Digital Design (BA)

Teachers: Lionel Maes, Stéphanie Vilayphiou

Bachelor 1, 2 & 3

The computer does not take risks because ultimately, it only obeys our orders, our instructions, our lines of code. Realizing this is already a big step in demystifying digital. There is no magic. And everyone can be the conductor of an algorithm.

Just as an artist or graphic designer will carefully choose an analog drawing tool, adapt it, or even create it from scratch, why couldn't we do the same with digital drawing tools? This course is intended as a place of experimentation where the question of tools, media and the digital environment linked to the practice of drawing is raised and makes sense. How to re-examine digital tools, how to divert them, how to distribute them in order to experiment with different ways of digitally drawing: algorithmic on paper, brush on screen, putting a protocol into physical space...

What if the ideal was in the interstice, in the digital/analog slash? Make the most of the digital world and the tangible world: produce hybrid productions that are neither completely computerized nor completely manual. In new ways of doing things that could not exist without algorithms or the hand.

Because it brings together a multiplicity of uses and issues, the Internet and, more specifically, the web and its technologies are at the center of the workshop in B2 and B3. This does not imply that the productions made by the students are entirely made online, but rather that the particularities of the web will serve as starting points for the various experiences offered.

As the course is common to students in B2 and B3 and partly in M1 and M2, there is no progressive and linear construction of knowledge based on prerequisites and acquired skills. Rather, it is about addressing a set of themes related to the web and graphic design, which can be seen out of order and to different degrees but which will all be addressed within each person's course. To know:

— graphical interfaces and their elements: analyze existing interfaces, imagine interfaces involving specific ways of doing things

— graphic systems that can accommodate fluctuating content: flow, scraping (automated data recovery from a corpus)

— graphic systems that can produce multiple forms: responsive web, web-to-print, but also from the web to other media (images, videos)

— networks and modes of communication: centralization, decentralization, local networks, peer2peer — databases: document-oriented search, classification systems and vocabularies

Module

During the first semester, the student chooses his/her Orientation (Digital Design (BA), Graphic Design (BA), Typography (BA)) at which he/she adds a module of their choice from their Orientation or one of the two other Orientations of the Media Pole. The educational advantage of these Modules accessible to both B2 and B3 students is that they ensure verticality. The two elements (3h Orientation and 3h Module) together create the 6h Orientation.

→ Example: A student in Typographic Design can therefore decide to choose the Module linked to his Orientation (Module oriented Typographic Design) or choose to take a Module rather tinted Graphic Design or Digital Design.

In the second term, the Modules give way to Orientation.

Digital Design oriented module - > Handmade digital