Focus Grid Projects
Don Adleta and Junior Design Students
2014
A collection of Focus Grid collaboration books by junior graphic design students (Elijah Justice, Evan Taylor, Katie Mallow, Alexander Calmus, Nathalie McClune, Kaleigh Sutherland, Amber VanDyke, and Kelsey Hanson) and Don Adleta
This research project addresses design aesthetics, practical application and theoretical design thinking process. This assignment develops an aesthetically pleasing result first and then applies it to a context. This is a unique learning opportunity and is opposite to the process in the practice. We have within the educational context the luxury of assigning a context post-processing of the innovative research. This condition allows us to think inventively, uninhibited by preconceived notions of what a design stereotypically should be. It is Don’s philosophy that if you taste the harmonic conditions of a self-generated visual quality and how it can be achieved and applied, you will strive to replicate that level of success within the design practice.
Through methods of reduction and comparative analysis, these experimental results became more powerful, more phenomenal. The restrictions echo the conditions that happen in the practice of design all the time.
The objective is to have five or six unique results that come from one method of taking away from the original grid. The idea is to have a family result from related roots.
Each student then found a context in which they applied their results. Evan Taylor experimented within the concept of synesthesia. Kaleigh Sutherland had a honeycomb grid and came up with several different mead flavors. Kelsey Hansen applied her color grid studies to environmental contexts. Katie Mallow brought her research into the context of quilts and created a ‘step-by-step how-to’ book.
This was one of Don’s most successful class of students. This research is dedicated to Armin Hoffman.