Course: ARST
Faculty: Eddy Lopez
DP&S Liaison: Brianna Derr, Jeff Tolbert
Date: Fall 2017
Professor Eddy Lopez asked his design students to conduct ethnographic fieldwork among a local group with which they themselves were unfamiliar. Students interviewed members of their chosen group and took photographs, then created a four-page visual layout using this material. Their content was used to publish a physical magazine inspired by Benetton’s COLORS magazine.
Ethnography’s usefulness to art and design was a key theme of the assignment. Ethnography is the description of culture, traditionally thought of as the realm of anthropologists and other social scientists. As a tool to understand and represent cultures to new audiences, ethnography is an important mode of research and presentation for all disciplines.
The project grew from the Summer 2017 Digital and Video Ethnography Workshop organized by DP&S staff members Brianna Derr and Jeff Tolbert.