DesignInquiry is a non-profit educational organization devoted to researching design issues in
intensive team-based gatherings. An alternative to the design conference,
it brings together
practitioners from disparate fields to generate new work and ideas around a single topic.
DesignInquiry selects a topic to explore at an intensive gathering of presentations, discussions, and workshops. We invite professionals, educators and students of diverse disciplines to contribute to the topic in any way they think is appropriate. We share these responses, while working toward a publication that binds the outcome: a free-to-download boost of information, meant to inspire and inform its readers.
DesignInquiry is an alternative to the one-way delivery of a standard conference: each participant contributes and is equally responsible for the quality of the gathering; a collaborative production where we both learn and teach the aesthetics and ethics that are central to Design (and life). Days become nights; the program doesn't stop when dinner is served.
<< watch our group pool at FLICKR or read comments about the DesignInquiry experience >>
TOPIC: JOY
June 20-25 2010, Vinalhaven Maine
TOPIC: Being Here
March 11-14 2010, Marfa Texas
With mesquite, cacti and tumbleweed, pristine air and the distant Chinati and Davis mountains,
Marfa has a spare and sublime atmosphere that literally suggests a site-specific creativity.
read more
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Contact us for scholarship opportunities.
Dig into our archive to see a sample of our program
Jump to our Journal
PARTICIPATE
Anyone who has an interest in this year's topic, regardless of profession or status, is welcome to attend and/or contribute.
You can participate in many different ways:APPLY
Contact us and we will send you a questionnaire in which you may
propose anything you think is appropriate to the topic. These thoughts, ideas, experiences and observations will ideally
become the starting point for
a contribution to the DesignInquiry event and the publication. We will contact you to indicate
if your proposal has been accepted. i.e. fits the mix for the gathering. Participants will be accepted until the program fills.
Apply early.
* This helps us to fund:
- scholarships to help ensure that DesignInquiry attracts a diverse
and ever-changing mix of people
- publishing ventures such as the online journal and printed
trifold essays
'08 Fail Again: Typography in Flux
'07 PASS•PORT: Identity
in the information age
'06 More than business as usual
innie or outie? by Peter Hall, Print magazine, March/April 2006
'05 Motive, Method, Medium
'04 Truth & Message
'03 OFF THE PAGE... type in Motion
Maine Summer Institute in Graphic Design 1992-2002
MSIGD Archive