Revision of: Launching the imagination. Two-dimensional design. Ã2002.

New and better than ever, Launching the Imagination treats design as both a verb and a noun—as both a process and a product. Design is deliberate—a process of exploring multiple solutions and choosing the most promising option. Through an immersion in 2-D 3-D and 4-D concepts students are encouraged to develop methods of thinking visually that will serve them throughout their studies and careers. Building on strengths of the previous five editions Launching the Imagination 6e is even more: Concise. Content has been refined so that maximum content can be communicated as clearly and concisely as possible. Colorful. In addition to the full color used throughout the book, the writing is livelier than that in most textbooks. Analogies expand communication, and every visual example has been carefully selected for maximum impact. Comprehensive. Launching the Imagination is the only foundational text with full sections devoted to critical and creative thinking and to time-based design. The photo program is global, represents a myriad of stylistic approaches, and prominently features design and media arts as well as more traditional art forms. Contemporary. More than half of the visual examples represent artworks completed since 1970, and over 100 represent works completed since 2000 Compelling. Interviews with exemplars of creativity have always been an important feature of this book. Three of the best past profiles have been revised and a new profile has been added. Now inserted into the body of the text, each interview deliberately builds on its chapter content. In Chapter Five, designer Steve Quinn describes the seven-step sequence he uses in developing websites, logos, and motion graphics. In Chapter 8, Jim Elniski describes The Greenhouse Chicago, an innovative home that is both highly energy efficient and elegant. In Chapter 11, ceramicist David MacDonald describes his influences and work process. And, in the new profile in Chapter 6, artist Sara Mast describes an ambitious art and science collaboration begun in celebration of the ideas of Albert Einstein. We have also added a new feature called Success Stories. These short interviews explore connections between foundational coursework and career success. In Chapter Five, Elizabeth Nelson discusses her wide-ranging design work at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. In Chapter Six, Jane Parkerson Ferry describes her work as Curator of Education at the Orlando Museum of Art. Jason Chin's interview in Chapter Seven connects directly to his self-designed project in the Self Assignment feature earlier in the chapter. As a freshman at Syracuse University, he completed this ambitious illustration project as the final project in a Two-Dimensional Design course. In the Chapter Seven interview, he describes his current work as a professional illustrator. In Chapter Eight, Dennis Montagna describes connections between his art and design major and his current historical preservation work for the National Park Service. Almost fifty new images have been added, representing major contemporary artists and designers including Wolfgang Buttress, Do Ho Suh, Garo Antresian, Janet Ballweg, Phoebe Morris, Alain Cornu, and Natalya Zahn.

Creative Inquiry introduces both undergraduate students and general readers to the exploratory mindset and hands-on skills essential to the cultivation and implementation of new ideas. Using active learning, this book combines concise explanations and real-world examples with engaging exercises for readers to complete. The writing style is conversational, yet substantial, and the examples given reflect a wide range of disciplines, from early aeronautics and linguistics to zoology. Creative Inquiry emphasizes the importance of direct experience, personal initiative, and the generation of new knowledge. Step by step, the exercises build the skills students need when they tackle the final self-designed Capstone project. Positioned at the end of major sections, five brief self-reflection papers are designed to help students assess their progress and revise their assignments. To encourage collaboration and strengthen metacognition, teams of three to six participants work together on these papers. This encourages an iterative mindset and provides extensive practice with writing. The appendix provides a lively and practical "Top Ten List" of writing strategies for students who need extra advice.

"John Paul Lederach's work in the field of conciliation and mediation is internationally recognized. He has provided consultation, training and direct mediation in a range of situations from the Miskito/Sandinista conflict in Nicaragua to Somalia, Northern Ireland, Tajikistan, and the Philippines. His influential 1997 book Building Peace has become a classic in the discipline. In this book, Lederach poses the question, "How do we transcend the cycles of violence that bewitch our human community while still living in them?" Peacebuilding, in his view, is both a learned skill and an art. Finding this art, he says, requires a worldview shift. Conflict professionals must envision their work as a creative act-an exercise of what Lederach terms the "moral imagination." This imagination must, however, emerge from and speak to the hard realities of human affairs. The peacebuilder must have one foot in what is and one foot beyond what exists. The book is organized around four guiding stories that point to the moral imagination but are incomplete. Lederach seeks to understand what happened in these individual cases and how they are relevant to large-scale change. His purpose is not to propose a grand new theory. Instead he wishes to stay close to the "messiness" of real processes and change, and to recognize the serendipitous nature of the discoveries and insights that emerge along the way. overwhelmed the equally important creative process. Like most professional peacemakers, Lederach sees his work as a religious vocation. Lederach meditates on his own calling and on the spirituality that moves ordinary people to reject violence and seek reconciliation. Drawing on his twenty-five years of experience in the field he explores the evolution of his understanding of peacebuilding and points the way toward the future of the art." http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0616/2004011794-d.html.

New Media and Popular Imagination offers a highly original account of the ways in which successive media of electronic communication - radio, television, and digital media - have been anticipated, debated, and taken up in the twentieth-century United States. Intended as an intervention in the emerging scholarly and policy debates around contemporary digital culture, the book analyses popular responses to earlier moments of technological innovation in the twentieth-century. Successive electronic media have challenged the borders between private and public, disturbed notions of national identity, and disrupted the gendered routines and spaces of the private home. Illuminating both the continuities and disjunctions between old media and new, New Media and Popular Imagination offers new insights into the relationship between technological change and cultural form.

The Blank Canvas offers solid advice for everyone who struggles with artist's block or other problems of creative expression, including: drawing subject matter from unexpected sources, mining one's daily visual responses for images, overcoming self-doubt and criticism, making choices when torn between several ideas, and getting started on assignments.