As a person that chairs my program, I often have to meet
with prospective students and their parents, and I talk about
those common notions, right? It's like, OK, so where did your
interest come from? And I'm sure.
And I hear things like logos, brochures, T-shirts, you know,
that's why I'm interested in this.
And I said, you know, those are great.
I said, I want you to know it is much more than that.
And I said at the heart, it's about improving everyday lives.
That is a core tenet of the way we feel about it here and that
we do that through experience and behavior.
Start small, but think big. I think we all want to save the
world. We all want to do really, really
big, impactful things. But things happen through
cultural shift and cultural change.
And so yes, there are big flash bang things that make change
happen great, you know, but there's also things that have to
happen incrementally. And why not be part of that
incremental space change? Welcome to the AIGA Design
Podcast. We are the official podcast for
the oldest and largest professional association for
design. My name is Lee Shawn Huang,
Senior Director of Learning and Programs here at AIGA and the
host and producer of this show where we talk about professional
development and creative growth for design professionals.
First off, special thanks to AIGA members.
Your support makes programming like this podcast available to
the entire design community for free.
If you are not yet an AIGA member, consider joining.
Learn more and sign up at aiga.org.
Now for the guest of this episode, Jen Stucker is
associate professor and chair of graphic design at Bowling Green
State University in Bowling Green, OH.
At the core for teaching and the design programs are developing
mindful individuals responsible for engaging in the social,
cultural, and technological world through collaboration,
facilitation, and leadership. Jen is also an active member of
AIGA, specifically the Toledo Chapter, and has collaborated
with AIGA Toledo and AAGA Design Educators Community on community
projects. She's also one of the very first
designers to complete the AIGA Professional Design
Certification Program, becoming certified as an AIGA Design
Leader last year. We're going to explore in this
episode how Jen incorporates community engagement into her
design practice, discuss the expanding definition of design
as profession, and talk about the value of design communities
and programs. Jen Stucker, welcome to the AIG
Design Podcast. Thank you, Alisha for this
invitation and also just very excited to participate and
contribute to this community. Yeah, we're glad to have you
here. Your perspectives as an
educator, as someone who's gone through the certification
programs, someone who's been active in our chapters.
So we actually met through your portfolio review.
I had the pleasure of reviewing your portfolio as part of the
professional design certification assessment.
And one of the things that stood out for me was how much you
incorporate community engagement into your design practice.
So maybe to kick things off, can you share with us a bit about
your background and how you got started in this kind of work and
give us maybe a few examples of how you do this?
Yeah, absolutely. So, so I'm going to go back 20
some years to sort of give some of this background, but I
graduated with my Bachelor of Fine Arts and Graphic Design
from BGSU, quickly entered into the design sphere into my first
job. I was working for a company that
focused on channel marketing, so mainly in construction industry.
So Owens Corning was one of our clients.
Marillac cabinets, Dow Styrofoam and the work was, you know, I
had to know Pantone 186 for Owens Corn Red and Pantone, you
know, 210 for the pink for the Pink Panther.
And it was a great agency, great people.
And also with the side projects, it was my main work was, you
know, vinyl siding, brochures, roofing things, you know,
insulation, cabinetry. And I did some side projects
though too, some things for the arts Commission here and there,
some things for some restaurants.
So I started there in 90 seven, 2000 and one 9/11 happens and I
got really reflective on what is it that I'm doing.
I'm looking and seeing these doctors and nurses and
firefighters and police officers attending to some like real
human needs. And I'm going, man, I'm just
like making a roofing shingle brochure.
Like it really taxed on like, what the heck am I doing with my
life? It was significant for me,
really made me think about, you know, what was all this training
for? And so I really thought about I
needed something that gave me purposeful meaning to my work.
But certainly I have sustained a living to, you know, I have to
have a job to to do that. And one of the things that's
also happening in the background of my first job is that I'm not
from Ohio originally. I grew up in Colorado and moved
here in 94 to Ohio. And one of the observations I
made was how people kind of dogged on their own city.
You know, they looked Toledo as like this Rust Belt town kind of
often the question like, why did you move here from Colorado?
It's so great. And I was like, wow, this is
like a great town. And then, of course, in 2012,
Yahoo runs an article. It says one of the most
miserable cities to live in. And there's this photograph of
Toledo. So all these things are kind of
reinforcing this messaging and it, it bothered me a lot because
I really like the people in Ohio.
I really like the location of Ohio.
I am within 4 hours of Chicago, five hours of Toronto, 3-4 hours
of Pittsburgh and now where I'm in Detroit.
So I can be in a lot of different places and a very
short drive back in Colorado, while beautiful, I could drive
four or five hours and be kind of in the same landscape and
probably not a whole lot of different cultural experiences.
So I'm like, you guys have a lot of great things in this
community and I knew that we were going to be here for the
long haul. My husband got a job here and
his family was here. And so I guess that idea or that
language of bloom where you are planted or the grass is green,
where you water, it was something that meant a lot to
me. Like if I'm going to be here,
then how can I help impact and improve the community within
that I live in? And so I really started very
small because, Oh my gosh, making a big community impact,
like how do you do that? And so one of the ways was Co
founding the AIJ Toledo chapter with my colleague and friend Amy
Fiddler. And through that we started also
then doing smaller community engagement projects.
So design shreds for nonprofits in need, really trying to build
our design community in that space.
So that's been kind of that driving sort of force was what
am I doing? I have these skills and how can
I apply those skills in really meaningful ways?
And so, yeah, that's kind of where that came from.
So following up on that, you are a design educator.
A lot of your projects are connected to community
engagement in your university specifically.
So thinking about your work with the round and higher education
administration, can you share a little bit about how those came
about and your process? Like how do you integrate the
teaching with the community practice through the lens of
these projects? For sure.
And, you know, that's also what's great is the university
is a great place to, you know, as a public institution to do
this type of work. At BGSU in particular, the
University of Mantra is a public university for the public good.
And so that serves as a great internal and external branding
message. It makes us all question, like,
what is public good and what are our contributions to public
good? And so back in 2021, my
colleague Heidi, niece and I had gotten to know each other
through a book club. And then her background.
She is a scholar in Native American drama and theater.
And so she's in the theater department was really looking at
the land acknowledgement statement at BGSU and we didn't
formally have one. And there were also a lot of
different departments across the institution that were using
different land acknowledgement statements.
So some having different references of different tribes
that were from this area. So we thought it would be great
if we could bring one together that we're all uniformly using
that is researched and really highlighting and reflecting on
the, on the communities that lived here.
And then how we could also, you know, make a better presence by
having this statement. And, and we have an FAQ.
We built a website around it, talking to people about why
would you do a land acknowledgement statement?
What purpose does it serve? How do you talk about it?
Where did this research come from?
And so after we created the statement and we went through
the channels of the university to get it presented to you,
Undergraduate student government, presented to Faculty
Senate, to our graduate committees, Then of course, we
created different versions of it.
So there's a written version, there's an oral version, there's
an e-mail version. And so that was great work.
But then those are words. And so it's meaningful.
We have to say what we need to say, but how do we actually do
something with that? So I had learned about a grant
that's an interdisciplinary grant through the Arts.
It's called the Glenn's Family Research Award for
Interdisciplinary and Innovative Research, and it requires 2
faculty members to partner together to do something.
And so I reached out to Heidi again and I said, hey, what do
you think about if we did a speaker series covering the six
domains of the arts here at BGSU?
So we have writing theatre, we have film, we have art design,
and we have music. And So what if we hosted Native
American indigenous speakers that all represent those
different domains so that we can give meaningful action to this
land acknowledgement statement and also we can bring more
visibility to the arts and design here at BGSU, but also
across the country. So that grant was for $6000 and
we ended up that first year raising $44,000.
Actually bring in those six speakers for all of 2022 that
covered, you know, we had Seth Sutton, who's a a filmmaker and
an author. We had Carol Lidstrom and
Michaela Goad, her children's book authors, Sadie Redwing,
who's a graphic designer, came Frank Wong who's a hip hop
musician, Mary Katherine Nagle who's a theater and a
playwright, and then Pat Pruitt who is a Metal Smith creator.
So that was our first year and it was, I mean, it was
outstanding. We had really great responses.
We averaged about 200 people that came to these events across
our campus. We had great community partners
with our library, being able to bring in the author, partnering
with other areas. So you know, the music
department helping with funding, the writing department helping
with funding, you know, our office of, you know, diversity
and belonging, supporting the funding, the president's office,
just a really nice connection. And then of course, as we're
halfway through, we're like that.
We can't just do one year. Let's just checking a box.
We're like, we really need to make a longer term thought about
this and and commitment. And we didn't know that six
events was challenging for us because you know, that's not our
full time job, right? We still have to maintain our
teaching responsibilities to our students and our other service
commitments and research commitments.
So the next year, I would say we scaled back, but we didn't 4
sneakers the next year. And so we had Kevin Millard and
Juana Martinez Neal, who are the author and illustrator of the
children's book Fry Bread, came and spoke to our campus.
But we were also able to work with community partners and
WBGUPBS to get funding to provide copies of Fry bread for
all the students in Bowling Green City Schools K through 3rd
grade, as well as all the teachers and the student
teachers that were graduating from BGSU that year, as well as
the our education teachers graduating from BGSU.
So, you know, we delivered just under 1000 books.
And so our thought process is that if we want to, it should
back up. Ohio has the highest number of
Native American mascots, sports mascots.
So we have 195 S more than any other in the country.
We also do not have any federally recognized tribes.
So for us there seems to be, maybe there's a correlation
there, individuals having sort of free reign of picking their
mascots and, and not having to be held in accountability.
And, and how do we change this culture of disrespect and this
culture of not seeing why it matters?
And so for us, we really thought that that precondition is
educating the young people. And if we want to have cultural
shift and cultural change, we need to start earlier on.
So we look at that as fried bread as being one of those
mechanisms. And so then we had two more
speakers later that year, that fall last year.
So Ryan Redcorn, who is a graphic designer and also a
story editor on Reservation dogs.
And then we had Talon Silverhorn, who is Shawnee from
Southern Ohio, from the Dayton area.
That also came and and we connected him with 5th graders
who have a living history experience.
And so they were coming back from camp.
And so Talon came and spoke to over 205th graders that heard
more of his stories about being Shawnee and and being in and
around this area. And then just this last March,
we hosted Tracy Sorrell and she's also a children's book
author. And we were able to get copies
of, we are grateful, one of her books and copies of classified,
another one of her books. And this time it was pre-K all
the way to 5th grade that we were able to get books in the in
the hands of kids. And so it's just been this
wonderful. I often use like the ripple
effect if like, if you want to do change, like each sort of
throw even a little rack in the ponds where it has this big
ripple effect. And that's kind of what's been
happening. And so we have people that are
now reaching out to us wanting to connect, wanting to see what
we're doing. We're building amazing community
partners again with the library was with WBGU, with private
donors that are very excited about this work.
But our goal is to be that culture shift and and the ways
in which we can do that. Yeah, I wanted to do a little
bit of synthesis based on what you've told me so far.
So it sounds like for this project around the Native
American speaker series and engagement with young people,
you identified some problems, right?
Some structural issues about the lack of federal recognized
tribes in your state of the issue with the the mascots and
and all of that. And then sounded like you
started with a grant relatively small with the first speaker
series, but then turn that into a promise, turn that into a
platform for continuous programming in the future.
And so in doing this, it sounds like you're really expanding the
notion of what your practice is as a graphic designer, as an
educator, however you self identify where all the labels
that you wear. So I wanted to weave in our
theme of margins. We've been exploring the idea of
margins in this podcast, in our programming this year at AIGA.
And so I feel like, you know, graphic designer, even
communication designer, puts us in a certain box of
associations, right, of creating marketing materials, even
websites, products that you know, could be print or digital.
You talked about your early career and your experiences with
Pantone colors and brochures and all of that sort of stuff,
right? And so that is core to what we
do. It's a starting point, but it's
not an ending point. So your vision of being a
community, community engaged, graphic designer, educator, you
know, stretches outside of just those immediate things that we
think about in that box. So can you help us sketch out
some more like how you think about your profession or your
practice and what does it mean to be a designer when you're
also doing all of these things where event planner is also part
of this, right? And like fundraiser is also part
of your practice in addition to the promotional posters that are
also great and that are part of putting on these events.
Yeah, I want to back up to also just say that we've raised at
this point $113,000 for in the rounds.
So it's really grown quite a bit.
But I want 100% agree that graphic design is often situated
into a box of these things. As a person that chairs my
program, I often have to meet with prospective students and
their parents and I talk about those common notions, right.
It's like, OK, so where did your interest come from?
And I'm sure, and I hear things like logos, brochures, T-shirts,
you know, that's why I'm interested in this.
And I said needles are great. I said I want you to know it is
much more than that. And I said at the heart, it's
about improving everyday lives. That is a core tenet of the way
we feel about it here. And that we do that through
experience and behavior. So if we're going to improve
everyday lives, we need to be mindful of what is the
experience we want someone to have and then what is the
behavior we need them to do. So for students excited even
about doing a music concert poster, that's great.
Think about that experience of what you want someone to have,
right? You want them to be excited,
joyful, invigorated about this music event.
And then of course, the behaviour is you need them to go
to the event. So those two things are
connected together. But I also talked to them about,
you know, and I rattle off things that are not as maybe
lusciously beautiful, like a music concert poster of like,
going into Target and seeing a person in a red shirt is not
necessarily a fancy piece of graphic design, but it is a
piece of design that helps us when we're in that space to know
who to ask a question for. So Targets helped me in my
experience of like, I don't know where this thing is or I don't
know how much this thing is. I see a person in a red shirt, I
go over and I can ask them that price and the course of behavior
is like, I buy that item, right? Or I find the aisle that I need
to go to and I have a better experience.
And then I talk to families and, and students about.
And it's also driven by context. So if I'm wearing the red shirt
in the grocery store, it's not going to be meaningful.
So these, these design things, you know, happen in tandem
together. Or if I'm in the airport, I need
the experience of the kiosk. Delta needs to be really fluid
because I'm coming into that space and most of us are very
anxious, little stressed out, all kinds of worriedness, you
know, worrisomeness. And if that kiosk is adding to
my stress, it is just a ping pong of experiences of how I'm
going to be at the TSA counter when I get there next.
I need the bathroom signage to be clear.
I need the TSA signage to be clear, to know which line that I
get into. And so all of these are graphic
experiences that are really impactful to what that everyday
life experience is going to be. And then sometimes those things
that we create or make, again, are not those beautiful design
things. Sometimes they're facilitating
just conversations of sort of seeing that problem and then
going, OK, the thing that would make a better experience and get
a better behavior is for us to sit down and talk about this
thing. And that's not necessarily
visual product at all. But I think graphic designers
just have that sort of understanding, or that's the
understanding I'm hoping to build is that it's, it's not a
thing that's just you watch and, and it just exists like it's,
it's doing really semiotic, symbolic things for us to
navigate our everyday lives. And so that the value of design
is essential because it helps us shape that daily life
experience. Totally.
So it sounds like even the best design poster or ad campaign or
whatever exists in some sort of cultural context or it exists in
an architectural context and based on what wall you're
putting it on. And it's not just a sort of
imagined user, but it's like a more complex social system of
different people who might interpret something in different
ways. I also love your example of the
airline of Delta. We actually have a a guest
coming up on another episode who's an expert in airline
branding. So that's something for
listeners to stay tuned for as an example.
So do you have any advice, Jen, for designers who maybe aren't
explicitly working on community projects right now that, you
know, they don't see the link to, like the public good in the
same way? Yeah.
How can they start thinking about this to get started,
whether it's starting their own projects or maybe just
incorporating some of this community engagement thinking
into their existing work? Yeah, I think there's two ways.
I kind of alluded part of that, you know, finding community
partners, discovering who is out there and who has needs.
Some of that just comes from observation.
Some of it might be connecting with the United Way or
connecting with the Arts Commission and finding out.
But I wouldn't want anyone to enter those spaces like
flippantly and just be like, oh, I'm a graphic designer, I have
all these skills, let me help you.
You need to be very intentional walking into spaces in which you
want to do community engaged work.
You need to recognize also that it needs to be a sustainable
commitment. That whatever you sort of set up
in structure, like how is it going to exist or continue when
you're no longer there? Or maybe you're going to build a
long term relationship in that space.
And so if you walk in and go, OK, well, this is a nonprofit
and they need a new logo and I can help them.
And then that might even be what the nonprofit thinks they need.
But out of a conversation, you might discover in a deep
conversation with meaningful questions that they have poor
funding mechanisms and they don't have a website that
actually draws donations like that could be far more
meaningful. And then design the logo later,
if it's even needed, it might not be needed at all.
Or maybe some of their challenges are structural as far
as getting promotions to get volunteers for their things or
celebrating their volunteers. Because again, celebrating our
volunteers is another experience and behavior thing.
We'll get more volunteers if we recognize their efforts.
So I think it's being really mindful of it's not a magic wand
and it's not, it's not about the aesthetics.
I mean, the aesthetics support and help us interact with it,
but it is undergirded with a good research and good
background and good understanding of the problem.
And so that would be one way is to, you know, start reaching out
to, you know, talking to community partners and just
finding out what the vibe is. There are far more people that
need help. You know, I just get frustrated.
I'm talking to students and communities about, you know,
these contests, for example, spec work all the time, like
because I'm an educator, you know, oh, this would be a great
project for your students to make this logo for my product.
And I'm telling students all the time, you know, there's, there
are people that really need your work.
So if you want to give your work away for free, then go do that
intentionally and let's not put it into a contest, but getting a
little off track. The other way for a person to
get into community engaged work is that sense of being very
observant and then go create it. You don't have to wait for the
prompt to come to you. My son, one of my son's favorite
movies, the robots see a need, fill a need.
So I think that's the other part is like what is missing or what
are you observing in the community?
So one of my early projects that I did was the You Are Here
project in partner with AIGA Toledo and with the Arts
Commission. The Arts Commission was wanting
us to do a previous project we'd already done, which was the
Urban Forest project that was in New York City and many other
communities. And they were like, yeah, can
you put up these great banners again around the community to
help people that are coming into our community be excited?
And I was thought it was OK. I'm like, yes, we could do that
again. The banner project was great,
but really wanted to do something else.
I'm thinking about how people in my earlier conversation, I
mentioned to you feeling like meh about their city.
I started thinking about the dot on a map.
You are here and I love the dot on a map.
I love that it helps ground me. It gives me a sense of place, of
where I'm at. So I proposed an idea to the
Arts Commission which they funded and it was a series of
100 dots around the city of Toledo.
So they were ground stickers, 3 foot in diameter and artwork was
created by 100 different designers and they were all
location specific. So the artwork that they were
creating was specific to the location in which the dot
existed. And then on the dot was also the
Year here logo and a QR code. And then the QR code when you
scanned it gave you information about the location in which you
were standing. So you got historical
information and you also got information about the artist and
their statement about why they created it.
And then it became a gamified thing where we had an app and
the 1st 100 people to digitally collect 25 dots got a special
slow screened poster. And we had amazing feedback from
that from people just saying, wow, I, I rediscovered my city
like it was, it just went gangbusters.
All I can say it was just a really, really great result.
People were just very excited people, some people were wanting
to buy smartphones. This is back in 2011 where I
found it only came out in 2007 and people wanting to engage in
this. And so for me, I saw an
experienced people just not feeling proud of their city.
And so let's get them reconnected to 100 different
places around the city that they can see and rediscover.
And then with that, I think if a person gets involved with
community engagement work, it's important that you have the
ability to deliver the results. So be mindful of what you can
promise and what you can deliver.
And also be mindful that discipline really matters
because a lot of this work is really on your own shoulders.
So the Arts Commission, you know, I outlined the timeline
for them, the budgets, all those things ahead of time.
But they certainly weren't watching the timeline and going,
oh, you missed this deadline. That was really on me.
And it was, it was for me to keep track of.
But it was also, you know, so they could see how what the
stages and phases were. But if the project didn't happen
at all, their money just wouldn't have been spent.
It would have just faded away. So in some respects, you know,
if you're not disciplined or really committed, a lot of
projects cannot happen and no one will be the wiser that it
didn't exist. So there has to be a strong
commitment with that work that you believe in it, you want to
see it happen, and you're going to do the work to make it
happen. And then you're going to connect
and collaborate with a lot of other people that you need to
help make that thing happen. And you also have to share your
inspired vision. This is what I see.
And that enthusiasm then translates and other people want
to participate in it. Yeah.
Thank you for sharing that. I'd love to hear about another
project that was also a collaboration you did with AIGA
Toledo and your local community. And then after that, we can
pivot to learning about your learning journey because you've
been doing a lot of learning as well, both with AIGA and with a
PhD program that you've been working on.
So talking about this project in particular, you did something
with chairs, the Sudintel project, which is also very
tactile and tangible in the sense.
And so can you tell us more about that community project
using the chair as that invitation for friendship and
communication? Yeah, absolutely.
So the You Are Here project won a Toledo Innovation Award.
So the Toledo Community Foundation was again very
excited about this project and the Arts Commission submitted
and so it won this $5000 award. And the Arts Commission said you
were really in AIG Toledo with the creative energy behind this.
So that $5000 is really all your money that you guys want to do
for our next project. So that was in 2013 that that
money was awarded and we had not figured out ways in which we
wanted to spend that money quite yet.
And through, again, enthusiasm and collaborative people,
someone reached out to me from a marketing agency up in Toledo
and one of their clients produces chairs, conference
chairs, restaurant chairs, just all types of chairs.
And they thought, well, hey, we have this artist seating
campaign. Maybe some of your design
students at BGSU could, you know, paint on some chairs and
we could do a little feature on them and, and do some promotion
of their product. And I was like, yeah, I guess I
just, I wasn't really excited. I.
Was like, yeah, that's cool. But like, yeah, what more can
you do? Right?
Yeah. Sounds like free labor a little
bit. I'm just, you know, and where
was it going to go from that point other than promote the
chair company? Totally.
So, pun intended. I sat on the idea for a while,
wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And then the Arts Commission
reached out and said, are you guys going to do anything with
this money? Because we have other things.
And I was like, wait, hold on, hold on.
So, you know, started doing some research and thinking about,
well, I have this opportunity with these chairs and we got
this opportunity with this money.
And So what does a chair mean? And so that pinged some research
about, you know, what's the meaning of chair?
What does it represent? And I loves the phrase pull up a
chair. When someone says that, you
know, it means we're going to sit down, we're going to have a
conversation with each other. And I really liked this idea of,
of conversation and storytelling.
So then that led me into finding and discovering World
Storytelling Day, which is on the vernal equinox every year.
And it's around a particular theme.
And in 2016, the theme was Strong Women.
And I'm like, I'm a woman, This is great.
And so how might I collect stories about strong women?
And so I proposed to MTS Seating was the chair company, and I
promoted and I proposed to the Arts Commission.
What about this idea of collecting 100 stories about
strong women of Toledo or told by people of Toledo?
And then those stories will be recorded.
And then those recorded stories will be given to designers that
will create graphics of those chairs of of the story.
And then each chair will include URL and you can go to that chair
and when you see that chair, you can go to the URL and then you
can listen to the audio story for which that chair was created
for. And then there was a touring
exhibition with that. So we had a hundred chairs.
I was mindful to have things that I knew I could move because
that was one of the things I learned in the York Here project
was there was a lot of physical things I wasn't prepared for.
So I was a little bit more prepared this time to go, OK,
I'm probably going to be the one moving these chairs.
So let me make sure they're stackable.
Let me make sure there's a cart that can think about.
The ergonomics for yourself to your own art handler.
Exactly. So I got a little smarter this
time. So what we did was to have these
chairs go and sort of mini exhibitions so that they could
be a small group, could be seen at different times in different
spaces. So, you know, one being down
here at BGSU and then also being back in the places where they
were collected. So 10 chairs, one on exhibition
at the Toledo Public Library. Then that would be up for two
weeks and then those 10 chairs would come down and another 10
chairs would go up in the Sofia Quintero Arts and Cultural
Center. And people could come and see
that. And then ten chairs would come
down and then ten chairs would go up into the Frederick
Douglass Community Center and and so on and so forth.
So this went over a couple of weeks and then every day for 100
days, a chair was featured on Instagram with the storyteller
and the artist and the chair that was created.
And then the culminating output was have a final exhibition of
all 100 chairs at the Toledo Museum of Arts Glass Pavilion.
So we didn't tell people that there was going to be a place at
the end to see them all because we really wanted to drive people
to those different locations to be in those spaces and to
discover the stories. And then later on this, this
large exhibition. And then after that, the chairs
went up for auction. And the proceeds of those chairs
went back to the Arts Commission for art classes for young people
in those neighborhoods from which we collected the stories.
And the stories were fantastic. Like some are emotional and some
are invigorating and some are funny.
And the artwork is great. And it gave graphic designers
and artists another place and space to participate in a
community project and, and have their work seen and, and
storytellers that aren't traditionally storytellers had
an opportunity. So, you know, we had over 180
people just in the chairs and the storytelling together.
So it just made that community that much bigger.
Sounds like a great example of how you take something that
initially was mostly just a promotional idea for the chair
company and turning it into something that's like actually
community based, actually participatory.
And so you built out a whole system there.
But it's also great example like how do you take this initial
brief and like say, well, actually let me one up that and
make it even better for all of the people involved.
Yeah, they were very excited that they had a much better
story to tell than just, you know, here's a painting and
here's the student they had now a great community impact piece.
You mentioned in your previous response the theme of strong
women, and so I wanted to pivot a little bit, take a detour on
that. So the name of your practice is
Sisu design and that's where to find Jen online to
sisudesign.com. It's sisu, which is a, a Finnish
word that your mother taught you, which means like something
like guts or tenacity or something like that.
So can you tell us about that heritage, like what you learned
from your mother and that cultural context?
Yeah, absolutely. Like it's a very common finished
phrase, So lots of Fins will totally know it.
If you go up to, you know, northern Minnesota, you'll see
lots of stickers for it. So it, Yeah, it's a great, a
great mantra. But yeah, I come from a great
lineage of really strong women. You know, I was able to go to
Finland and see the house in which my great grandmother was
born in and the church and where she actually learned to read and
write in her schooling. And then she migrated here to
United States, up in Houghton, MI.
And so thinking about, you know, that young person, right, that
came all the way over from Finland, then meets her husband
here, then moves to Minnesota. And you know, my grandmother, so
her daughter, which my grandmother was one of eleven
children that my great grandmother had.
You know, she ended up being a nurse.
Sadly, my grandfather died when my mom was 17, so she was
raising five children by herself.
So she has certainly projected and presented how a strong woman
navigates life. And then my mother, mother of
three, and my parents divorcing when I was seven and having to,
you know, work a full time job and trying to do all the great
things that she can do to provide for a family.
So I just have these great personal family role models.
But then, of course, you know, lots of other friends and, and
women in my sphere that, yeah, are just really encouraging
special people in my life. And I'm also encouraged by a
well known feminist. Gloria Steinem is from Toledo
and she has a phrase that says power can be taken but not
given. It is the process of taking.
That's empowerment in itself. And so that's, you know, a
special quote to me and, and the fact that I landed in this
Toledo area and she's a straight feminist in the Toledo area.
I sort of take that aura with me.
That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that.
Continuing on that thread in a different direction, you've
shared a bit about what you've learned from your family, from
your experiences growing up, from feminists like Gloria
Steinem. You've also been pursuing
learning journeys through AIGA through this PhD program that
you're doing. So why don't we talk about your
participation in the AIGA Professional Design
certification first? So we launched this program in
2023, so just last year you're one of the first cohort of folks
who have completed the certification.
It's really meant to be a way to validate professionalism among
designers, to create inclusive pathways for designers.
Whether you learned in design school or on the job or from
YouTube and the school of Hard Knocks, whatever that is,
however you started, this is a way to validate that learning
and to create a basis of these are the things that we think
everyone should know as a starting point.
So can you tell us what brought you to this program, why you
decided to go through this? Because you're already a design
professor, right? So why did you go through this
program and what did you get out of it?
My decision was twofold. So part of it is exactly what
you said, being an educator. So you know what am I teaching
my students? I want to think about what AIGA
is saying as an institution. I highly respect AIGA personally
as a, as you know, an individual practitioner always had a big
admiration respect for AIGA and you know, hold it up high as far
as being one of those beacons of like, what is the value of
design? Who communicates that, who
translates that? Who represents us, who talks
about us and in the work that we do?
And so I really wanted to know, well then what is AIGA saying
going through the process of the learning modules, right.
And, and going through the process of the steps was, yeah,
really informative. And so as an educator, I'm not
practicing as a level of a boutique design owner or working
in top creative strategist levels anymore.
Right. I, you know, worked up to an art
director. It's been many years, and so
some of that lingo I don't quite have.
And so if I'm going to educate this next generation, right,
then I want to help them have that background and more of that
lingo. That's also changed.
And then the other part has been from my PhD.
So I am studying for a PhD in higher education administration.
And with that, my examination is looking at design leaders.
And so that's where my dissertation research focus is.
That was also more the reason I'm, I was more curious about
like, how do I inform my PhD information with what a IGA is
saying and stating about design leadership.
I've also been a very active leader in my institution, the
former faculty Senate chair for the faculty here.
And so I wanted to know too for myself of like, am I saying and
doing the right things? Because as you mentioned, some
of this we're not taught. So there's a lot of tacit things
I've acquired over the years through observation, through
reading, paying attention, but I was like, am I doing this right?
Am I, am I getting the right things?
What am I missing? What else do I need?
So I was really, really excited to go through all of these
modules and took a lot of tidbits and information that are
sustaining with me, but are also going to go with my students as
well. I always think that I'm really
good about ethics and there were some really great questions and
prompts in the epic section that, you know, really had me
thinking that I think is really, really important to what we do.
There were many other examples, but that that section really
stuck out to me quite a bit. Yeah, that's a great point.
You know, we often think about ethics as just like a thou shalt
and thou shalt not kind of thing, right?
And obviously there are rules and norms and things that we
want to follow, even if they're legal isn't ethical, right?
So there's questions like that. But then there's also like ways
of thinking through things, especially with emerging
technology like AI and whatever new tools are emerging, right?
Like we have less precedent about like what that might be
like, just as another example within my lifetime, right, of
it's like it's now pretty well established.
You probably shouldn't be, you know, having a cell phone
conversation on speakerphone in public, right, in most places.
But that wasn't a problem until cell phones existed and were
widespread, right? So there's things like that that
are going to be coming up for us as designers with AI or whatever
the next tool will be. And so it's not just a you
should do this, you shouldn't do that.
It's like learning how to think through these issues about how,
what do your choices affect other people and what are the
trade-offs and, and all of that sort of thinking.
Oh, yeah. I mean, AI is going to be a
huge, you know, we already have those ethical questions of how
much of it is the designer, how much of it is the machine,
Where's the line? There's a lot of Gray, Gray
issues to uncover there that I'll be very curious to see how
we navigate that. So a couple years ago, you know,
when MSU had that horrible shooting on their campus, the, I
think it was the Provost sent out a memorial message and it
turned out to be generated by AI.
And so it really raised a question of people were
offended, significantly offended.
And I completely understand it that how could AI be used to
generate this very personal and very tragic thing.
But it does ask the question, is it do the words not matter
because of the mechanism or the context from where it came from?
And so I think those are going to be some interesting
conversations that we have going forward about the meaning of the
author, the meaning of the creator in these spaces, and
what their intentions are as people use these particular
modalities. Totally, yeah.
And I feel like the shade of Gray there is like there's one
thing on the extreme end to just like go to ChatGPT and say like
generate a condolence message, right?
And copy and paste that and reply all.
But there's some real life examples like I teach at the
School of Visual Arts in New York.
The master's program I teach in has like a majority of the
students are international and they don't speak English as a
first language or native language.
And so we all get access to Grammarly on our college
accounts for Gmail and Google Docs and all of that.
So the students use that and. You've been using spell check
for decades and so in some ways that is already in a machine
assisted thing. It's not writing their papers
for them, but it is helping them with suggestions.
So there is AI in the mix there, but that's a very different
application than just like writing your whole paper using
Jet GPT where's. That little Gray line.
Totally. I also want to learn more about
your PhD. So you mentioned you're doing
this PhD in higher education, focusing on design leaders.
I know this is still in progress, so you're probably
making sense of your data and your research there, but any
previews of your findings so far that you could share with us?
I think what are the observations, but it was
something I, I already knew going in, but I'm being
reaffirmed is the lack of high level administrators in higher
education. And I find that really
interesting because just like the MF as the new MBA, all those
things that we've seen happen in corporate America where people
are more interested in MF as in their C level or high level
spaces. That's not really happening in
higher education, although higher education is paying much
more attention to design and design thinking.
And so we have, especially my institution, we have a life
design program that all of our freshmen are enrolled into their
very first year as they study here.
We have a president that's very interested in design thinking.
And my observation is like, yeah, but you don't have any
designers. They're actually leading that
space. And so there becomes this
assumption that, well, if you just take this design thinking
workshop from Stanford, like you're good to go, which
certainly then undervalues the level of years I've spent
studying design and the many other people that have spent
studying design. And so in my research, you know,
I'm wanting to talk to higher education administrators that
have a visual design background and how they navigate those
spaces. How does that visual
understanding work in that space?
But what I'm already finding, right, is that there's a lack of
people. So most of the, the biggest
level that I can find are associate Deans, which certainly
have great power, but also very limited power.
So trying to find a Provost, a Dean, a president, those are
much harder. And part of it is because of
this academic glass ceiling that when those positions are
advertised, you have to have an EDD or a PhD.
And sometimes they'll say terminal degree, but often
they'll just say qualifications for a Dean is EDD or PhD.
And most graphic design educators, the MFA is, is our
terminal degree. So there's the space where we
can't even get into those areas. And I'm just very curious about,
well, what if you did have graphic designers up in those
spaces? And then there's also a portion
in academia in design education about maybe we do need PhDs and,
and we do need PhD studies and we do need to study ourselves
and we do need to understand traditional research, which is
certainly a big mechanism that I'm learning.
But to do that, we have to have people that have PhDs to do
those programs. And so that's.
Yeah, it's a chicken or egg problem there, right?
Exactly. So it's driven my curiosity
about like, what is it that I'm missing from that traditional
PhD study line? I've I've learned a lot, but
also like how is design and design thinkers going to
infiltrate higher Ed and higher Ed is under extreme pressure
about what is the value of higher education?
And yes, like some of that can be solved from a marketing, you
know, standpoint, but there's like deep structural things that
need to happen there. And I think a designer, a really
good designer understands that, right, that it's not just making
a great brochure or great website that just says these
words there. There's actions and things that
we have to do to make that happen.
So. Totally.
Yeah, it's not just about as you say that marketing layer putting
lipstick on a hog. It's really, we could use our
skills to say visualize systems or facilitate strategic
conversations, all of these other things that are maybe
below the the surface on the iceberg.
As I'm mixing metaphors here. You know, we've been talking
about learning a lot because this is a big theme of who you
are, Jen. But there's a question that we
like to ask all of our guests here on the AIG Design podcast,
which is what is something that you've learned recently could be
a fact, a skill, an insight. It could be something you've
learned as part of your PhD program or just in your daily
life, teaching your students or outside of design.
This is, I guess, more of an insight that I learned from a
colleague here at BGSU in our Diversity and Belonging office,
Katie Cycles. And, you know, I'm always coming
up with ideas and my colleagues coming up with ideas.
And she took a pause and she, you know, as we're thinking
about something and she said, you know, I recently had someone
tell me, and I want to share this with you.
And she said a yes to something is a no to something else.
And that was like really great words that I need to hear on
many different levels. Part of it from, you know, you
can see I'm a very active, busy person, so I need to be mindful
of time management. But the more important side is
the things I'm saying yes to or the project is saying yes to,
what is it saying no to? And I think that relates to any
kind of harm or impact that it might have is like a residual
effect of like, yes, we should do this.
And so it's just made me be much more.
I thought it was pretty reflective.
It was just another layer of like I thought I was being good
about like, hey, don't go into community and just think you
made it awesome and then walk away.
I think that's always been at a core of what I value.
But even just from the beginning of saying yes, like what is on
the table of what I'm I'm not allowing to have happen.
So that's probably a recent insight that I've been excited
about. Yeah, it's like every design
choice has a trade off, right? With the that yes also comes
these implied no's since our our time and attention is finite.
Yeah, exactly. So Jen, I've really enjoyed our
conversation together for our listeners.
You can learn more about Jen and connect with her work at
sisudesign.com. Again, that's Sisu, design.com.
John, to take us out. Do you have any final words or
advice that you'd like to give to our listeners about community
engagement or using design to better our society?
Whatever you'd like to take us out.
Yeah, so I guess my mantra, I share this with lots of people,
start small but think big. I think we all want to save the
world. We all want to do really, really
big impactful things. But things happen through
cultural shift and cultural change.
And so yes, there are big flash bang things that make change
happen great, you know, but there's also things that have to
happen incrementally and why not be part of that incremental
space change? And so one of the examples I
give is recycling when I was younger, you know, child of the
70s, and to recycle like pop cans and different things.
You have the neighbor that like had a bag of pop cans in his
garage and he would take it to the recycling center, but nobody
else pretty much did it. And there's been a cultural
shift over the last number of years.
And you cannot walk into a single building in my
institution or many other places without seeing a recycling bin.
And to see someone throw a pop can right into a garbage can is
Oh my goodness, you know, and, and so I see those as being
small cultural changes. It's hard.
We want change to happen quickly.
And yes, we want to happen quickly, but I just want to make
sure it happens. And so to make it happen,
there's got to be some some action.
And I guess I share that because I think people get overwhelmed.
They don't enter into the space at all because they can't fix
the big thing. It's the star small.
Thank you for that advice and for our conversation.
Jen Stucker, it's great having you on the AIG Design Podcast.
And to our listeners, thank you for listening.
See you at the next episode. I'm Lee Shawn Huang.
Until next time.