Graphic Design

Graphic Design Professor Eric Benson was recently selected into cohort 3 of the Climate Wisdom Fellowship for 2025. Congratulations Eric!  

Graphic Design Clinical Assistant Professor Jena Marble was recently named a 2025 Designer to Watch by Graphic Design USA. Congratulations Jena!

Samantha Jenae Jones, a graduate student in Design for Responsible Innovation, is part of the 2024–25 "Collisions Across Color Lines" Interseminars project funded by the Mellon Foundation, and was recently interviewed by the Humanities Research Institute (HRI).

Molly Briggs was interviewed by Ricker Library of Architecture and Art talking about her research and her special topics course "Interactive Print: Reading from the Inside Out." Link to interview: Ricker Library: Vera Mak Interviews Molly Briggs https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d6PXThOQmVD5WpW5k-rUX7CANkon3utE/view Link to Exhibition Catalog | Interactive Print: Reading from the Inside Out https://heyzine.com/flip-book/ede718d023.html#page/11  

The Chicago Sukkah Design Festival is named the winner of the 2024 Roberta Feldman Architecture for Social Justice Award. The Chicago Sukkah Design Festival, the public art and architecture festival founded by Assistant Professor Joseph Altshuler, is named the winner of the 2024 Roberta Feldman Architecture for Social Justice Award, administered by the AIA Chicago Foundation. The award recognizes excellence in built projects and design programs guided by the conviction that access to high quality architecture is not a privilege, it is a human right. The AIA Chicago bestows this honor award to one project annually, celebrating the commitment of designers who work on behalf of the public good. The Chicago Sukkah Design Festival’s organizational framework and co-design process builds on the legacy of Roberta Feldman (Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Architecture), a trailblazer with a long career dedicated to democratic design and public-impact work. Altshuler serves as artistic director for the Festival’s first three editions (2022–2024), including the upcoming edition that opens to the public on Sunday, October 6. Collaborators include fellow FAA faculty members Assistant Professor Nekita Thomas, exhibition and landscape design, and Assistant Professor Akima Brackeen, design/build contributor (2023) and community design support (2024).

Professor Deana McDonagh was recently named an Illinois Leadership Center Faculty Fellow. The ILC Faculty Fellows are a group of leadership scholars from a variety of disciplines, all with an interest in leadership research and education.  Funded by the Illinois Leadership® Center, up to four fellows are selected annually and are given a discretionary fund of $2500 per year to support their leadership research and scholarly activities. The appointment lasts for one academic year and may be renewed for up to three years via reapplication.

Graphic Design Clinical Assistant Professor, Jena  Marble, was in the University of Illinois System Annual Report. Marble's article is in the "In Their Own Words" faculty spotlight. She highlights Art & Design with Convergence: Art and design, artificial intelligence.

Fresh Press will be on Prairie Fire on Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. on demand on YouTube or PBS Online.

Sharayah Cochran, Art History was recently named as a Humanities Research Institute Graduate Fellow. Grace Eunhyn Bae, Art Education and Samantha Jenae Jones, Design for Responsible Innovation, were named as Graduate Fellows of the Interseminars Initiative, 2024-2025 CONGRATULATIONS!  

Giant Congratulations Ali Ibanez, Graphic Design (2024) for competing in the Paris Paralympics on the women’s basketball team. Go Ali! Also congratulations as well to Phillip Croft, Industrial Design (2025) and Isaiah Rigo, Industrial Design (2024) for making it to the paralympic trials for Track and Field.

Fresh Press Co-Founder and Graphic Design/DRI Associate Professor, Eric Benson, with e. ainsley (MFA 2021 Sculpture), Co-Studio Manager & Program Coordinator and  Meredith Hislope (Art Education major), Co-Studio Manager will be featured on Mid-American Gardner tonight at 7 PM on WILL.

In 2024 Molly Briggs co-founded the Panoramic & Immersive Media Studies (PIMS) Yearbook, a digital & hardcover book series published by De Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston. She serves as executive editor alongside Thorsten Logge (Universität Hamburg) and Nicholas C. Lowe (SAIC). The PIMS Yearbook surveys the historical and contemporary landscape of panoramic and immersive media, an interdisciplinary field that includes optical and haptic devices; 360-degree paintings; long-form paintings, photography, and prints; dioramas; museum displays; games; gardens; literature; maps; music; printed matter; still and moving images; virtual and augmented reality; and theatrical productions. Whereas the notion of the panoramic describes extensive, expansive and/or all-embracing vistas, immersion refers to porous interfaces between representation and the real, observer and observed, nature and culture, and past, present, and future. Together, the concepts of panorama and immersion have catalyzed time- and space-bending strategies for creating, experiencing, and transforming culture, ideas, and built social space across the arc of human history. Scholarly essays are subject to double-blind external peer review; conference papers are subject to single-blind internal peer review; other sections (visual & creative essays, restoration, management & field reports, reviews, reprints, and the forum) are edited by named section editors. Volumes 1–3 (2024–2026) will be published open access (OA) and in full color. Volume 1 (2024) is in production and will be released in December 2024 with 380 pages and 190 figures. The call for contributions to v.2 (2025) is live and closes 7 October 2024. Learn more at https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783111335575/html?lang=en and https://panoramacouncil.org/en/publications/the_panoramic_immersive_media_studies_yearbook/.

Eric Benson with alumni Veronica Pham and E. Ainsley have article published in Advanced Materials Technologies. Silvestre, Sara L., Morais, Maria, Soares, Raquel R. A., Johnson, Zachary T., Benson, Eric, Ainsley, E., Pham, Veronica, Claussen, Jonathan C., Gomes, Carmen L., Martins, Rodrigo, Fortunato, Elvira, Pereira, Luis, Coelho, João, “Green fabrication of stackable laser-induced graphene micro-supercapacitors under ambient conditions: Towards the design of truly sustainable technological platforms,” Journal of Advanced Materials Technologies (2024).

Dr. Molly Briggs, with collaborators Dr. Wei (Windy) Zhao and Dr. Sharon Suiwen Zou, received a 2024-25 Transdisciplinary Global South Community-Based Learning Program Development Grant for their proposal, "Place Making and Rural Tourism in China."

Nekita Thomas, Eric Benson, Joshua Pridemore, Holly Strickland, Noelyn Stephens, and Yiqi Xiao recently had their article, "How to Explain Design Research To Your Friends" in the Design Research Society Digital Library published.

Brittany Bindrim (Graphic Design 2007 BFA) just dropped her debut album "Velella Velella." The album may be purchased here.