In This Issue
Welcome New Students
This week, we begin a new tradition at the School of Visual Arts: the MFA in Interaction Design program—a graduate-level program with an inaugural class of 18 remarkable students and 25 faculty members. This tradition carries forward a long-standing tradition started in 1947 by Silas Rhodes and Burne Hogarth who founded the Cartoonists and Illustrators School with just three faculty members and 35 students. Then, they created a model whereby faculty were working professionals and courses were held at night. This model allowed students to work during the days, brushing up on professional skills if desired.
We continue this tradition today. Students have come from across the country and the world to join us in this first-year program, to build a new tradition, but to continue that one set forth by the school’s founders more than 60 years ago. The curriculum will give students a grounding in “design fundamentals, while helping them cultivate the soft skills so often required in the modern workplace: strategic thinking, entrepreneurship, ethics, and communicating with clients.”
To that end, design is what we’ve come this far to do, and what we’ll carry forward after we leave. The pursuit of it involves unique skills crucial to shaping experiences and creating lasting value in our society. We look forward to watching this group build on their skills over the next couple of years—and our program both carrying forward a tradition and charting some new ones of our own.
RELATED
Interaction Library
In the spirit of reading what you love, the program has asked each incoming student to select one design-related book to contribute to the department library. Each book will bear the student's name and class year, and we hope, inspiration for all future students, faculty, lecturers, leaders, and thinkers of interaction design.
Special thanks to New Riders for donating the starter collection for our library.
Fall Lecture Series
This fall, the MFA Interaction Design Department welcomes visiting lectures in an intimate series to inspire conversation, pursue change, and incite creation. Each evening gives way to discussion with the lecturers and guests. RSVP will be announced three weeks prior to each event on our blog.
Wednesday, September 9: Kim Goodwin
Designing Our Professional Future
Interaction design is still a relatively young profession. Like many new ideas, it has evolved organically, powered largely by the need to humanize the ever-accelerating proliferation of technology. The decisions we are making today—the ideas educators emphasize, the skills for which managers hire, and the paths we each follow in our individual careers—will shape our profession for tomorrow. Should we not design that future as consciously as we design products and services every day? Kim Goodwin will discuss her take on how today’s choices will affect tomorrow’s designers.
View details for this event
Wednesday, September 16: Scott Thomas
USAbility
Scott Thomas, former design director at Obama for America will discuss how interaction design made a huge difference in the past election. All too often, discussions of analytics, click through rates, and search engine optimization cloud the important truth that online campaigns and communities are for human beings. Come discover how superior design, technological collaboration, and authentic messaging, can truly change the world.
View details for this event
Wednesday, September 23: Laura Forlano
Disruptive Organizing: Collaboration and Innovation in the Open Source City
How can we reformat our cities and public spaces—and the architectures and technologies within them—as sites of collaboration and innovation? The open source movement is known not only for the innovation of robust operating systems such as Linux and Internet browsers such as Firefox but also as an emergent form of organizing based on collaborative production. Disruptive Internet technologies such as e-mail, blogging, instant messaging, Skype and Twitter have enabled the widespread availability of cheap, instantaneous global communication. These same technologies have engendered emergent forms of organizing in physical spaces including MeetUp groups, BarCamps (unconferences) and coworking communities. This presentation will discuss disruptive forms of organizing based on a current collaborative project, Breakout! Escape from the Office, which is being presented by The Architectural League of New York as part of the Situated Technologies: Toward the Sentient City exhibition.
Location
MFA Interaction Design Department
132 W 21 Street, 6th Floor
New York City
View all upcoming events
October Open House
You’re warmly invited to join faculty members, students, and staff for an afternoon of informal presentations, questions and answers, and open discussion. An afternoon reception will follow, when you can get to know some of the faculty and students, and prospective students can ask additional questions about applying. Spend the afternoon considering your plans for fall 2010, and meeting some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the field. RSVP is required for this event.
Details
Sat, Oct 24, 2009
2:00-4:00PM
Host: MFA Interaction Design Department
132 W 21 Street, 6th Floor
New York City
RSVP for the Open House
For more information, please contact the department at interactiondesign [at] sva.edu or 212.592.2703.
Faculty in the News
Jake Barton to speak at Pioneers of Change
Jake will be joined by fellow National Design Awards honoree Scott Stowell of Open, Arne Hendriks of Platform 21, in a panel “open talk” discussion moderated by Julie Iovine, Executive Editor of Architects Newspaper at Pioneers of Change, a festival celebrating Dutch design, fashion, and architecture on New York’s Governors Island to celebrate 400 years of Dutch-American friendship.
More about Jake Barton
Introducing Typedia
Typedia, “a shared encyclopedia of typefaces,” launches with design efforts from faculty members Jason Santa Maria and Khoi Vinh and more. The new site aims to revolutionize font creation and curation, and is sure to be the ultimate treat for typographers.
More about Jason Santa Maria
More about Khoi Vinh
Old School, New School: Teaching Interaction Design In Manhattan
For the September issue of Interactions Magazine, Alex Wright contemplates the emergence of an interaction design community in New York City, with special emphasis on the MFA in Interaction Design Program: “New York City has long ranked as one of the world’s design capitals, but the city’s interaction design community has been slow to find its feet here. Historically, user interface designers first flourished in the cubicle farms of the Bay Area, while many industrial designers plied their trade in the product foundries of the Midwest. Meanwhile, Manhattan designers traditionally worked in the city’s dominant media and advertising industries, with their inevitable bias toward print and motion graphics.”
More about Alex Wright
Designing With Web Standards, 3rd Edition
The 3rd Edition of DWWS by celebrated author, designer, and web standards godfather Jeffrey Zeldman is available for pre-ordering at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The newest edition is, in Jeffrey own words, “not merely an update, but a significant revisions to the foundational web standards text.”
More about Jeffrey Zeldman
Chloe Gottlieb and Khoi Vinh at Click New York
Chloe Gottlieb, Executive Creative Director of R/GA and Khoi Vinh, Design Director of The New York Times will participate in Click New York, the one day forum a part of the Centaur Conferences. Chloe will demonstrate “how interaction design is shaping the new creative paradigmn in the digital age,” and Khoi will lead a talk on “How The New York Times is going digital.”
More about Chloe Gottlieb
More about Khoi Vinh
Questions? If you have questions for the department, please get in touch at interactiondesign at sva dot edu or call at 212.592.2703. We look forward to hearing from you.
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