Body copy: Typography and the human scale

Typography engages all media, crossing a broad continuum of scales and levels of interaction. While design education manages to keep pace with the transitions and implications of evolving media, a shift in the embodiment of information through typographic study is still necessary. Such a shift is no longer solely a matter of introducing new technologies or techniques, but of embodying tectonic or topological points of view in studio practice. Beginning students in graphic design should confront typography that behaves according to existing expectations in print and digital media, but also engages realms of interaction that are architectural in scale and reach. As material development pushes the potential of architectural skins hitherto seen as static to become dynamic and informatic – the study of typography needs to make a reciprocal change in its pedagogy. The typographic sequence of study at the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) follows a historically accepted course of studio practice that closely outlines an internal understanding of typography – the means, logics and strategies for the combination and integration of alphabetical and numerical forms for visual communication. While format – page, space, environment – are given significance in this approach, an exposure to spatial realms far beyond the page are necessary to broaden the discourse of the role typography can play in our increasingly mediated cities. The confines of formal study in small, intensive typographic exercises should be supplemented by the inclusion of larger formats that serve as a preface to scales of engagement that address the body. This paper will argue that in addition to investigations that address the symbolic and systematic aspects of typography, significance must also be given to projects that engage the human body in scale and quality. While the device driven dissemination of information now crosses and integrates previously distinct channels of media, they remain largely of a similar limited scale and experience. The pedagogical evolution from a typography of the eye and hand, to one that integrates the body as a whole may be considered timely as our collective attention is being pulled from civic environment to virtual device. A case study will detail the inclusion digital fabrication with photographic and cinematic points of view into a project aimed at the generation of a typography inclusive of the body. The study will demonstrate how the broadening of introductory typographic education can engage students in formal and intellectual processes that are inclusive of architectural scales and implications

OCAD University Graphic Design Program learning outcome map

A visualization of learning outcomes by semester via a reconstruction of Bloom's Taxonomy. The map functions as a tool for curricular development and academic advising

The color of experience

As a design principle and element, color often suffers from brief pedagogies in most first year design experiences. An approach anchored in serial exercises and the acquisition of an invariable lexicon often leaves the spirit of color undiscovered in terms of the dynamic experience it brings to surfaces, materials, objects, environments and human engagements. A recently redesigned First Year Program at the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD University), places color in the context of culture, environment, and dimension. While color terminology remains intact, it is the introduction of sensory exposures to color in context that will begin to shift color studies away from existing, conventional curriculum to a more engaged and critically aware investigation of this crucial design element. In an introductory color studio, an attempt to address six distinct programs (Industrial Design, Environmental Design, Graphic Design, Advertising, Illustration and Material Design) may seem daunting as a pedagogical stance, but it is one that deserves attention as color serves as a mediating common ground amongst design disciplines. While it is not the place of any one studio to replace and integrate disciplinary specificity, the proposed course Color in Context seeks to afford students an experience of color that crosses dimensions, manifestations, and cultures. The inclusion of a bias system – cultural, dimensional, and environmental – in a studio framework is pedagogically significant as each bias has haptic dimensions that shape the human experience of color. Climate, geography, light, and topography serve as initial perspectives to situate color in relation to the specificities of different contexts. Yet, the very phenomena we experience as color is both physiological and psychological – it is of the body and the brain. The relationship between the external and internal realities of color is hindered by a static lexicon, and necessitates a shift to a new territory of experiential learning. The integration of a bias system into a more holistic pedagogy of color provides a more relevant experience of color for emerging designers. Beyond the existing lexicon of color terms, the flatness of color wheels, swatches and rubrics of color interaction, is a new approach that is rooted in context. An approach that investigates how our bias to color influences how we interpret, use, and come to understand why our color choices are appropriate, effective and meaningful. Color in Context challenges students to look beyond the lexicon of color theory and serial exercises to discover the effects of the external world. The construction of a broader, more inclusive point of view, in tandem with an investigation of our internal reality as sensory beings, forms a rich base for the initial and continuing education in color. Using context as the primary filter, a discussion of newly designed projects will interrogate an experiential pedagogy of color that will demonstrate how interdisciplinary links between practices and intrinsic biases foster deeper, more meaningful and relevant practices of color to design outcomes

Market concentration : a South African perspective.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.Abstract available in PDF.Quality of scanned PDF has been compromised owing to poor condition of original document

sgTarget: a target selection resource for structural genomics

sgTarget () is a web-based resource to aid the selection and prioritization of candidate proteins for structure determination. The system annotates user submitted gene or protein sequences, identifying sequence families with no homologues of known structure, and characterizing each protein according to a range of physicochemical properties that may affect its expression, solubility and likelihood to crystallize. Summaries of these analyses are available for individual sequences, as well as whole datasets. This type of analysis enables structural biologists to iteratively select targets from their genomic sequences of interest and according to their research needs. All sequence datasets submitted to sgTarget are available for users to select and rank using their choice of criteria. sgTarget was developed to support individual laboratories collaborating in structural and functional genomics projects and should be valuable to structural biologists wishing to employ the wealth of available genome sequences in their structural quests