“I was a real amateur at it but I learned what his feeling for chess was…. He said it wasn’t a war game, it’s an aesthetic game, and you feel the shape of the board as it begins to shift its pattern and you make it become beautiful, even if you lose.”
–The gallerist Julien Levy remembering being taught to play chess by Marcel Duchamp

“A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue”
– Arthur Rimbaud

“If the balanced line is considered to be the only correct one, then the typewriter must, of necessity, write incorrectly.”
– Josef Albers, “Regarding the Economy of Typeface”

“This is an A train running local, local, local, local, local, local, local, local, local to Lefferts Boulevard.”
– Conductor unknown

“I was wondering about a radio [broadcaster] in the Netherlands … he was stu-stu-stu-stuttering. And I was thinking, how is it possible that someone who can do everything, he can be a postman, he can be a scientific thinker, he can be an architect, but not someone who’s working with language… But when he was speaking it was so intense and so believable…”
– Karel Martens

Some of the most interesting and lovely possibilities in design arise when design’s job is to connect multiple networks of information and of people, all of which are in motion. You will complete three assignments in this class, each of which involves the qualitative design of systems for transient, multi-directional communication among sets of people. We focus particularly on typographic form, network form, and movement form, and the synesthetic possibilities for conversion between these.

No technology is required for any of the assignments; there are many ways to create algorithms and networks (for example, a chess board). Nevertheless the course is inspired by technology, and the use of technology (such as programming, digital screens) is supported and encouraged.

CHESS

• Aurora: Diminishing grid
• Daniel: Instrument
• Inva: Yale vs. New Haven
• Jaewon: Bauhaus stamps
• Nontsi: Tablecloths
• Ryan: News cycles
• Weiyi: Joints

ALPHABET

• Aurora: Synesthetic alphabet
• Daniel: La Casa
• Inva: Feedback
• Jaewon: Circle/square grid
• Nontsi: Can you hear me now
• Ryan: Arl
• Weiyi: Brushstroke framework

MARQUEE

• Aurora: Short films
• Daniel: Frames
• Inva:
• Jaewon:
• Nontsi and Julia: Interlaced
• Ryan: Transcendent captions
• Weiyi: Now