Thesis Compendium
For the Super-Detailed Overview of Compendium You Need to Begin, please Click Here.
All Thesis Compendium Due Dates: Cheat Sheet
Thanks to Ryan for this thing of beauty!!The Big Key Dates
🌀Monday, April 26th
This is the first due date for your Compendium working draft . Please bring to class for individual meetings: a working, collected draft of your Thesis Compendium so far, which includes drafts of your “Foundational Principles,” “Research Questions,” “Crucial Terms,” “Process Log,” your “Projects” in progress, and a “Bibliography” in progress.
🌀Monday, May 10
All-Class Internal Review. These are Compendium in-class presentations of your drafts. Plan on 7-10 minutes with time designated for feedback.🌀Monday, May 17th
Shown your in-progress (near-final) draft of Compendium in joint Grad Studio/Seminar II final reviews, on Monday May 17 and Tuesday, May 18 with Bethany Johns and Will Mianecki and Ryan Diaz, and our Guest Critics.🌀Thursday, May 27
Final written and edited Thesis Compendium due. Please upload a PDF to your individual folder in the class Google Drive folder; send proof of printing (a receipt); or submit your website, completed. (BRIEFEST) OVERVIEW
Here’s a good place to read the Full, Detailed Super-Overview of Compendium, elaborating on the prompt, what is hoped for, what is expected, and how to approach it. You’ll want to read this in depth :]
Compendium noun, plural com·pen·di·ums or com·pen·dia
â—Ź a brief compilation or composition consisting of a reduction and condensation of the subject matter of a larger work (Merriam-Webster)
The core project for this semester is a compilation of inquiries, learnings, and operations over time: a set of documents that comprise a schema toward your thesis at this stage.
Combining research, writing, documentation, mapping, and forecasts, your Thesis Compendium will ideally operate as a précis of, or even a guide to, your final thesis book. You should give your Compendium a form appropriate to its contents. In general, GD has required a printed edition for archival posterity, and there is immense value in creating a book in which you can practice, play with, and experiment with styles and forms you’d like to explore in your thesis book. Seminar II will accept a PDF of a book, or a website, in lieu of a laid-out book, that contains all the required components (below). In general, there is nothing stopping you from producing a website, editions, video, or other open-ended forms that you might sustain beyond spring.
This project is a prompt for you to cross-reference your own intuitions about your areas of inquiry with research, studio work, and critical feedback from your peers—all with the goal of defining your thesis direction. In order to do so you will begin refining subject areas you have already articulated. For MORE DETAILS, here is the full overview of Compendium :]
Major Thesis Compendium Components
1
Foundational Principles
[±750 words]
The written component of the thesis should sustain your interest throughout the process, and enhance your graphic design research and practice. Consider this concise essay your introduction. Cite ideas, precedents, and examples of related work that have driven your area(s) of inquiry.
Full Description of Foundational Principles Prompt, Here In Our Class Drive.
Draft due Sunday, March 28th.
2
Research Questions [Hypotheses]
Pose 4–5 relevant research questions (rather than one definitive question at this point). State questions about your territories—these will form the basis of a hypothesis. You can include questions that have been posed and even answered by others, constituting the ongoing debates active in this field—questions that are interesting and worthy of further exploration. A good question should provide a starting point—not too simple, but also not too vast and general—and lead in a compelling direction.
Drafts due Monday, April 12th for in-class workshop.
3
Crucial Terms [Glossary + Statement]
Familiarize readers with words, phrases, and terms that are important to you and your work accompanied by both official and personal definitions that contextualize your question(s). Please include both a glossary of relevant terms, and a short statement outlining what readers need to know in order to understand the significance of your work (ongoing conversations in the field, precedents, related research, writings, figures, &c.).
Draft due Monday, April 19.
4
Process Log [Visual Documentation]
Throughout the semester you will be exploring and thinking about the flexible, critical, and conversational relationship between your visual and written bodies of work, while documenting along the way. Select TEN examples of process documentation—sketches, reflections, tweets, visualizations or conversations—to create an annotated, time-stamped visual log that relates to your larger research inquiries. First Draft for Monday, April 12th. In progress throughout semester; include in Compendium draft due on Monday, April 26th.
5
Projects [Selected Work]
A selection of completed studio work, with accompanying photographs or illustrations, that aligns with your written work. These should be clearly described (the what and how), but also critically interpreted (why). Pay attention to the editorial structure here: think of breaking up information and writing into logical parts, for both readability and design potential. Look at magazine article structures as an example: headline, deck, byline (in our Compendium context: project type, class, semester date, other contextual info), and then description as it relates the project to your wider Compendium themes.
Also include a short list (accompanied by a single image) of any project ideas that you have not yet undertaken, but plan to complete in the coming year. In progress through semester.
Projects shortlist due Monday, April 12th. Include in Draft due Monday, April 26th.
6
Bibliography [Annotated List]
Just to reiterate: this is an ANNOTATED bibliography. In addition to properly-cited references (see Chicago Manual of Style “Notes and Bibliography: Sample Citations” ), you will provide a running commentary with thoughts and criticism. These can be as formal or informal as you wish, and could well be illustrated too, as you see fit. Items in your bibliography can be divided into two sections: texts (or indeed other media, see below) already read and texts to be read. You should break your growing list into categories that revolve around your burgeoning thesis topic(s). These categories may give you clues for how to structure the thesis itself. Aside from textual references, your bibliography will naturally include resources in other media (e.g. films, documentaries, exhibitions, websites, &c.). Please also list any people you are starting to think about interviewing for your thesis.
Work in progress throughout semester; include in Compendium draft due Monday, April 26th.
7Critical Position [±750 Words]
It is not enough to know what you want to explore, but how and why you want to explore it—a philosophical viewpoint. Think of design as arguments made manifest. Instead of “good design,” we might consider what makes for a good argument, both in terms of its coherence or integrity, and in a larger sense: does it forward a line of thinking we wish to perpetuate? Design writer Peter Hall points out that “design insists on a contextual evaluation: it isn't just about how a thing looks, or just about how a thing works; it is also about the assumptions on which a thing rests.”
In your studio work and in your writing, you have a perspective that informs why and how you approach the work: this can be a combination of your ideas about the role of design and its relationship to the world, and indeed of your own relationship to the world (social / political / ecological)/&c., as well as the roles of other researchers and designers. In the synthesis and exploration of these points of view, you will formulate a statement that articulates your current critical position.
Draft due Monday, May 3rd for discussion in groups.