Visual Discovery Conference 2022

Twelve Bobcats expand professional knowledge in Lucerne, Switzerland

A partnership between universities across the globe offers students a chance to attend the 2022 Visual Discovery Conference.

Founded in 2018 as an effort to provide students with an opportunity for experiential learning to gain real-world skills, the Visual Discovery Conference involves some of the world’s most renowned design schools participating in a weeklong student-centered experience. 

Twelve Ohio University students attended the conference in September and had the opportunity to explore Lucerne, Switzerland, while researching cultural aspects of the city and creating visual presentations to share with professionals and peers. 

The Visual Discovery Conference began as a collaboration between Ohio University School of Visual Communication Assistant Professor Emeritus John Grimwade and Augsburg University of Applied Sciences Prof. Michael Stoll.

“I knew some of the things I wanted to do and that was to provide students with the kind of experiences that professionals get, and the kind of experience that will help them get jobs,” said Prof. Timothy Goheen, who joined OHIO as a professor in the School of Visual Communication in 2014. 

The conference is hosted annually by one of the involved universities. The inaugural conference took place at the Iuav University of Venice.

Following the success of the 2018 conference, Scripps College of Communication Dean Scott Tittsworth, who attended the first conference and continues to support the event, invited participants to come to Athens, Ohio. The second annual conference was hosted by the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University in 2019. 

The 2022 Visual Discovery Conference took place in Lucerne, Switzerland hosted by the Lucerne University of Art and Design. Visiting schools included Augsburg University of Applied Sciences, Ohio University, University of North Carolina, Iuav University of Venice (Italy), Offenbach University of Art and Design (Germany), and the National Institute of Design (Ahmedabad, India). 

“The way we decided to do this, and to help with the cultural aspect of it, was that the topics that  students would research and visualize would have something to do with the locale,” Goheen explained.  

The topics covered in Lucerne were: Sports Made in Switzerland, The Bourbaki Panorama: A piece of Media History, The Bridges of Lucerne, Transport to the Sublime: Touristic Mobility in Lucerne, and Grand Hotels: A History of Luxury in the Wilderness. 

Students had the chance to select the topic that interested them most and dive deeper throughout the week with a group of their peers from the various attending schools. 

The criterion for projects is simple - anything that’s visual. Students explore videos, photography, infographics, and many other forms of visual media. They work tirelessly throughout the week researching their selected topics, and each group gives oral presentations on their discoveries during the final day of the conference. 

“There is nothing that beats hands-on learning that mirrors what you would be doing professionally,” Goheen said. “You’re collaborating with other people. You’re collaborating with people who have different skills and learning how to work with them. In this case, you’re collaborating with someone who’s even from a different country. All those things I think are valuable, I don’t know of many things that are like it.” 

Another group looked at the transportation system of Lucerne. Though the region is naturally mountainous, the country has an incredibly efficient and affordable transportation system.

“I’ve been on many metros and trains in the United States, but I’ve never been on a train that smooth. You couldn’t feel turns, you couldn’t feel bumpiness, it was just so smooth,” said Hunter Thiede, a senior studying interactive media. 

 After exploring the various methods of transportation, Thiede and his peers create an interactive map that helped users learn about the area’s different modes of transportation. He noted that the illustration experience of the group allowed them to create skillfully crafted graphic designs. 

“It was interesting to see how they got around certain obstacles,” Thiede said. “Switzerland is very mountainous, and some of them built trains that go up the mountain. Even the largest, most famous mountain there, Pilatus, they had a specific vehicle that they engineered to climb this mountain.”

On top of the inherent field knowledge and experiential learning that the conference provides, it is also a chance for students to forge connections and become immersed in a new culture. Despite their busy schedules and projects, students are given a half-day of work so that they could go out and explore Lucerne.

“I don’t think they’ll ever forget this; I think that they not only learn some things and show that they can do some amazing work in a tight deadline and collaborate with people, but I think that they made friends that they might keep forever,” Goheen said. 

The connections forged at the conference will impact student attendees far beyond their weeklong trip. 

“We were only there for a week but interacting and hanging out with all these new people and making friends with them was a great opportunity,” Thiede said. “We were all kind of sad afterwards. A lot of these friends that we made are separated by an ocean."

Emily Allen is a senior at OHIO studying publication design, minoring in retail and fashion merchandising and specializing in museum studies. Allen’s takeaways from the conference equally benefitted her personally and professionally. 

“I have never been so grateful of an experience,” she said. “I have made so many connections with people I would have otherwise never met. Regardless of language and cultural barriers, I believe we all came to the conference with a mutual respect that creators have for one another, and that respect helped us build amazing friendships. I took a lesson from the panorama and the Swiss people, to accept people with open arms and to learn about/from them.”

Though students were from all over the globe, they quickly bonded over shared experiences.

“Getting to know people from different areas around the world always interested me, people with different ways of life than I lived," said Thiede. “Just getting to know them, making friends, and networking with them. They talk about how life is for them; I explain how life is for me. I think it’s just a good way to get to know people.”

“My favorite moment of the conference was Thursday night when most of us had stayed late at the university to wrap up our projects. We were all losing our minds trying to work as quickly and efficiently as we could in order to be ready for our presentation on Friday afternoon. We all just laughed and sang to the music in spurts between working and it felt like I had known everyone in that room my entire life. Being a student is hard, it takes a lot of dedication and hours and having that common ground created a beautiful connection,” Allen recalled.