Rutgers Design Research Spotlight

The Flea Theater, 20 Thomas Street, New York NY
Reception and Presentations

Tuesday, October 29, 6:00-8:30 pm

RSVP by October 22: https://forms.gle/NVaWs8mbfwhXdT7VA

As our MFA in Design progresses to its fifth year, we announce our inaugural Design Research Spotlight, an evening of conversation and presentations by recent graduates of our MFA in Design program. For our alumni, design is a tool for inquiry, critique, speculation, as well as communication. The event is hosted by Chat Travieso, artist, designer, and the new Tepper Chair in the Department of Art & Design. Our graduate speakers are Corina Coughlan, Rachel Herring, and Melisa Tekin, who will present work that employs a range of media from print to installation to address their research directions.

Chat Travieso, Yes Loitering, research and design project 2017-Present  

Chat Travieso will speak about the social impact of design. He states, “I want my students to be civically engaged and be conscious of their impact on the world.” He is the co-founder of the multidisciplinary collaborative duo Yeju & Chat, with Yeju Choi. His practice encompasses community-centered urban interventions, public art projects, and research initiatives that explore ways of creating more inclusive and just cities.

Corina Coughlan, Calibrating Hands, video projection, 2024

Corina Coughlan’s work uses design to tell feminist narratives, particularly around the female body and performance data. She is driven by the desire to make data more human and accessible through visual storytelling and immersive experiences. Her work looks to expand abstracted data communication to encompass lived experience by visualizing experiences and sharing personal narratives.

Rachel Herring, Cellular Balance, installation, video projection, book, printed matter, 2024

Rachel Herring is a medium agnostic educator, writer, and designer creating work at the intersection of techno-critique, design ethics, and participatory research. Her background as an art director in Manhattan’s beauty industry, informs her desire to interrogate the ethics of design. She is interested in how the rapid pace of technology, intertwined with the aestheticization of society, shapes our perception of time, space, and sociopolitical dynamics. Ultimately, her work is about a way of being in the world—slowing down and looking closely at the everyday. In a world where everything is designed, she hopes to democratize design by creating products with the consumer and allowing them to customize products to best suit their individual needs. 

Melisa Tekin, presentation at Urban Design Forum Office Hours, 2004

Melisa Tekin is an Assistant Professor of Visual Communications at SUNY Farmingdale and is the Founder and Creative Director of M/WBE-certified graphic design studio Neighbors. With a background in Urban Studies, her research is focused primarily on housing and placemaking, using design as a tool to communicate important issues that affect our communities to the public. Melisa’s research examines issues of history, access, affordability and transparency in housing developments and public housing projects in New York City. She invites citizens to be curious about the spaces constructed around them, and to recognize the power of collectivism in dense environments, which also informs her research on placemaking in neighborhoods in New York City and beyond. 

Rutgers MFA in Design accepting applications

The MFA in Design at Rutgers University is an innovative program that situates a critical, experimental, and speculative studio practice within a major public Research University. Through close personal attention in studio and seminar classes, we enable designers and artists to develop and realize their distinct research directions. The MFA encourages work that is grounded in scientific, aesthetic, political, or social research. All admitted students receive scholarship support, and other opportunities including teaching where appropriate.   

Our dedicated studios and excellent facilities are on our campus in New Brunswick, an hour from New York and Philadelphia. The curriculum interweaves studio work and theory with opportunities for collaboration with scholars across Rutgers. The program is at the heart of an interdisciplinary department that fosters and integrates a dynamic range of art and design practices. The MFA encourages applications from designers, artists, and interdisciplinary practitioners. Further details on the program and how to apply are here

VISITING DESIGNER LECTURE SERIES | Ryan Kuo | 3/5

From “Puzzle”, a work from 2022 by Ryan Kuo.

Ryan Kuo is an artist and writer based in New York City. His work uses digital systems and sequences to invoke a person or people arguing. This is not to state an argument about a thing, but to be caught in a state of argument. His projects have been commissioned and shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), M+ (Hong Kong), Queens Museum (NYC), and TRANSFER (LA). He was a 2022 Knight Arts + Tech Fellow. He is not a programmer.

Those affiliated with Rutgers can watch Ryan Kuo’s lecture recording here.

VISITING DESIGNER LECTURE SERIES | Kelly Walters | 2/27

Kelly Walters is an artist, designer, and founder of the multidisciplinary design studio Bright Polka Dot. Her ongoing design research interrogates identity formation and systems of value embedded in Black visual and material culture. Kelly has curated a number of exhibitions, including KindredOpen Dialogue: Artists + Designers of Afro-Caribbean Descent and Remix: Activating the Archive andreceived a Graham Foundation award for her exhibition With a Cast of Colored Stars in 2021. Kelly has written about Black American design histories and the impact of colonization on the construction of the Black image.

VISITING DESIGNER LECTURE SERIES | Scott Reinhard | 2/13

A visualization of Starlink satellites by Scott Reinhard in The New York Times.

Scott Reinhard is a Brooklyn, New York and Sharon, Connecticut-based graphic designer and cartographer. He works as a Graphics Editor at The New York Times focusing on cartography and data visualization, and previously worked at the design studio 2×4 and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Scott holds a Master of Graphic Design from North Carolina State University.

Those affiliated with Rutgers can watch Scott Reinhard’s lecture recording here.

VISITING DESIGNER LECTURE SERIES | Kit Son Lee | 2/6

Kit Son Lee’s avatar head floating beside a table labelled “WHO WOULD WIN … industrial machinery // a shoe”.

Kit Son Lee is a graphic designer, developer, and artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Through a form-agnostic practice spanning web experiences, graphic systems, installation, print ephemera, and language (both natural and programming), they appropriate the methods of contemporary computation to instigate collaborative sabotages of their control structures. Kit is a co-founder of Codify Art, a collective dedicated to supporting queer and trans artists of color, and was the 2021–22 Visiting Fellow at the Ammerman Center for Arts & Technology. They have worked in educational, speaking, and/or design capacities with a variety of cultural institutions, including the Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Casa del Lago UNAM, New Media Caucus, and PRINTED MATTER LA Art Book Fair, in addition to exhibiting in the US and abroad. Kit holds an MFA in Graphic Design from RISD and BAs in Visual art and Literary Arts from Brown University.

Those affiliated with Rutgers can watch Kit Son Lee’s lecture recording here.