ART 418 · Charleston Southern University · Fall 2026
Design is being remade by a new medium, again. This course runs the studio's four-phase process — discovery, definition, design, develop — as one engagement across the semester, with AI worked into every phase the way a practice actually uses it: researcher in discovery, option generator in definition, spec-reader in design, production method in develop. What the student documents all term is the part that stays theirs: the judgment, the process, and the price of the work.
One engagement across the term, in two halves: a brand built by the midterm, then systemised with and for AI. Four gates, each presented.
What you brand is your own choice, and the room will be a mixture: a real organization you find, a venture you invent, or one of the briefs offered in class. Whichever kind it is, it has to be real enough to research.
One venture, researched and then built. Two gates: the research and the directions it could live in, then the brand itself at the midterm.
August3 classes
Introductions, and the semester walked through end to end: what the course is, how it runs, and what it will ask.
What a design process is, and what a practice is, taken as an overview before either is put to work. The Emigre piece goes out today for Monday.
Design Practice in the Age of New Mediums
What the medium keeps doing to the work, read through the Emigre piece: that was then, this is now, and the question of what is next. The semester project is announced today, in full and exactly as it will run.
September8 classes
How a practice learns a subject before it designs anything. The rest of the session, and the long weekend, is theirs to research what they want to take on for the semester.
The discourse around the folding of roles, walked through: Soleio and the designers who ship, set against Monteiro writing not long ago, and how fast the ground is shifting.
Brass tacks: brand infrastructure, brand platforms, house of brands, and the technical parts of the whole thing.
The practices, worked in the room, and then hands on real data: students play with it and make something that reads. Infographics.
Brand: Storytelling Frameworks
Definition, and the frameworks a brand tells itself and its audience through.
Frameworks in practice, and studio
A short practical talk on putting the frameworks to work, and then the rest of the session on their own projects.
Lecture
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Gate 1: research and direction
October3 classes
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Workshop
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The same brand systemised with and for AI: written as a spec a machine can operate, then actually operated by one. Two gates: specified, then running.
October4 classes
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November8 classes
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December2 classes
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Grades of record live in Blackboard. This page is the schedule and the reading; the syllabus carries the books, the rubric and the policies.