Design Camp | Summer 2008

Every summer high school students from across the country come to NC State University to participate in a week long design camp where they can explore Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Art and Design, Industrial Design and Graphic Design. This program is organized in conjunction with cam, the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh. As an instructor for the Graphic Design component, I was responsible for developing and carrying out a project that would allow students from varying backgrounds, skill levels and interests to explore Graphic Design and achieve closure within the fast paced timeline. To begin the project, the students randomly chose a word or phrase from the cam mission statement. Some examples were diy, community involvement, intersection of art and science, etc. The groups brainstormed how those phrases could be interpreted both conceptually and visually. The students then worked individually to create analog image compositions, analog type compositions and digital type compositions. In an effort to encourage self-authorship, the students authored one of the type compositions. The writing was to further explain, respond to or challenge their phrase from the cam mission statement. In the afternoon, the students worked in groups in the projection studio. Taking their composition from earlier in the day, now scanned into the computer, they projected it along with a peer’s composition. By using two projectors and projecting directly onto the same space, the students were able to see how their work was changed by layering. The students had to communicate with each other to zoom in, zoom out, move left, etc. Once the students were happy with their new composition, we captured it in a photograph.


Examples of individual analog and digital compositions that is then layered in the projection studio. While in the projection studio, the students discussed how the layering was changing the visual composition and the meaning of the message.


The students used props such as t-shirts, foam board, cardboard and body to explore how the projection interacted with different surfaces.