4. Weekdays Design – workshop week / Design na BezTydzień

/the ‘double pencil method‘
Martin Majoor

The first shapes will be ‘written’ with the ‘double pencil method’, two pencils that are tied together to form a sort of calligraphic writing tool. It is quite a simple tool but it is important to use it in the right way in order to get a good basis for an italic type design. Here is where the expertise of Martin Majoor comes in. Squeaking felt-tip markers will be used to fill in the contours of some essential characters, intoxicating correction fluid adds the necessary sharpness in detail. Numerous times the drawings will be put upon the wall, just to be able to take distance and to judge shapes. It will be one of the more important, maybe even philosophical aspects of this masterclass: take a distance from time to time!

Martin Majoor is a Dutch-type designer and book typographer. Around 1990 he designed the award-winning typeface family, Scala and Scala Sans. He also designed Telefont, Seria, Nexus and Questa (with Jos Buivenga). Majoor taught at several Schools of Fine Art and gave numerous lectures and workshops throughout the world.
https://www.martinmajoor.com/ 

/ how to formulate them and effectively diagnose needs?
Agata Urbanik

Apparently, we live in the best possible world, which does not mean that you should not try to change something for the better (especially in the face of the growing climate crisis and questioning basic human rights). How can designers get involved in this change?

One option is to design meaningful solutions and support people who care about social organizations and informal movements in this process. The proposed lecture and workshops will be an opportunity to pose a question about socially sensitive design and to think about how to implement it in the best way. During the lecture, we will discuss the diagnosis of needs, and why and how to ask questions. The participants and the workshop expert will also consider how to discover the needs of the users by considering their habits and the challenges they face daily. How to get closer to the perspective of users in the design process and how to talk with them to create a smart design that introduces a meaningful change.

you should know before signing up:
The workshop is for people (acting independently or in a team) who have an initial idea for a project (a diploma project or another one implemented outside the university: studio, social organization). 

Agata Urbanik. Founder of the Facilitation Ambulance Service (Pogotowie Facylitacyjne). She specializes in strategic facilitation – designing and conducting processes in which she closely cooperates with groups, creating a space for good conversation and the achievement of goals. She designs and conducts social research, including participatory and evaluation research. She teaches how to wisely diagnose needs and conduct meaningful meetings. She is a dialogue facilitator at the Nansen Center for Peace and Dialogue. For several years she has been cooperating with social organizations, informal movements, and public institutions.

More information: https://facylitacje.pl.

/how it links? Theory, methods, practice.
Laura Ferrarello

In this workshop, you will be introduced to methods and guidelines you can adopt and implement when facing ethical issues in your practice.  An introductory seminar will (1) describe applied and theoretical principles and examples of research on design and ethics and (2) offer guidance on the workshop activities in which you need to analyze a set of given case studies that present different kinds of ethical issues. Activities will be facilitated by Miro boards and will provide:

• guidance on the identification of ethical issues in design;
• understanding of personal and collective responsibilities and accountabilities (people and/or materials)
• the ability to categories ethical issues (e.g. environmental, human, organizational, production chains, etc)
• a mapping of ethical issues in the design process
• the understanding of the role or personal/social values in design practice and how they can help address ethical issues.

The workshop assignment will include the redesign of a given case study following a set of values that tackle ethical issues. 

Dr Laura Ferrarello is an interdisciplinary researcher and designer whose research focuses on developing inclusive/accessible innovation through design-led collaborative and interdisciplinary methodologies. Laura’s research includes ethics, human-human-AI interactions, design for resilience and cultural transformations, future of work and education, and design for safety. Laura is the course leader of the Executive Education online course “Designing Products & Services with AI”. She collaborated with organizations including British Airways, BBC, Design Museum, Huawei, Fujitsu amongst others. Before joining the RCA Laura worked as an architect and designer in the USA, UK, and Italy.

/Coding Art: Designing With Creative Coding Techniques
Yu Zhang
Mathias Funk

In 2020, we wrote the book ‘Coding Art’ to share experiences and useful steps around creative coding with a primarily non-technical audience: designers, artists, musicians and other creatives who deserve a very different approach to creative coding that what was available so far. We follow a creative process from ideation to making and refining. In this workshop, we will introduce you to this process and help you make your first steps in Processing, a creative coding environment. Throughout this workshop, you will experience hands-on how visual elements, dynamics, and audio-visual interaction are coming together. At the end of each day, you can present and share your results with each other and get feedback and further inspiration from others. We also will provide tips how to continue in the future.

What you need for this workshop:

• A recent Windows or macOS machine
• A good screen and headphones available (will help achieve better results)
• Have a good pen and sheets of paper available (will help with notes and quick sketches)
• A good Internet connection, webcam and microphone for interaction and presentation moments

An artist by training, dr. Yu Zhang (https://www.yuzhang.nl/) finished her PhD in 2017 at Eindhoven University of Technology on the theory and artistic practice of interactive technologies for public, large-scale installations. In 2017, Yu Zhang launched STUDIO Ü in the Netherlands and she approaches visual art with mixed reality installations and projections, sensor-based interactives, and computational arts. Apart from her artistic research and practice, Yu has been teaching design and art classes and workshops for over ten years. In both her art practice and teaching activities, Yu is well-versed in different interactive technologies.

Dr. Mathias Funk (https://www.mathias-funk.com/) is Associate Professor in the Future Everyday group in the Department of Industrial Design at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). He has a background in Computer Science and a PhD in Electrical Engineering (from Eindhoven University of Technology). His research interests include complex systems design, remote data collection, systems for musical expression, and design tools for data-intensive systems of smart things. Since 2011, he teaches creative programming, designing with data and connectivity and builds tools for design researchers.

/ designing memorable experiences
Agnieszka Szóstek

Looking at the condition of the modern consumer, we see that they are a rather special hybrid of two trends. On the one hand, an increasingly intense seeker of new experiences and sensations, and on the other, an involuntary collector of more and more information. The first aspect is crucial in understanding the relationship between the sphere of everyday activities and needs (experiences) and the business world that tries to define, understand and meet these needs. The workshop will be divided into two parts: the first part will be about creating a vision of the experience and the second part will focus on how to design a memorable experience. Their goal will be to show not only why it is worth designing experiences, but also how to do it effectively.

 
Dr. Agnieszka Szóstek, author of The Umami Strategy: Stand Out by Mixing Business with Experience Design, creator of Seed Cards tools for designers and researchers, co-host of the Catching The Next Wave podcast, and co-creator of the Become transformation agent program (in cooperation with the Danish alternative business school Kaospilot). Based on over twenty years of experience, she deals with the experience design strategy and conducts projects aimed at creating innovative solutions using the research through design process. She collaborated, among others with Google, Philips Research, Play, Orange, Allegro, IKEA, ONLY, ING, Santander, PZU, Tatra National Park, Silesian Marshal's Office and other companies and organizations looking for ideas on how to build the emotional value of their brand. She completed her Master's Degree in Interaction Design, then completed her Ph.D. in Experience Design at the Faculty of Industrial Design at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, and lectures on experiment design in Poland and abroad.

/ BlackMagic Fusion + VR
Piotr Welk

The workshop will be devoted to coding, generating, and composing an image with the use of tools available on the Internet. One of them is BlackMagic Fusion – an advanced compositing program that can be used to create various types of visual effects for film, animation, motion graphics, and VR. The workshop aims to introduce the specific environment and organization of work at Fusion, a creative approach to combining with other tools and examples of practical (and impractical ????) applications.
more information: https://legalnakultura.pl/pl/czytelnia-kulturalna/rozmowy/news/3444,moze-warto-cos-zepsuc-zeby-wiedziec-gdzie-jest-granica

Dr hab. Piotr Welk – graphic artist, an academic teacher at the Faculty of Graphics of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where he runs the studio of Multimedia Artistic Creation. He obtained his diploma in the studio of prof. Waldemar Świerzy. He creates graphics in 2D and 3D techniques, computer animations, and special effects for animated films,  author of photography and multimedia installations.

/ Modeling a stylized head in ZBrush
Olaf Pożoga 

The main aim of the workshop is to prepare participants for independent and creative work in a 3D environment. Workshop participants will learn the modeling techniques in the ZBrush program - under the supervision of the tutor, they will create individual elements of the model, which will then be discussed. During the classes, everyone will be able to consult their projects with the expert on an ongoing basis.

Olaf Pożoga – a character artist with 10 years of experience in game development, graphic designer, and comic artist. Associated with 11-bit Studio for the last 7 years. He worked on many well-known projects such as This War of Mine or FrostPunk, where he was responsible, among others, for the concept and preparation of models. https://www.artstation.com/olafpooga

/visualising the complicated audio-compositions
Brian Lucid

The Mapping Mashups workshop will playfully explore various methods of visualising the complicated inter-relationships of “content” and “form” (as defined in musical terms) that exist in multi-layered, time-based audio compositions. It will ask participants to identify, through research and observation, the content and structure of chosen musical compositions, then challenge them to communicate what they have learned through a diagram
(or visual score) designed to be understood by a general audience. To support this work, the group will investigate the influence of remix culture on design and music while viewing and discussing historical examples of complex and experimental forms of musical notation.

Prof. Brian Lucid leads Ngā Pae Māhutonga, the School of Design at Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand.
He also leads the Weta Workshop School at Massey University, an innovative entertainment design postgraduate program delivered in partnership with design studio Weta Workshop.  Lucid’s interaction design research focuses upon the strategic implementation and aesthetic refinement of digital interactive environments. His work with studio Proximity Lab has seen him undertake product strategy and user experience for some of the world’s most successful cloud-based services. 

/how design can influence tightening togetherness
Rasmus Holscher, Friederike Faller

The awareness of the importance of the quality of the urban space is growing and has to find new functional and aesthetic qualities and the new architecture and city planning. The assignment is to diffident one or more places in the urban space you as a person find problematic, and where you can place or incorporate one or more elements that will provide a larger extend of “togetherness”. The city is characterized by having a population stretching from infant to old, poor to rich, able to disabled, inhabited to visitors. For all to feel welcome it is of greatest importance to make urban elements, design, and city planning accommodate all needs to some degree. The challenge is to find solutions providing the greatest degree of functionality with the least effort. The functionality has to take into consideration; human safety and physical comfort, longer lively, inclusion, different use over the year, and the clock  

What to deliver
Find a space where you can do a difference, illustrate the idea, make short writing of what and how the idea is affecting and emphasize “togetherness” and make a description of a few personas and how your design has affected daily life, and what values it gives for the whole neighborhood.

Rasmus Holscher (born 1968) is a Danish architect and designer who is developing solutions that improve, change and shape the future world for people in the public and private space. Rasmus is Managing Partner at Holscher Design, a Scandinavian design studio that for the past 50 years has been collaborating with a long row of international companies like Philips, JCDecaux, Geberit, Flos, d line and Cisco. Father of three, sailor, snowboarder, and free diver.

Friederike Faller (born 1966), architect and designer, has been a partner at the Copenhagen-based design agency Holscher Design since 2007. Friederike mostly focuses on transportation design and hardware solutions for the architectural environment such as building components and appliances. Friederike studied Architecture at the University of Karlsruhe and at the iRoyal Academy in Copenhagen from where she also earned a Master's degree in Design (MiD).