Research Guides: GDES 220: Design Practices: Home

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Related Guides

For additional research information

try these guides:

Graphic Design
Includes information on Motion Graphics.
Diversity in Design
Contemporary Art
Visual Literacy
Museum Studies

Search Terms

Browse for books and articles using the following keywords:

Archives in art
Artists as collectors
Designer/artist + curator

Browse for Books

Use these call numbers to browse for books at the Cabell Library:

N 400-3990 (3rd floor)
Art Museum, Galleries
N 500-6500 (3rd floor)
Modern & contemporary art
NK 845-1003 (3rd floor)
Graphic & commercial art

Learn more about the Library of Congress Classification System used to organize books in VCU Libraries:

Library of Congress Classification
An overview of the overall system structure.
LC Classification Outline
The letters and titles of the main classes of the Library of Congress Classification, with links to subclassification details e.g. N-Fine Art, NC=Drawing/Design/Illustration.

Bloomsbury Design Library

Bloomsbury Design Library
Bloomsbury Design Library offers cross-searchable access to a broad and expanding range of encyclopedias, reference works, e-books, images, and more covering the global history, theory, and practice of crafts and design.

Library Stack

Library Stack
Library Stack is an online archive of digital arts publications from the fields of contemporary art, graphic design, architecture, photography, film, sound and philosophy. Library Stack draws from diverse global platforms, and has a particular focus on hybrid works.

A Guide to Teaching with Library Stack
Shows how to navigate the collection, retrieve and share contents with students and efficiently communicate about that content.

Art Browsery

Look. Learn. Create.
Visit the Art Browsery on the 4th floor of Cabell Library to see a selection of new visually rich books available for checkout.

Subject Guide

Carla-Mae Crookendale

(she/her)

Contact:

cmcrookendale@vcu.edu
(804) 827-0367
Cabell Library, Room 121-L

Subjects: Arts, Performing, Arts, Visual

Ask Us

GDES 220 Assignment

PROMPT
Develop a catalogue that functions as a flexible archive in order to analyze and develop new forms of interpretation. This project challenges you to begin to use the process of collecting as a way of researching; to understand the process of archiving, and the archive itself; to use an archive to translate form into new language; and most importantly to look closer. Students are challenged to source a large array of material/media to create a database that functions as a flexible archive in order to analyze and experiment with conditional organizational structures.

The project is divided into three distinct phases: Cataloguing, Translation, and Synthesis. Each phase of the project includes an introduction, studio time, and process critiques.

Cataloguing - DESIGNER AS ARCHIVER
Translation - DESIGNER AS EDITOR
Synthesis - DESIGNER AS CURATOR

Creative Research for Graphic Design

Graphic Design Thinking: beyond brainstorming
Call Number: Access Online
How to define problems, get Ideas, and create form. Explores a variety of techniques ranging from quick, seat-of-the-pants approaches to more formal research methods for stimulating fresh thinking, and arriving at compelling and viable solutions.
(also in print: NC997 .G674 2011)
Visual Research: an introduction to research methodologies in graphic design
Call Number: NC997 .N63 2011
This book explains the key terms and theories that underlie design research; examining the importance of audience, communication theory, semiotics and semantics. It features a range of case studies that demonstrate how the use of rigorous research methods can form the basis of effective visual communication and design problem solving.
Practice Based Design Research
Call Number: Access Online
Publication Date: 2017
Addresses a range of models and approaches to practice-based research, considering relationships between industry and academia, and explores how students' experiences of undertaking practice-based research has impacted their future design and research practice.

Art/Design + Archives

Art + Archive: understanding the archival turn in contemporary art
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2022
Art + Archive provides an in-depth analysis of the connection between art and the archive at the turn of the twenty-first century. The book examines how the archive emerged in art writing in the mid-1990s and how its subsequent ubiquity can be understood in light of wider social, technological, philosophical and art-historical conditions and concerns.
Installation Art and the Practices of Archivalism
Call Number: N6494.I56 J66 2016
This book engages with the recent growth in visual projects that respond to the archive, focusing in particular on installation art. It traces a line of argument from practitioners who explicitly depict the archive to those whose materials and practices are archival.
Staging the Archive: art and photography in the age of new media
Call Number: N7433.94 .A47 2014
This book is dedicated to art practices that mobilize the model of the archive, demonstrating the ways in which such archival artworks probe the possibilities of what art is and what it can do.
Art Making, Collections, and Obsessions: An Intimate Exploration of the Mixed-Media Work and Collections of 35 Artists
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2008
Looks at how artists use their collections to make artwork. Presented in gallery-style format, this work allows readers to see what artists collect, and the resulting artwork they make from it. It features the collections and the artwork of 33 major mixed-media artists. It also includes journals, assemblages, altered books, and jewellery pieces.
Magnificent Obsessions : the artist as collector
Call Number: N5210 .M34 2015
Exploring more than a dozen personal collections of contemporary artists, this unique and revealing book probes the aesthetic and psychological dimensions of collecting and shows how objects can influence and reflect their owners' work.
All This Stuff: Archiving the Artist
Call Number: N440 .A45 2013
All This Stuff breaks new ground in the field of archive theory. It documents the innovative ways in which the arts are challenging the distinctions, processes, and crossovers between artworks and archives. This critical reexamination exemplifies how the field of art archiving is changing theory and practice as well as our understanding of what an archive is, or could begiven into the archival process and the book also explores how archives can be made accessible and the unpredictable ways in which they may be explored and reinterpreted in the future.

Art/Design + Curation

The Designer As...: author, producer, activist, entrepreneur, curator & collaborator : new models for communicating
Call Number: NC997 .M365 2013
The role of designers in communication and visual culture is evolving, from designers serving as commercial 'hired guns' to assuming the more empowering roles of design authorship. The role of the designer can expand to being the author, producer, curator, network facilitator, activist, consultant, entrepreneur ... the list goes on and on.
The philosophy of curatorial practice : between work and the world
Call Number: ebook
This book walks us through the process of how artworks eventually get their meaning. Using notions of belonging and membership and applying analytic perspectives, it shows us how curated exhibitions invite audience members to infer an exhibition's narrative threads, giving artworks their contents and discursive sense.
Curatopia: museums and the future of curatorship
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2018
What is the future of curatorship? Is there a vision for an ideal model, a curatopia, whether in the form of a utopia or dystopia? Or is there a plurality of approaches, amounting to a curatorial heterotopia? This pioneering volume addresses these questions by considering the current state of curatorship. It reviews the different models and approaches operating in museums, galleries and cultural organisations around the world and discusses emerging concerns, challenges and opportunities.
When Artists Curate: contemporary art and the exhibition as medium
Call Number: N408 .G74 2018
An increasing proportion of exhibitions are curated by artists rather than professional curators. This book provides the first critical history of visual artists curating exhibitions.
Book Marks an Artist's Card Catalog: notes from the library of my mind
Call Number: ND237.P1668 A2 2021
Intricate collages and drawings created on old library checkout cards, each one representing a book that left an indelible mark on artist Barbara Page.

Art/Design + Editing/Criticism

Critiqued: Inside the Minds of 23 Leaders in Design
Call Number: NC997 .B368 2014
Critiqued takes you on a journey with designer Christina Beard through an iterative design experiment. With her poster in tow, she meets with leading designers, writers, and curators. At each stop, the participant critiques the poster and talks about his or her own design process. Based on their conversation, Christina redesigns the poster before heading to the next critique — a process similar to the children’s game telephone.

Citations

Citation Styles Research Guide
VCU Libraries guide to citing information in a variety of formats including APA, MLA, and Chicago.
Citation Tools
Provides information about choosing and using citation tools such as Mendeley, Zotero, and EndNote.
Purdue OWL - Research & Citation Resources
Comprehensive guide to in-text and reference list citations for APA, MLA and Chicago styles.