Designing Digital Scholarship: Visual Interface Prototyping Strategies for Scholarship Beyond the Printed Page

Amy Papaelias (State University of New York at New Paltz)

How can undergraduate studies in graphic design prepare students for engagement in public scholarship and the digital humanities? As part of a Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) at SUNY New Paltz, BFA graphic design major Megan Doty collaborated with Assistant Professor of Graphic Design Amy Papaelias on the design and development of a web-based prototype for “Critical Making: Design and the Digital Humanities” a special issue of the design journal Visible Language (co-edited with Jessica Barness, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Kent State University) that investigates “critical making” at the intersection of design and the digital humanities as a site for expanding the roles of divergent scholarly and creative work.

SURE grants provide undergraduate students from all academic disciplines the opportunity to work directly with faculty on a current research project, yet few of these collaborations are situated in arts and humanities discourses. The eight week collaboration focused on the following inquiries: What are the most effective and engaging ways to present digitally-born content and scholarship in online / open-access formats of a scholarly research journal? How can data visualization software be utilized to uncover new ways of exploring keywords in an interactive presentation? How does the typography, page layout, image treatment and color treatments impact the authoritative voice of an academic journal in its online presence? This presentation will discuss the collaborative design process between faculty and student and include a demonstration of the final working prototype and interactive data visualization.