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March 23, 2023

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

March 23, 2023

Statement for Diversity

I am originally from South Korea as an international graduate student in the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art 2005. I relocated to Chicago Suburb due to my partner’s job relocation in 2008. I started being aware of inequitable opportunities for minority students in America when I began teaching at Chicago State University. Chicago State University is a historically multicultural institution located in South Chicago. Most of my students were black and non-traditional students, not just high school graduates, but first-time college generation, students with labor-intensive part-time and full-time jobs, single mothers, Etc., They are highly challenged to succeed in higher education due to lacking support systems. I felt tremendous empathy toward their situations since I was an academic stranger in Midwest and a minority designer and faculty in a white-dominated academic area, graphic design. I was challenged to find supporting systems and social belonging in the predominately white-dominated professional society. Also, my students needed more equitable learning opportunities beyond college-level classrooms. For instance, my web design course started teaching how to use the Internet because the students lacked computer and Internet literacy. I was demanding perseverance to teach students who were not academically fully ready to pursue higher education. My graphic design education focused on building social and professional independence with critical thinking as a designer. The students were more engaged in graphic design, hoping to be independent with professional experiences and design skills. My teaching experiences at Chicago State University seeded my vision as a design educator for community engagement and diversity at Chicago State University. In 2014 fall, I was hired as a tenure track Assistant Professor of Graphic Design and Web Design in the Communication Department at Valparaiso University in Northwest Indiana. It is a Lutheran institution founded in 1869. It is a regional tier 1 research institution, and 93% of the students are white. I proposed a new special topic class, Design for Social Changes, cross-listed among digital media, art, and communication. How to teach diversity to students in a predominately white private institution? I use graphic design to educate students about equity, diversity, and inclusion through diverse research methods, including literature reviews and interviews. The course consisted of group discussions to discuss what diversity is and how we could bring unity or inclusion through understanding diversity. The course worked with diverse issues, including diversity on campuses, sexual harassment issues on campus, Syrian refugee camps, and homelessness in Porter County, Ec. They were presented and exhibited through national conferences, the annual art students exhibition, and Martin Luther King’s Day at Valparaiso University. I co-founded the group Asian Female Scholars with Mary Szeto, a former law professor at Valparaiso University, currently at Syracuse University. It is a social group consisting of around 40 Asian female faculties in the Midwest, particularly where white populations relatively dominate in the academic world. The group provides regular workshops and social gatherings for mentoring, connection, networks, and resources such as pedagogical strategies for Asian female faculty to survive and succeed on US campuses. It has been held at Valparaiso University and Purdue University and has been virtually hosted since 2015. Now the group has regular meetings via Zoom during the pandemic. I plan to organize the conference for the group at the University of Wisconsin Madison with the budget approval. My project, Social Homelessness on US Campuses, brings awareness of people being isolated and marginal on US campuses, initially focused on Asian female faculty. It has extended to class projects for students in the course ART598 User Experience for Graphic Design in the Graphic Design program of the Art department at the University of Wisconsin Madison since 2018. The class design and develop mobile applications for students who may feel isolated and marginalized at the University of Wisconsin Madison. It has been presented and exhibited through SIGGRAPH, ISEA, ARTECH, IEEE GEM, CICA Museum, Web3D Conference, Etc. My current grant application as a principal investigator is pending with the $124,000 budget from Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Madison, WI. It is an exhibition proposal to incubate Bicultural and Bilingual Visual Dialogue Between Korean and English with Korean American designers and artists with the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Educational Achievement and Global Engagement Office in the School of Education at UW-Madison. Teaching diversity in design education is very critical for the next generation. Future professional designers should understand diverse cultures to create inclusive visual communication, including graphic and interaction design. This spring, I was asked during my guest artist’s talk at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. “If you may have a superpower, how do you want to use it? My answer was, “I want to make

March 23, 2023

Teaching Philosophy

We are in an era where graphic design has rapidly shifted from print to interact with the physical and digital worlds where real-world objects and artificial objects co-exist. The Graphic Design area is interdisciplinary, engaging in diversified mediums, including fine art, journalism, technology, literature, education, business, communication, etc. The current graphic design embraces experience design, environmental design, service design, human-centered design, participatory design, and speculative design. Now it is evolving to trans-disciplinary design education, practices, and research using creative graphic design. How do we, as designers, teach graphic design to the future generation of designers including makers in the 21st century? Design educators should guide students to see where they are now and go as designers. I highlight their critical thinking in contemporary media, such as the Spatial Web, including VR and AR, compared with traditional media, such as print. They read related essential papers and essays and discuss how they could become designers in a rapidly changing world. As a designer, I emphasize social responsibility to articulate social issues and present possible solutions to the public through visual communication such as print, website, social media, and digital worlds. Motivation is the foundation of my teaching. I have students research what they want to do throughout my courses. I encourage them to collaborate on their interests as class projects under the objectives. For instance, many volunteering projects were created, including book publications, websites, and virtual reality for the Web. They include various social issues such as environmental issues, preserving cultural properties, and supporting non-profit organizations such as schools, museums, shelters, etc. Students learn how to engage in society as highly motivated designers with critical thinking and community engagement from those projects. Collaboration is an emphasized part of my classes. As a designer, I was previously educated and accustomed to working alone. My design experiences in computer science, graphic design, and interactive media to experience design have convinced me that collaboration is essential and inevitable in design education. I enjoy group projects that teach them how to collaborate with other classmates. I plan and organize project outlines based on students’ research interests. Throughout the group projects, I expect to learn how to communicate with classmates, solve visual challenges, manage timelines collaboratively, and provide professional-looking design projects at the final critique. All my class projects are directly involved in exhibitions, community, and scholarly activities during the semester. I mentor them to research and submit their proposals to various design competitions, research grants, and conferences. For instance, my former students from the course 490/590 Photoshop/Illustrator were displayed at Resident Hall and Harre Union at Valparaiso University to raise sexual harassment issues. They exhibited at “The Title IX Conference” and “Indiana of Sexual Violence College Campuses for Prevention.” My graduate students were selected as presenters for Kawergosk Project, creating photo books and posters for a Syrian refugee camp at a national design conference. Also, my former students at Valparaiso University and the University of Wisconsin Madison received several undergraduate and graduate research grants. I initiated the exhibition beyond print, the annual fall graphic design exhibition, in 2018. It showcased creative design ideas and solutions in collaboration with creative coding, digital fabrication, and physical integration. I directed, designed, and developed Graphic Design Area Virtual Exhibition at http://www.uwgraphicdesign.com in the fall of 2020. My former student, Anjika Verma, was invited to an international peer-reviewed international conference, 24th International Generative Arts Conference and Exhibition in Italy. It was exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum of Cagliari in Italy. Her research paper was published at the 24th Generative Arts Conference’s proceeding. A class project, “Blank-xous”, created by Josie Cutrara from the course, Art 448, Coding for Graphic Design, was selected at the iDMAa and SECAC hosted by Maryland Institute College of Art in 2022. It is a computational visualization of her over-anxiety during the pandemic to reflect her psychological moments. Also, another project by UW–Madison student Nicole Golownia was selected for ARTIFACT [BOLD], a national biennial exhibition of graphic design, new media, illustration, printmaking, and the expanded field in 2022. Golownia’s “Fashion Intervention: Posters Promoting Sustainable Style” project is an exhibition design she originally developed for the course Art 448 Graphic Design for Exhibitions. My teaching approach is flexible and based on multiple situations. I have taught various students in South Korea and the United States, including high school graduates, part-time students with daytime jobs, older generations who need a college degree, and high school teachers in the summer institute. Also, I taught in various academic programs such as art, graphic design, communication, information technology, etc. I taught at four identical institutions, the School of Art Institute of Chicago, a prestigious art school; Chicago State University, a historically multicultural University; Valparaiso University, a private Lutheran liberal arts college; and the University of Wisconsin Madison, a tier 1 research institution. Working with these situations directly, I have learned to adjust my teaching styles based on level, background, major, culture, etc. Consequently, I can meet the diverse institutional expectations in different programs, departments, schools, and colleges. Teaching is a calling. I have a strong sense of duty and responsibility for students through mentoring and advising. Students often come to my office for advice about their class challenges and future career. I am welcome to share my previous experience as a former student in computer science in South Korea and how I dealt with that situation to become an internationally recognized typographer and designer. I encourage them not to give up their goal and to keep pursuing possible and practical solutions. As an educator, I am open-minded, respect students’ novel ideas, and learn from their experimental thinking. Teaching is another way of learning to share the knowledge