“The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is – it’s to imagine what is possible.”

bell hooks, (Writer, educator, and cultural critic)

“There is power in seeing people from the past.”

Noelle Lorraine Williams, (Newark artist)

“If we don’t write ourselves into the future, we get written out of tomorrow as well.”

Gabriel Teodros, (Musician)

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Buckminster Fuller, (American designer, inventor, and futurist)

“It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.”

Ray Bradbury, (Author)

Dear Seniors,

Welcome to Senior Studio Seminar II!

This course focuses on the conception, design, and implementation of your capstone project to be presented in the 2026 Senior Exhibition TRACEWORK at Project For Empty Space’s Ironbound Gallery at 110 Edison Place, opening on Thursday, April 16, 2026. The exhibit will showcase self-driven capstone projects under a common theme. This experience will teach you to apply your expertise to communicate your point of view as a system and create impact through design.

The 2026 capstone invites graduating designers to explore the theme of legacy — the cultural, social, environmental, and personal imprints that shape our present and influence the futures we are actively creating. These legacies can be inherited, celebrated, or contested; visible or invisible. They live in traditions, stories, artifacts, and systems — and in the ways we choose to remember, challenge, extend, or transform them over time.

Through research, storytelling, and design, you will investigate legacies that matter to you, asking: What have we been given? What must we change? And what will we set in motion for those who come next?

Each project will create a transmedia experience that honors, critiques, or reimagines legacy, forging connections between past, present, and possible futures.

It asks:

/ Whose stories, marks, or ideas have shaped your life?
/ What traces of the past influence your present?
/ Which legacies do you choose to honor, challenge, or transform?
/ How do stories and traditions evolve across generations?
/ How does design preserve, distort, or reinvent what remains?
/ How can design intervene in cultural, social, or environmental systems to shape what comes next?
/ How can design make intangible traces — values, power, memory, responsibility — visible and actionable?

Students are tasked with exploring the theme of legacy through the design of a two- or three-part transmedia experience that positions their work along a spectrum of engagement — from inheriting, preserving, or celebrating, to repairing, activating, reframing, or projecting legacy forward. The work can preserve, celebrate, disrupt, or reinvent, and may invite dialogue or open new ways of seeing forward.

This will require rigorous research, a deep understanding of the chosen perspective, and a clear design strategy for how to frame or reframe it. Each medium should bring a distinct perspective, and together they should create a cohesive, layered narrative experience.

This theme challenges students to see design as both archive and invention — as a means of preserving what matters and as an active tool for shaping what comes next.

You will find the complete project description here: Capstone 2026

COMPONENTS

Your capstone project (which may be a collaboration between you and a class partner) will become the content of your Senior Capstone exhibition. It will be presented as a completed project backed by a rigorous research-driven design process and presented as visually exciting solutions that demonstrate how your capabilities as a designer and your personal voice, engage in social awareness and propel social change.

Your online portfolio will feature your personal identity system and 10 of your best projects including your capstone/exhibition work. Photographic documentation of finished pieces is required. Your project ideas, execution, and craft should meet professional standards and work field expectations, proving that you are prepared to pursue design with passion and cultural relevance. In addition, an updated off-line PDF Deck version of your portfolio is required.

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PROCESS OVERVIEW

Phase 1: Ideation & Research

Ideation & Research will consist of the formulation of the conceptual framework for your project, identification of larger narrative “theme” or story, and the development/collection/creation of content and other raw materials. Write an approx. 100-200 word abstract that describes your topic.

Phase 2: Design Development

Design Development, will encompass the creation of multiple narrative content (your “Story World”), the planning of a systems-oriented functional framework of three (3) distinct narratives that work independently and as a “whole:” the goal being: form/medium and content inextricably working together. An extensive research and sketch process will be an essential aspect of your work.

Phase 3: Design Implementation

Design Implementation will involve the refinement of your narrative/s, the build-out of all technological requirements (i.e bookbinding, interactive prototyping/simulation, etc), and the design and planning of your individual exhibition.

Phase 4: Design Validation

Design Validation will focus on the completion of your Capstone, and the coordination and presentation of a cohesive transmedia narrative experience.

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

+ Finesse independent critical thinking to solve communication problems through design.
+ Embrace and leverage technology to amplify and enhance your message.
+ Hone collaboration and presentation skills.
+ Refine your eye for detail and impeccable, appropriate presentation.
+ Learn how to properly document and present work.
+ Perfect your projects demonstrating creative knowledge, technical expertise and an original perspective.
+ Apply writing as a tool to strengthen critical thinking.
+ Demonstrate effective time management & planning skills.
+ Encourage class members to be critical observers of design.
+ Make observations verbal by making use of the professional design vocabulary.
+ Balance originality of expression and appropriateness of purpose for a target audience
+ Learn to effectively navigate our sociotechnical & data-centric landscape
+ Gain an understanding of the social and ethical responsibilities of communication design practice

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Please see further details of the course in the 2025 syllabus PDF at the link below:
SeniorSeminarStudioII_Syllabus_Spring2026

Student Folders:
Shared Google Drive