ILLUS-2000

VISUAL THINKING

Faculty: Various

Course Level: Sophomore - major requirement

3 CREDITS

Illustration is visual communication: meaning made visible. Visual thinking, the creative process by which all successful illustration is created, constitutes the development of an articulate imagination through thorough, iterative exploration of ideas. This class emphasizes process over finish, idea over application and significance over style-exploring both ways of seeing and ways of showing. Coursework will encourage conceptual invention and application fundamental to an understanding of what the practice of illustration is and can be. The object of the course is to strengthen the students’ inventive talents and interpretive skills - and thereby to augment their ability to articulate complex ideas with clarity, eloquence and power.

Encouraging expansive thinking as a prelude to visual communication, assignments in this class will emphasize exhaustive approaches to illustration problems. Students are expected to finish the class with a fundamental ability to utilize visual tropes such as metaphor, irony and allegory and with a basic understanding of connotation and denotation as they relate to narrative, concept and message, and as dynamic forces in visual communication. An ability to create pictures for both expository and expressive purposes will be explored as will the use of a variety of visual thinking methods and systems to develop unique forms and ideas.