STUDIO | Fences
Professor: Juli Gudehus
»The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.« …
Fences are currently an extremely hot political issue. There are fences between the US and Mexico, Israel and Palestine, North and South Korea, India and Pakistan, Spain and Morocco… meters high, kilometers long, heavily guarded, and deadly. Frighteningly many Europeans now want fences to keep refugees away from their greens.
Then again fences seem to be almost as old as mankind. Civilisation brought infinite variations of all kinds – many of them much more kind than the above. They seek to decorate, to symbolise, to guide, to represent…
Fences integrate various disciplines like communication design, product design, architecture, landscape architecture, urbanism, sociology, law, logistics… Fences are part of buildings, cities, and landscape, in this world, in toy worlds, and virtual worlds. Fences are highly modular and serial. Fences are three-dimensional and can as well be seen as two-dimensional drawings in the air. Fences can convey messages. What else?
In the course of the semester we will methodologically explore many aspects of fences, both playfully and seriously. You will find sources of inspiration, and you will find that your unprecedented fence has never been created before.
ELECTIVE MODULE 2D | Starting the Week with Brain Food!
Professor: Prof. Brigitte Hartwig
The course includes the lunch break, so why not preparing a simple meal together – but not only focussing on preparing and eating – but under the aspects of design and communication, scenography and skills exchange.
No matter where you come from – from all over Germany or from all over the world, you come from different cultures, you have different backgrounds, experiences, skills and knowledge – let’s share it!
The idea is that every Monday s.o. else is responsible for a recipe, a small group for cooking, s.o. for taking photographs, s.o. for giving a small lunch lecture (PechaKucha), s.o. for writing a text, s.o. for preparing the table etc. – depending on your ideas we’ll gather at the beginning of the project.
The project starts on Monday, April 11th at 10:00 a.m. in the garden of VorOrt-Haus, Wolfgangstr. 13 (just next to Kaufland) and ends at 2:00 p.m.
Result is a shared documentation (printedor as a blog) of everything we did, designed and learned during the summer.
ELECTIVE MODULE 3D | Machine Design / Design Maschine
Professor: Gesine Hillmann
If you take them by their original meaning, the relation between design and machine seems to be well- balanced. The Industrial Design engages in designing a broad variety of objects produced in mass- production processes. Machines produce bulk goods in the same appearance, its parts are exchangable. It’s all about efficiency precision, promptness and repeatability.
Current tendencies are showing a different approach: the one- off piece as a reaction to the modern industrial and digital age becomes more popular.
What happens if the machine produces unique pieces? Do they preserve the quality?
We will take the risk: What happens if we implement a random component into a production process? Can we outsource our creativity?
ELECTIVE MODULE 4D | How to Talk about Risk and Fear
Professor: Prof. Rochus Hartmann
Interview miniseries. Planing, Recording, Editing.
Risk, fear, panic and related topics are a basic substance of our life; for some people, because they do everything to avoid it, and for some who do a lot to experience it.
- How to setup an interview situation.
- How to deal with the people on this difficult topic.
- How to record it on video and audio
- How to edit a mini collage, for example as an Instagram video
Video or audio experience recommended.
EXPERTISE PHOTOGRAPHY | Understanding Photography
Professor: Klaus Pollmeier
In our course we will review a deeper insight into photographic communication from various perspectives. Depending on our individual interests, theoretical and practical aspects of the media will be researched and applied. Since MA/MAID students come from different universities with very different experiences in photography, the class will try to provide technical and theoretical information and assignments to improve individual skills or to support current projects.
EXPERTISE EDITORIAL DESIGN | The Edges of Layouts
Professor: Jakob Wolf
In order to create a structured and communicative information, typography and layouts are our basic tools. According to the textual form or content, certain layouts were designed with rules that seems to be appropriate for specific applications. Often, this visual conventions appear as unquestionable authorities and quite invisible, because we‘re simply using them.
In the class we‘re going to research and remix this phenomenons in order to discover the rules and edges of layouts. We are going to take advantage of the rules to create something that contains a personal, critical, applied, artistic or experimental approach and attitude towards the conventions of design and layout. Get ready!
EXPERTISE INTERACTIVE INFORMATION | Interactive Inforgraphics
Professors: Tine Päch, Maria Thiele
The future of data visualization lies in interactivity. Infographics are everywhere in the digital world right now, and they’re increasingly interactive.
We’ll be taking a closer look at the design process to create functional and impressive infographics from the ground up. By using examples and exercises we will convey basic knowledge, dos and don’ts and cover current trends for different types of data visualizations.
You will learn how content can communicated openly and can be made accessible innovative.
Nowadays it is becoming increasingly important to respond to the rapid development of the internet. New design standards and practices are greatly required to optimize the design for a variety of formats and devices with smooth user experience.
We will discover the principles and basics practical techniques of responsive design and learn that they can support and enhance your personal workflow when working on digital projects that work well on any device e.g. responsive websites or apps.
EXPERTISE PROJECT REFINEMENT
Professor: Katrin Greiling
The expertise course is a chance for you to improve already existing projects and consulting me in creating your portfolio. During 5 occasions this summer term we’ll discuss your individual requirements and concerns. This is an unique opportunity for you to learn through my knowledge. There is no limit in questions concerning design topics, all depends on your needs. I’ll share with you my thoughts on the profession as a designer, starting with an introduction of my own experiences and knowledge, collected through my international approach in the business.
ADVANCED ENGLISH
Professor: Alexander Davidson
After last semester’s focus on Academic English, this semester we will turn our attention to the use of English as freelance or otherwise professional designers. The students will respond to a real brief and try to produce work for a children’s clothes company in London. This will allow us to tackle a range of issues, including corporate culture and language, appearing professional in contact with potential clients and explaining your work to non-designers. Following a process of email and telephone contact with the client, the semester will end with a presentation of your concept.
COMPACT WEEK | Design Thinking / Social Innovation
Professor: Sascha Wolff
Most of you have already heard of design thinking, some may have applied it already. Some of you welcome the opening of the design discipline to „non professional designers“ and some of you would rather keep the design expertise within the world of professional design.
As your lecturer (and non-professional designer) I will share my experiences working as a design thinker supporting organizations from the societal, economical and political sector.
Throughout the course I will give short inputs on design thinking methods, tools and culture. But overall you’ll be thrown in at the deep end and I expect all of you to honestly, constructively and critically reflect the chances of combining your professional skills with design thinking in order to create relevant impact in real life.
From day one on you will team up with fellow students in order to jointly define, analyze and re-define a socially relevant challenge for your team. You will have to put yourself into the shoes of your „clients“ and repeatedly leave your comfort zone in order to raise your level of empathy. You will create rough prototypes, test and refine them.
During the final presentations some teams may have come up with great ideas and some may have failed terribly. Both ways I will be satisfied as long as you used the five days to leave your comfort zone and experience new perspectives.
COMPACT WEEK | Editorial Photography
Professor: Markus Seewald
In this expertise project, you will learn how magazines select, arrange, layout, and publish photographs for specific articles, whether it’s for news, feature, editorial, or advertisement. For this semester, we will use this semester’s main topic “risk and fear” for our own magazine, which we will publish by the end of the week; each group is assigned to their own chosen topic about risk and fear.
COMPACT WEEK | Content Marketing for Non-Profit Organizations
Professor: Katharina Kirch
During the expertise project we will have a closer look on the opportunities of content marketing for designers. We will work together with Amnesty International, analysing peoples needs to identify fields of application. In small groups you can either develop a storytelling campaign or create a valuable content format that moves people.
Through the last 10 years communication has changed fundamentally. The digital world caused a significant information overload. People are looking for relevant and entertaining content that provides a personal benefit.
Companies, brands and institutions prospect for new ways to grab people’s attention. Talking about the USP of the product is not enough. Creating stories that really move people and developing content that is valuable and relevant or really entertaining is the main challenge for brands and institutions to build reputation.
Content Marketing offers several new chances for designers. Storytelling campaigns combine emotional stories with people’s needs and multimedia distribution. Creative formats like infographics, videos, motion graphics, e-books, factsheets, podcasts and apps bring information to life. There are no limits for creative talents.
In comparison to brands and companies non-profit organisations and institutions have one absolute advantage – they have the relevant stories and information that most people would call “valuable”.
Amnesty International is a non-governmental organisation globally fighting for human rights. They call themselves a global movement of members and activists in over 150 countries and territories who are dedicated to ending grave abuses of human rights and getting justice for those whose rights have been violated. The NGO is independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion, being funded mainly by membership and public donations. Amnesty International relies on the time and energy given freely by members in solidarity with the victims of human rights violations.
Exercise: Choose one of the following tasks
- Develop a concept for a storytelling campaign for Amnesty International Germany to spread awareness for the need of reception and protection of refugees in Germany.
- Create a innovative content format to help Amnesty International Germany strengthens its position on asylum policy in the public.
DESIGN THEORY | Elemental Design
Professor: Prof. Dr. Joachim Krausse
This class will explore what elemental design is all about: from the development of pedagogical methods of teaching to the periodic table, from Plato to the Bauhaus Masters, from Western and Oriental beliefs on the five elements to the Gestalt and Gestaltung practiced by Bauhaus, De Stijl, and the Modernist movement, and even beyond.
EXCURSION | The Netherlands (Amsterdam, Utrecht, Haarlem)
Professors: Prof. Dr. Joachim Krausse, Prof. Uwe Gellert, Nadine Tamler
The five-day excursion to the Netherlands will involve a visit to three cities: Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Haarlem. The group will visit an atelier and an art exhibition in Amsterdam, a co-working space for designers in Utrecht, and a natural history and sciences museum in Haarlem.
MAID in Dessau 