How things are made to be useful and beautiful, from typefaces and buildings to everyday objects. Quick lessons on design thinking, its history and the designers who shaped how we live.
The history of graphic design concerns a profession, academic discipline, and applied art that creates visual communications to transmit specific messages to social groups. With origins in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, it was initially linked to the rise of printing in Europe in the 15th century and the growth of consumer culture in the Industrial Revolution.
The history of graphic design is the history of combining text with images and concepts, most often for advertisements, publications, or websites. It is frequently traced from the onset of moveable-type printing in the 15th century, though earlier developments and technologies related to writing and printing can be considered part of the longer history of communication.
Textile science concerns fibre-based materials that meet needs ranging from everyday clothing to technical applications such as bulletproof jackets and spacesuits. Its topics include natural and synthetic fibres, textile processes, and materials designed for technical uses beyond appearance.
Green building practices are environmentally responsible, resource efficient processes across a building's life cycle, from planning and design through demolition, aiming to conserve resources, protect the environment, and create healthy, comfortable spaces. What makes buildings work as integrated systems, and how can their design, use, and upkeep support these aims? The lessons connect design choices, life cycle thinking, maintenance, and public planning.
The art and architecture of ancient Mesopotamia is the art of a region widely considered the cradle of civilization, known for durable sculpture in stone and clay, while little painting has survived. How did Mesopotamia make meaning endure, and how can its art and architecture help us understand that? The lessons consider how buildings, images, and writing carried meaning across time.
Cartography is the study and practice of making and using maps, combining science, aesthetics and technique to model reality or imagined reality and communicate spatial information effectively. These lessons answer how maps shape our view of reality and help you understand how choices in map-making influence what maps communicate. They consider how maps balance representation, distortion and perspective.
The history of architecture traces changes in architecture across traditions, regions, stylistic trends, and dates; these traditions are thought to have begun as humans met the basic need for shelter and protection.
The founders of American industrial design are associated with industrial design, the process of identifying problems and creating products, systems, and experiences that make everyday activities more efficient or meaningful. As an applied art, industrial design most often focuses on a combination of aesthetics and user-focused considerations.
Visual design arranges basic visual elements according to design principles to make a product's overall appearance consistent, and Alan Hashimoto and Mike Clayton published Visual Design Fundamentals: A Digital Approach in 2004. What choices help create that consistency, and how can you understand their effects? The lessons consider how colour and the relationship between shapes and empty space contribute to visual design.
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