Text and printing materials

Evolving Design Thesis Ideas through Studio Production

Team: Project leader: James Boyd Brent; Course instructors: Brad Hokanson, Daniel Jasper, James Boyd Brent; Design graduate student participants: Neda Barbazi, Kara Rajcic, Quang Anh , Stephanie Heidorn, Alisha Ghaju, Sam Reed, Giselle Kian, and Lei Feng 

Program: Graphic Design 

The question of using studio production to assist in generating ideas related to graphic design graduate thesis work. Work completed in one module of Design PRAXIS Studio, Fall 2022.

This repeat pattern, screen printing, and dyeing project took place in one 5-week learning module within Design Praxis Studio last fall. During the five classes, we visited a specific exhibition to set the tone for translating ideas into image production (We are working all the time at WAM), a visit to the GMD’s collections with Dr. Jean McElvain, followed by repeat pattern making and dyeing workshops and production, culminating in each participant framing their visual production in terms of their own design research ideas.

Participants were encouraged to make connections between their finished repeat pattern screen printed on dyed fabric and their graphic design graduate student activity—and to speculate on any connections, no matter how tenuous, with their actual or potential thesis research. The titles and text below are condensed versions of their longer written responses.

  • Neda Barbazi: Woman Life Freedom Reflecting the murder in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini, the Kurdish Iranian woman arrested for so-called “inappropriate hijab”: a powder keg moment that ignited the first counter-revolution in history led by women.
  • Kara Rajcic: Creativity in motion—exploring the relationships between yoga, divergent thinking and visual communication.
  • Quang Anh Le: Airport icons around the world, out of context
  • Stephanie Heidorn: FLAME Creative Process Symbol - Repeat Pattern
  • This repeat pattern is based on some of the iterations I drew when creating the FLAME creative process symbol for my thesis project. The pattern demonstrates created my own creative process during the development of this acronym/symbol.
  • Alisha Ghaju: Attention to detail, and the portrayal of the social and the cultural, in the Ghibli Studio movies of Hayao Miyazaki
  • Sam Reed: Bringing the Digital into the Analog—Minecraft
  • Giselle Kian: Representing symbols of nature, tradition, and the complexity of the surrounding environment—trial and error
  • Lei Feng: Beauty, imagination, and order: Wild Peas. In traditional medical practices, the roots of the plant were used as a stimulant, a tonic, an emetic, and was applied to the chest for convulsions—and they can be carried for good luck. It is an idea about how an ornamental art form might tell a story about the life of traditional people.