Theories of Information and Communication

Instructor

Kim Erwin

Is theory of any use to communication designers? Modern communication theory has been under development for over 80 years and is mostly borrowed from the social sciences for use in schools of journalism/mass media and rhetoric/speech. It's helpful to designers that these schools of thought share our passion for understanding users and conveying information. However, to make these theories helpful to communication design, we must push them to generate design criteria that then drive action.

This class surveys communication theories—both classic and contemporary—and looks to answer to the question, "HOW might this theory must be of use to communication design?" In an iterative cycle of analysis and application, we will evolve a list of communication principles that we will then test and apply to a pre-selected content area.

The objective of the class is not to create new theory--we have plenty. Our objectives are to:
1. emerge conversant in various communication theories
2. become more knowledgeable in knowing "what theory when"
3. produce communications that are significantly better for having gone through the trouble

Format & Grading

Class time is split between lecture and design critique. Class participation and preparedness will count as half of students' grade. The other half comes from three design executions: these can be in the form of a web page, poster, diagram, Powerpoint or whatever suits the content and your ambitions. These are intended to be relatively modest in their execution but successful in achieving both their communication goal and use of theory.