Gianluca Monaco esc

Course objectives

The course serves as a warm-up for design practice, assuming students have no design background and may hold stereotypes about what designers do. I aimed to keep the topics broad to provide a solid foundation, regardless of their future paths. This effort was enriched by exchanging ideas and references with many fellow designers, whom I thank.

Methodology

The first design course I took as a bachelor student was Basic Design. Rooted in the Bauhaus tradition, it featured practical exercises from masters like Johannes Itten, Tomas Maldonado, Bruno Munari, and Giovanni Anceschi. I adopted the Basic Design framework, prioritizing practice over theory, but created new exercises to help students step into the designer's role (in 2020).
The course addresses these core questions:

• How does the design process work?
• What is a brief, and how do we start from it?
• What (cultural, social, or physical) constraints must designers navigate?
• How do we handle obstacles, time, and collaboration?

Topics and Structure

Six topics were developed to explore the questions above, each paired with related exercises.

1. Destructuring

Breaking complex things into smaller parts reveals their structure, relationships, and mechanisms—a precursor to analysis.

Exercise – In mille pezzi
Break down a common object to analyze, classify, and represent its components using various techniques.

2. Hierarchies

Hierarchies organize everything from social structures to websites. Designers must understand and translate them into usable artifacts.

Exercise – Antiprimadonna
Master hierarchies between simple visual elements.

Exercise – Cercasi gerarchia
Identify and assign hierarchies to a plain text.

Exercise – Gerarchie astratte
Identify visual hierarchies and reproduce them in abstract form.

3. Conventions

While conventions simplify life, designers must recognize their limits and account for diverse perspectives.

Exercise – Codex Abadirianus
Develop a symbol system that replaces the use of alphanumeric characters.

Exercise – Design Camouflage
Reproduce different graphical layouts applying given content.

Exercise – Design swap
Swap the contents between two different graphical artifacts.

4. Instructions

Clear communication is essential, especially for team- (and remote) work. Instructions also introduce programming basics.

Exercise – Omaggio ad Albers
Reproduce abstract compositions to get prepared for the subsequent exercises.

Exercise – Un po' più a destra
Write clear instructions to reproduce a given composition.

Exercise – Positivo Negativo (non al COVID)
Give clear oral instructions to reproduce a given composition.

5. Cause-Effect

Design decisions have consequences. A small change can disrupt an entire system, and solving one problem often creates others.

Exercise – The Quarantine Machine
Tackle a playful design task through research, ideation, production, testing, and iteration.

6. Variations

Never settle for your first idea. Exploring variations generates more options and can lead to better results.

Exercise – Variazioni sul Domino
Train ideation and apply concepts from previous lessons by creating a variation to the game of Dominoes.

Exercise – Ping Pong Pang
Train ideation and apply concepts from previous lessons by creating a variation to the game of Ping Pong.