“Digital Projects and the Role of the Designer”

The kinds of design tasks that come up in digital projects that are extensions of but also, sometimes, very different from, what designers have done in traditional roles, particularly graphic design. What are the current boundaries for design as a profession? What pedagogical and critical issues arise in regard to the pressures on designers to understand the “back-end” technical requirements of digital platforms as well as the “front-end” user experience. And how might critical concerns about the role of design in a consumer-driven model of experience challenge the terms of efficiency on which digital design is often premised?

Johanna Drucker is the Breslauer Professor of Bibliography in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA. She has published and lectured on a wide array of topics related to graphic design, visual epistemology, aesthetics, contemporary art, artists’ books, and digital humanities. Her most recent titles include Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production (Harvard University Press, 2014) and Diagrammatic Writing (Onomatopée, 2013).

www.johannadrucker.net

This was a Keynote on June 2, 2017. 9:30- 10:30am (SCI 106)