Introduction

Welcome to Meaning by Design. For the last four years I have been teaching design in a community college. I found that as much as I understand and recognize the elements and principles of design at work in the transmission of meaning, that it is still one of the hardest things for the students. Memorizing a list of words or attaching the words to designs and artwork that have no meaning for the students seemed to produce results that were not lasting. I became committed to designing a unit that would lead from introduction of language to clear demonstration of the students' ability to communicate meaning through the use of simple shapes and lines.

Every semester, I streamlined the number of completed projects. I began to see ways to bring students through acquisition of specific skills and language by defining and deepening each section of project development.I broke the most successful projects into a series of smaller projects the lead to the completion of a original creative design.