It’s so hard to know what to say to sum up Design History class. Basically, I was a contented sponge, soaking up all the marvelous clarification from our textbook! I feel so… validated, I guess, by learning about the ideas and movements that define the field I’m entering. Kind of a ‘cloud of witnesses’  thing.

And now, at long last, I can show the single project we worked on all quarter long.
Parameters: Create a book that elucidates the five design periods outlined in the textbook and includes a period-inspired illustration for each. The book should have a creative theme.

So, my book is aimed at late elementary school age, and it is about the alphabet (actually, it’s about typography, but shhhh… they don’t know that yet).

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All I’m working on right now are finals, but this little assignment crept in. It’s my Art Nouveau-style monogram, with a nod to Charles Rennie Mackintosh!
Here are some genuine monograms from the Vienna Secessionists, as featured in Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. We used them for inspiration.

Ironically, I’ve actually been trying to come up with a logo for myself. And… this is still not it.

Design History is probably my favorite class right now, because of its content. You won’t see a whole lot of its assignments until this summer, because we are working on one big project for the entire 11 weeks of the course. It will be worth the wait, I promise!
In the meantime, here is a little timeline I just made based on a few chapters in our fabulous textbook.
Timelines don’t really make fascinating reading for most of us, but I’m posting it because it was also an exercise in information graphics – organizing and presenting information clearly and appealingly.