contributed by Remy Peritz

Open Pitch brings graduate student-led projects from Hopkins and MICA for social good to center stage. This event centers around the broad themes of public health, innovation, entrepreneurship, development and education.

Students have 5 minutes to pitch their idea or project that aims to impact a community or solve a problem. A diverse panel of experts from MICA and  Johns Hopkins schools of Business and Public Health will critique and present unique perspective. Aggie Toppins and Javier Lopez from GDMFA, and Danah Abdullah and Julie Sayo of MASD will presenting their work onstage.

The event will be dynamic session in which participants and speakers can connect with students and faculty from the other schools and collaborate about the innovative ideas. Sponsored by the Office of Graduate Studies and Research. 

Only a limited number of free tickets are available, RSVP ing is highly recommended.

thesocialinnovationlab.org/openpitch

December 9, 2011: Friday: 3PM: BBOX
Cocktail reception to follow

Technology, if you haven’t noticed, has dramatically altered the way we conduct ourselves on a daily hourly minute to minute basis.  We’ve arrived at our current situation thanks to three factors: Moore’s law, free markets and, perhaps most importantly, dreams.

In an effort to promote ideas as design (and after reviewing some cheesy concept videos made in the 80′s and 90′s), Bobby Genalo’s Graphic Design 1 class was asked to dream up a product / service that they wanted to exist in the future and to design a concept video so as to convey their idea to others.

Their solutions are listed below – enjoy!

Jenelle Aromatorio – Peel It

Anwar (Boo) Bukhamseen – Handi

Fallon Chase – Willow

Gabriela Farina & Katie Mazikins – Talent Sharing

Alexa Florio – Search Click

Tanya Heidrich – Dreamcatcher

Zach Kircher – Traxx Musical Browser Software

Anny Lai – Nano Health

Amanda McMicken – Smart Coke

Amanda Simonds – Blanket Post

Jordan Sondler – The Outfitter

Danny Well – Why Is Nothing Handwritten Anymore?

Jessica Wen – Collect Texture

Hannah Williams – MeMail

Meghan Wittbrodt – Weather Window

Monday, November 28
3–4pm
BBOX

Join us for the typographic game show hosted by Ellen Lupton with Chipotle, prizes from House Industries, and a great time!

Poster by Emily Long (12)

Tim Collins, Anthony Mattox, Andy Mangold, Karen Shea, Bryan Connor and Ronin Wood

contributed by Karen Shea

Over the weekend of November 12 and 13, senior Ronin Wood, junior Tim Collins and sophomore Karen Shea had the opportunity to participate in Baltimore’s first Education Hack Day. This “hackathon” consisted of 30 to 40 designers and developers assembled in the cafeteria of Digital Harbor High School working in ten teams to create ten different projects to solve the various problems of educators in Baltimore. The event was free to register for and the work experience was invaluable. Thanks to Andy Mangold (11) for getting the word out at MICA.

The three of us all worked on different but equally exciting projects. Tim Collins designed on the team that created Baltimore School Watch, a program that collects demographic, economic and academic data for all the elementary schools in Baltimore into a streamlined website. Karen Shea worked on the team responsible for Pedante, an interactive website where teachers can share videos of themselves in the classroom and tag moments where they demonstrate examples of teaching based on the new Baltimore school district teacher grading rubric. Ronin Wood designed for the winning team that created Digital Harbor, an iPad app that allows the teacher to keep his or her students on task in class by controlling which websites the students can view in the app’s limited browser.

Other projects created over the span of the weekend included applications like CheckPlus, an online to-do list that connects teachers and students with assigned homework tasks; Boardspeak, an iPad app that allows autistic children to non-verbally communicate their needs; and Parent Connect a web and phone based service that would efficiently organize parent teacher conferences.

For all the participants, the weekend provided a great opportunity to learn new tech skills and make networking connections. Read another recap of the day by the organizers.

top image by Jess Gartner, others courtesy of Michael Rosner, ©2011

contributed by Andrew Walters

MDL’s Stuff We All Get exhibition closed on Saturday, it was your last chance to get some SWAG created by our members. Whether it was famous type designer themed buttons or office stamp zines, we were wiped clean. The show was a hit and we had a huge crowd come out to see (and take!) works done by:

Maria Chimishkyan
Tim Collins
Alex Dougherty
Michelle Fleming
Gabe Kelley
Rivkah Khanin
Mirjam Kienzle
Emily Long
Brian Metcalf
Tabitha Morikis
Ben Sifel
Andrew Walters
Ronin Wood

Thanks to everyone who stopped by and made the show a success. Be on the look out for future shows by the MICA Design League.

Contributed by Mary Galloway

Early one recent Friday morning, the Design Coalition class hit the road for Philadelphia (but not before a quick stop at Dunkin’ Donunts).

We spent the day exploring West Philadelphia’s Market Street Corridor and taking in Stephen Powers’ Love Letter to Philadelphia mural project. The project consists of 50 murals along the elevated train route, each with its own witty phrase and beautiful typography.  Powers’ saw the project as a love letter for West Philly from West Philly and as a way to revitalize the area.

The best part about seeing the murals in their environment was picking up on Powers’ inspiration from other murals, graffiti, and hand-painted signs around the neighborhood. Ryan Clifford challenged the class to find and photograph the best vernacular typography, and we stumbled upon some pretty spectacular signage.

If you find yourself in Philadelphia, go see the murals in person, they’re worth it! Also, check out Stephen Powers’ most recent projects — Love Letter to Syracuse and Love Letter to Brooklyn.

Mary Galloway is a junior graphic design major from Louisville, Kentucky.

contributed by Colleen Roxas, senior graphic design major from Maryland

Ryan Clifford’s Design Coalition class hosted the Chat & Chew, an event for the local community of East Baltimore to discuss their opinions and perspectives about the Northeast Market.

Working collaboratively as small teams in the class, we had various roles for arranging the event. At times it was challenging to plan time outside of class to meet as small groups since everyone had varying schedules throughout the week, but we still managed to produce awesome results together!

We prepared for the event by designing screen-printed invitations inspired by the handmade vernacular signage of farmer’s markets, contacting the vendors and other neighborhood people who associate with the Northeast Market, decorating and re-arranging the gathering space, and designing questionaires for the attendees. Best of all, we all got to cook and bring in various homemade foods and beverages for the delightful buffet-style dinner. Yumm! We had steamy zucchini, chili, macaroni & cheese, corn bread, fruit salad, guacamole and dip, cheese crackers, dozens of cupcakes, cookies, chocolate fudge cake, blueberry pie, warm apple cider, half & half, and coffee.

Throughout the dinner, we mingled amongst the community residents and partners of the Northeast Market to identify the urban issues and challenges that they faced in their area, as well as their overall opinions and ideas about their experiences in the market. The turn-out was a great success and we were able to get a lot of feedback from the people surrounding the neighboring area of the marketplace.

Gathering the feedback from the Chat & Chew, we determined some goals for improvement in the Northeast Market. Some of these ideas included focusing on healthier foods, providing service for larger, diverse community, creating a more open social center for the eating space, improving the signage and way-finding system within the interior space, re-designing a new overall branding system, creating a new open, welcoming exterior display, and much more.

As we delve more into research about the history of the marketplace, immersing ourselves in further community engagement, establishing trust and exemplifying empathy, our efforts will produce lasting relationships within the community. With continual collaborative efforts in the process of social design, we hope our design proposals will start to create more of a difference for the community around East Baltimore.

View more pictures of the deliciousness from the Chat & Chew here.

Design by Colleen Roxas and Natalie Fitzgerald. Printed by Ryan von Dohlen and Cassie Johnson.

Anthony Dihle of Fire Studios will offer a free presentation, Thursday November 17, 12-1pm, in Brown 320.

This lecture would be great for poster design, illustration, printmaking, screenprint types. Dihle is a designer by day, and operates the press (as well as a gallery) by night. The lecture is in conjunction with a workshop in the Poster Design and Print course.

contributed by Andrew Walters

The trip to Green Mount Cemetery was a success! After a couple ill fated attempts we finally were able to make it.

Green Mount Cemetery is near Station North, not far from MICA and has been around since 1839. It contains over 65,000 graves, including a number of notable figures such as Lincoln’s assassinator John Wilkes Booth, William Fuld who commercialized the Ouija board, circus performer John Eckhardt, Johns Hopkins and one of the early trustees of MICA, W.H. Rinehart.

In addition to its rich history, the cemetery is home to a collection of magnificent grave stones and crypts. Each memorial features amazing hand carved typography, that vary stylistically throughout the different eras of graves. As a group we decided to make a trip to the cemetery and take rubbings of the gravestones that we visited. Together, we collected dozens unique typographic samples from graves throughout the cemetery.

With the help of Emily Long, the rubbings were scanned and we are currently assembling them into a zine, which will hopefully be ready in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out.

1 / Congrats Ronin Wood and Karen Shea for taking 1st and 3rd place at Baltimore’s Education Hack day! Pretty exciting!

2 / Stuff We All Get was a hit. Had a great turnout. Thanks to all who participated! If you have work in the show, feel free to keep your items in supply this during the week. We will be uninstalling the show Sunday at 5pm. There will be food for those who help..

3 / Type is Right is coming up.. so that means decorations and preparations need to be made. Emily will be meeting all who are interested after the uninstall on Sunday.

4 / If you paid for the cemetery trip and still need to be refunded, stop by Anita’s office.

5 / I was told there is a lecture this Thursday at noon, brown 320, but I was not able find more information on this and unfortunately can’t not remember his name. If someone wants to email me the lecturer’s name, I can re-inform.

That’s all! Have a good week.