Communication Design

Department of Media Arts, Design + Technology

Courses

Communication Design Alumni Profiles

JJ Beard is an Environmental Graphic Designer at Gensler in their San Francisco, CA headquarters. After graduating from Chico State in 2007, JJ worked at a boutique environmental graphic design firm, Studio SC, in Seattle. After four years with Studio SC working on project types from college campus way finding programs to hospitals to corporate towers, he transitioned to Gensler. He now collaborates with multi-disciplinary creative teams that focus on user experiences in a wide range of built environments. His current project reach spans the globe but he still shares his design passions with his local San Francisco urban community.

Kortni Bottini is a Product Designer at Dropbox in San Francisco, CA. After graduating from Chico State in 2009, Kortni spent her time designing for a handful of boutique agencies like Instrument located in Portland, OR. After dedicating 7 years to visual design, she transitioned to product design with a heavy focus on ML/AI. She spent time at Google growing their future vision for People + AI as a consultant informing UX across multiple product teams. Kortni it currently working as a desktop surfaces designer creating a constellation of tools across the Dropbox landscape.

Ted Davis is an interaction design lecturer and research assistant at The Basel School of Design, Switzerland. Upon graduating from Chico State in 2006, he spent a year freelancing and soon realized that the experimental design realm of the classroom was far more stimulating. He then moved to Switzerland joining the first graduating class of an International MFA in Graphic Design, a joint program between UIC Chicago and HGK Basel. His current research in the realm of content-based image retrieval (visual search), within a Swiss National Science Foundation funded project, investigates alternative graphical user interfaces to accommodate future image search engines. His teachings focus on design and image making through programming new and newer media, along with embracing the error and glitch while questioning the ideal and mimetic conditions digital media is asked to encompass. These topics have been the focus of lectures and workshops given in both the US and Europe.

Benjamin Falk is a freelance consultant, graphic designer and web developer. With over ten years experience in both online and offline mediums, he combines expertise with both design and code to craft intuitive, user-friendly websites and web/mobile applications for clients across the United States. He’s involved with a little bit of everything, including user experience design, web app development, corporate identity and the occasional print project. A graduate of Chico State’s communication design program in 2012, he was heavily involved in Designers in Progress, AIGA, and interned with Chico’s CMT Design as a print designer. Ben now splits his time between his own personal clients, partnerships with several California-based design firms, and work on Overview, a small project management application aimed at helping other freelancers better manage their time. He currently lives in Gainesville, Florida with his wife, Amanda, and too many cats.

Carrie Fritsch is a partner at Deviant 9 Studios in Paradise, CA, specializing in thoughtful bag design for international clients. Carrie was raised in a bag factory and entrepreneurial environment and learned the bag business and manufacturing through assimilation. After graduating from Chico State in 2005, she joined her family’s business. At Deviant 9 Studios Carrie specializes in bag design, graphic design, branding + identity, product development, color trends and textile design. Her graphic design work has been featured in AIGA, showcased around the world on products, and noted in various publications. Her bag + textile designs are sold around the world under various leading outdoor + lifestyle brands.

Presentation design? In 2006, as a recent graduate of Chico State, Robin Gay had never heard the term. Robin was hired as a junior designer by Duarte, Inc., a global leader in presentation design and persuasive storytelling. Working alongside a talented team, she quickly learned the power of a well-crafted and skillfully delivered presentation. Robin finds creating clear and compelling graphics that effectively tell a presenter’s story a rewarding experience. Currently, as Design Lead Director, Robin manages a team of highly-skilled designers focused on efficiency and presentation systems. She’s proud to call herself a presentation designer.

Kristin Harvey is a UX Design Lead at Cisco in Milpitas, CA. Since graduating Chico State in 2004, Kristin has raised her own salary to work with non-profits around the world, freelanced to support her habit of going back to school, and joined in-house design teams to work end-to-end. Always searching for a better ‘why’ to push pixels, Kristin strives towards user-centered, inclusive and accessible design work. Currently she’s exploring the edges of the collaboration space at Cisco Webex by empowering developers to extend the Webex Platform, and end-users to streamline their collaboration ecosystem. Kristin lives in the Bay Area with her husband, two girls and a retired greyhound.

Megan Miles is a Senior Product Designer at Kinsa, a healthcare startup based in San Francisco focused on helping families feel better faster. After graduating from Chico State in 2014, Megan spent time exploring different career paths in design, including food packaging, corporate annual reports and branding.

After dedicating three years to visual design, she transitioned into product design full time at Kinsa, where she specializes in mobile product design and user experience. She recently redesigned the Kinsa mobile apps from the ground up, which now provide age-specific care recommendations for children and adults. Megan currently leads a team of incredibly thoughtful designers who are hyper-focused on supporting parents when illness strikes at home, and keeping families healthy with Kinsa’s suite of hardware and software products.

Megan is also an active mentor in the design community, supporting women, new grads and those making career transitions.

Akira Motomura is a service designer at Yumemi Inc. in Tokyo, Japan. After graduating from Chico State in 2017, Akira started working at Dubberly Design Office (DDO) in San Francisco, immersing himself in the world of information, interaction, and systems design.

After a year of working in San Francisco, he moved back to Tokyo to work for a software development consulting firm where he utilized the knowledge and skills of modeling that he had learned from DDO to navigate complex projects. After that, he began working for Yumemi Inc., where he leads a service design team, helping his clients to envision new software product/service concepts and visualizing them as a form of conceptual models and user interfaces to proceed with later development processes.

He enjoys the abstract nature of software and its similarity to human cognition, which led him to further research connections between the histories of architecture, design, and software.

 

David Muro II is an Experience Designer at Airbnb in San Francisco, CA. After graduating from Chico State in 2003, David worked at a small packaging and branding design firm, Voicebox Creative, in San Francisco. After seven years designing for the wine industry, David transitioned from brand to product design at Inkling, an educational technology company, where he designed interactive experiences across web, mobile and tablet. Marrying his passion for travel and design, David moved to Airbnb designing experiences for on and offline.

Ryan Orcutt joined Duarte in 2004 as a graduate of Chico State’s Department of Communication Design and now contributes as Associate Creative Director. His 11-year tenure has allowed him to help some of the world’s most influential speakers craft, visualize and deliver some of today’s most compelling and persuasive stories. A natural visual thinker, storyteller, and designer, Ryan’s skill lies in his ability to combine all three. He’s a true believer in the power of presentations and a well-studied student of the Duarte principles. If you dropped in at Duarte headquarters, you’d most likely find him leading a client workshop, drawing a storyboard or bar tending the Friday afternoon happy hour.

Juan Sanchez is a Creative Director and Partner at Tack Mobile in Denver, CO. After graduating from Chico State in 2003, Juan worked for a small advertising agency in Southern California while exploring the world of software design and development. After getting hooked on the aspects of user experience design, Juan moved to Denver, CO to work for a user experience agency where he helped design custom software for leading brands. His focus is now on mobile, designing integrated digital experiences and exploring the future of human-computer interactions.

Hannah Vine is the Photo and Graphic Director for Playbill Inc. in New York City. After graduating from Chico State in 2015, she moved to NYC. Following a year of working for a WHITELABEL product, a company specializing in commercials and music videos, she began working at Playbill. There she runs the photo and graphic department for both the digital website and the physical Playbills. These are handed out at every single Broadway show in New York City and in theatres all across the country. One of her primary goals working there has always been to help the company connect with their viewers in new ways, whether through an interactive medium or engaging design. She also plans and coordinates photo shoots to create new content that reflects the style and feel of the brand. In addition to these shoots, she manages photo coverage for all New York Theatre events.

A man of many hats, Cody Wackerman is working to bridge the gap between development and design. He began pixel pushing at Dubberly Design Office in San Francisco’s Mission District in 2012 as an interaction designer and frontend developer, while at the same time finishing up his last semester at Chico State. His experience as both a designer and developer allows him to bring his design knowledge to the engineering process (and vice versa) in order to craft beautiful and functional software. He is currently working to further expand his knowledge of Ruby, Rails, and all things web.

Announcements

AIGA Chico Student Group Meetings
First + Third Wednesdays @ 6pm in THMA_226
AIGA Chico Facebook Group

Graphic Design Portfolio Review
Friday, 17 April 2020
10:00 am – 12:00 pm (public viewing)
ARTS_203 (Crit Space)

Faculty

Professor, Graphic Design
MFA, Yale University

Member, AIGA

Department of Media Arts, Design + Technology

bsudick@csuchico.edu

Spring 2020 Office/Hours:
Monday + Wednesday, 10:00 – 11:50 am
THMA-241

 

M I S S I O N

Communication Design is a process of visualizing ideas and systems, which transforms information into understanding and enhances the human experience with technology. We teach students to communicate with meaningful visual form and space, enabling them to distill complex information into coherent visual interfaces for interactive applications, visualizations and publications that engage, inform and delight users.

The Communication Design program has been accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design since 1975 and is dedicated to developing students’ critical thinking skills, creativity, knowledge of visual communication and human-computer interaction.

© 2020 Barbara Sudick