“It was wonderful to see what you can achieve in 8 weeks.”
“You breathed new life into our design program, and have connected people who inspire and motivate each other. GA deeply appreciates how you approach student growth – with the ideal mix of empathy, humor, high standards, and tough love.”
—Amy Almeida, Education Programs Manager, General Assembly SF
General Assembly treats their courses like products, and they are hacking modern design education. Given their amazing qualitative feedback system and NPS data, they inspire educators to perpetually improve course content. I’ve given four day-long workshops within the UX Design Immersive, and I’ve taught Visual Design (VIS) four times. It gets better each time.
I’m proud to be GA SF’s first Visual Design Fellow. I worked with a committee of past instructors to optimize the course for different markets, then mentored new instructors. And, I’m piloting Advanced Visual Design during the fall of 2017.
Throughout each of my VIS cohorts, each student is encouraged to identify an original, entrepreneurial project, through which they learn the fundamentals of research, constraints, strategy, content strategy, color, type, form, UI, UX, ongoing user testing, and storytelling and presentation design. It’s had terrific success – beyond my own goals for engagement. For instance, after getting a taste of design, Joe quit his full-time job to enter GA’s UX Design Intensive program, and has gone on to an early stage startup with lots of responsibilities. And Leslie told me it was the passion with which she presented her final project that just landed her a new full-time job. Congrats, Leslie! Way to go, Joe!
Gratefully, I’ve brought an extensive roster of diverse guest critics (below) into each class, not only for their diverse perspectives on student projects, but to also whet their appetites for the GA community. Thank you to all!
VIS 3, April–June 2015
with Emma Hazlett
Marc O’Brien, Margot Bloomstein, Dave Bellona, Melanie Araujo, Matt Winters, Jon Kerwin, Kelli Peterson, Tom Burke, Tash Wong, Tracy DeLuca, James Buckhouse
VIS 5, July–September 2015
with Emma Hazlett
Marc O’Brien, Fontaine McFadden, Lara McCormick, Manjia Zhao, Lesie Cheng, Jon Kerwin, Dave Bellona, Mel Johnson, Amit Deutsch, Tash Wong, Tracy DeLuca, Zack Shubkagel, Justin Lokitz, Tim Belonax
VIS 6, September–November 2015
with Dave Bellona
Keren Mack, Mark Manalaysay, Rich Binell, Lara McCormick, Mel Johnson, Emma Hazlett, Fontaine McFadden, Clara Muñoz, Lotus Child, Dasami Moodley, Cort Cunningham, Ryan Ku, Kelly Bailey
VIS 16, January–March 2017
with Dave Bellona and Erin Moore
Jason Jackson, Lara McCormick, Catherine Schmidt, Fernando Muñoz, Ashutosh Kole, Lisa Ding, Brian Cox, Leslie Cheng, Nat Bolton, Zack Shubkagel, Michie Cao, Meghana Khandekar, Prachi Pundeer, Joe Caron, Tash Wong, Allison Shaw, Su Mathews Hale
