Research Statement
My current research works for creating original and impactful exhibition design and research opportunities for academically underrepresented and marginal graphic design educators in the United States. As an Asian female faculty in the graphic design of the US, I have been profoundly aware that graphic design education in the US is historically European-centric and technically print design dominated for mass production. Print design is a core of graphic design education, research, and practices. It is deeply rooted in Bauhaus, a German art school from 1919 to 1933, integrating crafts and the fine arts to approach rigorous, constructive, and universal design. Bauhaus design philosophy and design style have academically dominated modern graphic design education of the United States for over 100 years. Now visual design education in the US is hugely demanded to decolonize, extend, and diversify from Western and print-centric to cross-disciplinary and inclusive graphic design education and practices. It aligns with new emerging technology and globalization of visual design education. I feel academically responsible for incubating the inclusive and technically diverse graphic design approaches to the US’s academically conservative graphic design education. My research will investigate the future of visual design education and research. It crosses boundaries among computational graphic design, 3d printing, Guerrilla projection, speculative design, sound, data visualization, virtual reality, augmented reality with activism, indigenous typography movement, cultural identity, self-expression and reflection.
Long-established Graphic Design education in the US is academically homogenous. It has driven by print design, and it is culturally Western-centered. Conventional graphic design educators of the US strive to sustain their dated professional roles as print designers. Their invisible academic efforts are hugely collective and invisibly aggressive. They are academically exclusive to adopting new emerging technology but more welcomed to industry-standard commercial software like Adobe CC (Creative Clouds). Present-day graphic designers must pay a monthly subscription to use Adobe CC. Pioneers of graphic design education in the US started integrating new emerging technology in the early 2000s at MIT Media Lab. Creative Coding is an art and design movement to create software by artists and designers for free to distribute, initiated by Johan Maeda, Ben Fry, and Case Reas, at MIT Media Lab. It contributes and enhances technical independence, not relying on profit-driven computer graphic software. Also, it enables the integration of diverse new mediums such as live sound and data input. Computational visualization has already been embedded into graphic design education by using computational design thinking. Experimental graphic design researches by using new emerging technology have been nationally and internationally disseminated since the 2000s. Still, these are invisibly and systematically excluded and underrecognized from the US’s conservative professional graphic design communities.
Graphic design education has traditionally seen European-oriented and white-centered design as the standard to measure achievement. Graphic design educators who explore cultural identity have been doubted, ignored, and treated as unprofessional. It is obviously brushed off by Western-centered design perspectives in the US’s homogenous professional graphic design communities. Most of the US’s academically marginalized graphic design educators are pioneers of alternative, extended, and inclusive graphic design, crossing new emerging technology and cultural identity boundaries. They are routinely challenged to deal with inequity of academic opportunities and recognition. They lack supporting systems, connections, and resources to explore innovative graphic design education and research. They have limited opportunities to present their works as exhibitions and publications from exclusive professional graphic design communities. They are destined to compete with other academic areas such as digital art and fine arts to seek alternative venues for research opportunities, which are very competitive. The selected graphic design educators for the exhibition are highly recognized by prestigious, peer-reviewed, national, and international conferences and exhibitions in digital arts and fine arts as artists, but they have been underrated by their mother professional graphic design communities of the US. There is no data, survey, statistics, or research related to the academic marginality and exclusion in the traditional graphic design education of the US. My design research aims to provide essential exhibition and research opportunities for the academically marginalized but highly regarded graphic design educators of the US.
My research aims to showcase evolving and inclusive graphic design crossing boundaries among graphic design education, new emerging technology, and globalization. The show will include interactive posters, non-traditional typography, generative motion graphic, and brand identity, tangible typography by using 3D printing, sound and data visualization, virtual reality, extended book art and printmaking, mural project, Guerrilla projection, documentary film, and augmented reality for activism, etc. The curated exhibition will invite eighteen outstanding graphic design educators of the US who are highly regarded but academically undervalued and depreciated from conservative, homogenous, and print-centric professional graphic design communities. All the exhibitors are highly selective. Their groundbreaking graphic design research with new technology and globalization is recognized nationally and internationally. I initially select the exhibitors with 15 years of professional connections and networks in the graphic design of the US to initiate this unprecedented collective effort as an exhibition without a budget. The associate curators, Prof. Moon Jung Chang, at the University of Georgia, and Prof. Heather Quinn at DePaul University, contributed to inviting more diverse ranges of graphic design educators from prestigious art schools to teaching institutions and tenured professors adjunct faculty in graphic design. All of the invited exhibitors are eager to collaborate with
this multi-institutional and unprecedented collaboration in the graphic design education of the US.
My research includes the generative graphic design, and virtual gallery for the exhibition. I design and direct the exhibition in collaboration with the invited exhibitors, highly regarded graphic design educators in the US. Based on the nature of this exhibition and research, my exhibition design will be avant-garde, original, experimental, and forward-looking to deliver the exhibition theme. The design methodology, Design Thinking, is employed to design the user-friendly and inclusive interface design for the exhibition website and virtual reality gallery for the web. The virtual gallery includes all of the invited works as digital formats from in-person exhibitions. The first exhibition was held from May 24, 2022, to June 24, 2022, at Art Loft Gallery and Backspace Gallery, located in the Art Loft Building, in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin Madison. I developed the virtual gallery and the website www.evolvingraphicdesign.com, from June to July of 2022. It brings global exposure and tap into a large network of academically marginalized graphic design educators, diverse designers and artists, and underserved audiences. The exhibition visitors gains new in-person and immersive virtual experiences for new evolving graphic design. It incubate new graphic design perspectives that would be extended, open-minded, alternative, diverse, and inclusive graphic design education, practices, and research of the United States.
My research initiative was presented at DEL (Digitally Engaged Learning) in Between Webinar on May 14, 2021. DEL is an international conference for art and design education founded by Parsons and other global institutions. As a committee member of the DEL conference. I organized and moderated the panel, “Tran-disciplinary graphic design, art research and practices in higher education”, with some invited exhibitors. I proposed, organized, and moderated a panel, “Crossing boundaries: Alternative, extended and trans-disciplinary graphic design education and research”, at AIGA DEC (Design Educators’ Community) Kick-Off on June 25, 2021. AIGA is a professional association for graphic designers in the US founded in 1914. It is the oldest and largest professional membership organization. This exhibition design research was invited to 110th CAA (College Art Associations Conference) 2022: Design Incubation Colloquium in February of 2022 in Chicago. CAA is the largest professional conference of art historians, artists, designers, curators, and others in the visual arts in the US. The expected outputs will be the curated exhibition, “Evolving Graphic Design”, and the exhibition design including a virtual gallery for the exhibition. The exhibition partners with the SEGD (Society of Experiential Graphic Design). It is a global design community for professional designers having over 2,200 members from 35 countries. I serve as a committee member of the Academic Tasks Force at SEGD and the CAA Annual Conference. They support the exhibition through conferences, publications, exhibition catalogs, webinars, etc.
The extended symposium was held on June 23-24, 2022 at the UW-Madison. All the presentations (or artist talks) by the exhibitors were professionally documented and recorded. I will complete all extended exhibition catalog design and video documentation during the academic year of 2022-2023 including the summer. SEGD will publish the exhibition catalog in 2023. With a YouTube channel, all the professionally edited videos was uploaded and open to the public through www.evolvinggraphicdesign.com. I will submit the project to SIGGRAPH Art Paper and Art Gallery 2023, ISEA (Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts), Art Paper 2023, Leonardo (Journal by MIT Press) in 2023. Iowa State University will host the travel Symposium 2023. Rhode Island School of Design, DePaul University, University of Georgia, Illinois State University, Texas State University, and Iowa State University will consider hosting the travel exhibition or symposium contingent on their institutional funding approval. This research proposal received Brittingham Wisconsin Trust and Fall Competition at UW Madison and Graham Foundation in Chicago, IL. It will be submitted to Research Awards at the National Endowment for the Art in March 2023 in partnership with the SEGD and the exhibition sponsors, DDEEA (Division of Diversity, Equity, and Educational Achievement), Art and Computer