history and design education that informed my final thesis concept.
2.Develop a design process and working methodology.
In order to demonstrate my working methodology, I taught it in a workshop.
Materials turned in by Anjali Arasasingham.
On February 22nd, 2025, I held a workshop at Parsons where I randomly assigned students condensed versions of my own Learning Outcomes responses. I came to find that by conceiving of projects based on course learning outcomes, I had inadvertently developed a syllabus of assignments for a graphic design class. I also found that my best ideas could be reduced to the simplest instructions. This became the litmus test for my ideas: if it could be reasonably reduced to replicable instructions, it was a good idea. These were the assignments:
On February 22nd, 2025, I held a workshop at Parsons where I randomly assigned students condensed versions of my own Learning Outcomes responses. I came to find that by conceiving of projects based on course learning outcomes, I had inadvertently developed a syllabus of assignments for a graphic design class. I also found that my best ideas could be reduced to the simplest instructions. This became the litmus test for my ideas: if it could be reasonably reduced to replicable instructions, it was a good idea. These were the assignments:
1. Maintain a detailed document of your time in this workshop.
2. Create instructions for a previous project of yours.
3. Recreate an iconic work of art or design using different content.
4. Use language from existing writings to create new texts.
5. Present work as publicly as possible.
6. Translate text into image.
7. Typeset a text incorrectly.
8. Use an existing typeface to create new letterforms.
9. Translate academic jargon.
2. Create instructions for a previous project of yours.
3. Recreate an iconic work of art or design using different content.
4. Use language from existing writings to create new texts.
5. Present work as publicly as possible.
6. Translate text into image.
7. Typeset a text incorrectly.
8. Use an existing typeface to create new letterforms.
9. Translate academic jargon.
3.Demonstrate comprehensive awareness of design systems, critical thinking, historical awareness.
In order to demonstrate my historical awareness, I recreated Josef Müller-Brockmann’s iconic book, Grid Systems in Graphic Design, replacing its contents with archival images from 1961, the year it was written.
The cover retains only the grid lines and iconic orange color of the original.
When first faced with this response, I immediately thought of working with material from The Bible. Thinking it too far-removed from the topic of graphic design, I began to think of the designer’s equivalent of The Bible. It didn’t take long to think of Grid Systems in Graphic Design. Like The Bible, the Josef Müller-Brockmann classic is ubiqiutous and dogmatic in equal measure. In it, Müller-Brockmann imagines graphic design–and the world it seeks to communicate–as reducible to calculable measurements and rectangular grids.
The grid accomodates more and more images as the book goes on.
The plain white grid on the book's cover becomes an emblem of this proposal and is replicated in my response. The images collected from the year 1961 present a more complex historical context, including portrayals of racism, rebellion, and violence unaccounted for in his utopian worldview; historical context crucial for considering modernist design.
When first faced with this response, I immediately thought of working with material from The Bible. Thinking it too far-removed from the topic of graphic design, I began to think of the designer’s equivalent of The Bible. It didn’t take long to think of Grid Systems in Graphic Design. Like The Bible, the Josef Müller-Brockmann classic is ubiqiutous and dogmatic in equal measure. In it, Müller-Brockmann imagines graphic design–and the world it seeks to communicate–as reducible to calculable measurements and rectangular grids.
The plain white grid on the book's cover becomes an emblem of this proposal and is replicated in my response. The images collected from the year 1961 present a more complex historical context, including portrayals of racism, rebellion, and violence unaccounted for in his utopian worldview; historical context crucial for considering modernist design.
4.Articulate design decisions and concepts for both their own work and the work of others using the language of communication design.
To use the language of communication design, I designed a multi-section book rearranging excerpts from assigned texts into instructional design prompts.
The bibliography is on the cover.
For this response, I dug up the list of assigned readings from my Core 1: Typography course that comprised the canon of communication design writing. Of these readings, I chose six that felt representative of the whole. I dissected the six and picked out imperative phrases, nouns, and adverbial phrases from these readings in order to create a system to generate instructions using direct excerpts from these texts.
The letter-sized book is divided into three even sections, forming complete instructions when read continuously.
This 3-section book allows readers to remix these excerpts and frankenstein their own instructions for creative projects “using the language of communication design.”
For this response, I dug up the list of assigned readings from my Core 1: Typography course that comprised the canon of communication design writing. Of these readings, I chose six that felt representative of the whole. I dissected the six and picked out imperative phrases, nouns, and adverbial phrases from these readings in order to create a system to generate instructions using direct excerpts from these texts.
This 3-section book allows readers to remix these excerpts and frankenstein their own instructions for creative projects “using the language of communication design.”
5.Refine formal presentation skills.
In order to present at the largest scale possible, I advertised my thesis in Times Square.
Photo by Olivia Rae Harris
On December 17th, I commissioned a Times Square billboard service to project this image in Times Square for 15 seconds every hour for 24 hours.
On December 17th, I commissioned a Times Square billboard service to project this image in Times Square for 15 seconds every hour for 24 hours.
6.Understand type as image and its use in conjunction with image to successfully convey a chosen concept or idea.
In order to understand type as image, I translated a text into images.
The cover sets the rhythm for the interior.
For this exercise, I chose Walter Gropius’s 1919 Bauhaus manifesto, which was provided as optional material for a Core 1: Typography project. Over the course of the pocket-sized book, the text explodes into isolated fragments of language which are then assigned corresponding images. In isolation, these words and phrases open themselves to a variety of interpretations–a vagueness on which this project hinges.
Each page contains a word or short phrase below its corresponding image translation.
Image-text pairings range from the straight-forward: “by learning” paired with an image of school children, to the absurd: “so let us” captioning an image of lettuce, a homophone, and the esoteric: “was once” below an image of one term president Jimmy Carter.
For this exercise, I chose Walter Gropius’s 1919 Bauhaus manifesto, which was provided as optional material for a Core 1: Typography project. Over the course of the pocket-sized book, the text explodes into isolated fragments of language which are then assigned corresponding images. In isolation, these words and phrases open themselves to a variety of interpretations–a vagueness on which this project hinges.
Image-text pairings range from the straight-forward: “by learning” paired with an image of school children, to the absurd: “so let us” captioning an image of lettuce, a homophone, and the esoteric: “was once” below an image of one term president Jimmy Carter.
7.Demonstrate a comprehension of skills, methods, techniques, and processes to typeset for various media.
In order to demonstrate my comprehension of typesetting, I deliberately typeset a text incorrectly.
Sections 1.1.1, “Typography exists to honor content” and 1.1.2 “Letters have a life and dignity of their own.”
As the target of this typographic mutilation, I chose the first chapter of Robert Bringhurt’s Elements of Typographic Style, a prescriptive text laying out the rules of typography and a feature of virtually every recommended reading list in CD. The advantage of using this specific chapter was it’s organization.
Section 1.2.4: “Choose a typeface or group of typefaces that will honor and elucidate the character of the text” typeset in wingdings.
The chapter is divided into nine numbered sections titled by typographic truisms. These titles then served as prompts to subvert through their typesetting.
Section 1.2.2: “Discover the outer logic of the typography in the inner logic of the text”
As the target of this typographic mutilation, I chose the first chapter of Robert Bringhurt’s Elements of Typographic Style, a prescriptive text laying out the rules of typography and a feature of virtually every recommended reading list in CD. The advantage of using this specific chapter was it’s organization.
The chapter is divided into nine numbered sections titled by typographic truisms. These titles then served as prompts to subvert through their typesetting.
8.Manipulate typographic components in a way that demonstrates knowledge of anatomy, form, space, scale, hierarchy, and composition.
I demonstrated knowledge of typographic form by creating Laari, a typeface made solely from cut and pasted elements of Arial.
Scraps left from the physical collages.
Capital letter set.
9.Demonstrate integrity and respect towards others and the community through cultural literacy and sensitivity to differences.
In order to present a critique of the institutionalization of social justice initiatives, I coded a website that defines each word of the CD Anti-Racism Policy. The website questions the ability of academic jargon to address issues of inequity.
Users are prompted to click on each word of the policy, and when clicked, each word is replaced with its dictionary definition and so on. After clicking for a while, the text becomes complete gibberish as the increasingly complex language folds in on itself.
Users are prompted to click on each word of the policy, and when clicked, each word is replaced with its dictionary definition and so on. After clicking for a while, the text becomes complete gibberish as the increasingly complex language folds in on itself.