The Designed Image

3 units

This course foregrounds the interaction between text, lettering/typography, and image in illustrated projects. Students will design images for textual settings for narrative, symbolic, and decorative applications. Focus will be on what the words say, how the words look, and what the picture does. We will integrate material culture research in the WashU Libraries' Special Collections and the Dowd Illustration Research Archive (DIRA) by reviewing historical examples. Course projects will explore specified variables through iterative effort to be reviewed in group critique, culminating in an "apologia" (an argumentative defense of practice) written, illustrated, and designed by the student.