Graphic Design & Communications

The First year students finished up the last week of classes with a variety of activities.

Friday (04.26) McQuade Distributing Tour. Rhea Beto, head graphic designer for McQuades, discusses the ins and outs of in-house design with our first year students

Rhea Beto discusses in-house design with students.

Monday (04.29) Ryan Pitcher brought his Spanish class to the Career Academy to translate for the Graphic Design students as they repurposed their Festival of Short Plays poster from English to Spanish.

Ryan Pitcher helps design and spanish students with translation.

Tuseday (04.30) Arts Quest—First year students supported the Arts Quest Campus Crawl by participating tie-dye, enameling and raku.

(L to R) Blaze, Caleb, Jacob and Jared take part in tie-dying.

Congratulations to Bree Reetz (Malignen) who is featured in this month’s issue of Fargo Monthly. Reetz is listed among the visual artists ‘who are making Fargo beautiful’ in the May artist issue. Reetz, a 2010 graduate of the Graphic Design and Communications Program, is currently employed by NDSU as a graphic designer and animator. Click here to read the entire article.

Poster Design by Cole McCormick

To satisfy coursework necessary for completion, all students enrolled in the Graphic Design and Communications program are required to put together a design portfolio. In the span of four semesters the students typically do over 50 projects, yet the portfolio will challenge them to choose a fraction of these to demonstrate and creatively present their skills, talent, abilities and personality. This two-year culmination of hard work will on Friday, May 3rd in the BSC Graphic Design and Communications Department. An open exhibition of this year’s student design portfolios will take place in the Career Academy Rooms 305 A&B from 10am to noon. This year six professional reviewers will be conducting ‘interviews’ as part of this final assessment of student learning. Meet the design students, see their portfolios and ‘network’. All are welcome, so if you get the opportunity please stop by.

The 43rd Annual GDC Spring Show has now come to a close. The graphic design faculty consider this a highly successful show with over 700 entries and a freshman taking one of three judges choice ribbons. Judges choice ribbons were given to Jack Aide for Photography, Lindsey Hefta for Illustration and Michelle Flesness for her branding of Love Brew coffee.

Thanks to the judges who took time out of their busy schedules and the Kirkwood Mall for providing us with an excellent venue for this event. A big thank you to all who came out to view all the hard work  the  GDC design students had on display this week.

It is an understatement to say that this year’s Graphic Design and Communications graduating class has been busy. This entire semester second-year students worked diligently on bringing the second issue of PROOF magazine to life. With some direction from faculty, they accomplished this project by working on separate committees, individually and collectively. Like last year’s issue, students each have their own two-page spread where they share a collection of their best design and photography as well as a written narrative that helps the reader learn more about them. The students decided that this issue’s design would be thematically centered around a noir detective motif which helped set the visual tone. It was a lot of work, but the end result is an impressive creative and technical accomplishment. Because PROOF brings together nearly everything students have learned about designing for print into a single project it has become a very valuable educational tool. The second issue of PROOF magazine is available now.

Despite the weather (record snow fall in a single day for Bismarck, ND) Chip Kidd was able to make it to North Dakota. He gave three presentations a week ago on April 16th.

The noon session was a creative writing work shop. He read from his best seller The Cheese Monkeys and discussed his personnel writing style.

In the afternoon he addressed a group of over 60 graphic design students (past and present) with a very informal Q&A.  For an hour and a half students asked nonstop questions. Picking the brain of one of the most successful graphic designers working in the field today. Chip did his utmost to give the best advice and insight into a profession most of these students are about to embark on.

The evening was topped off with a funny, informative peek into the life of a successful graphic designer and author. Chip Kidd made a huge impact to a lot of students last week. An impact that  will be felt for years to come.