Collective Inquiry into the Visual Essay

The essays in this publication are the outcomes from the inaugural AIGA Design Educators Community 2022 Design + Writing Fellowship. Nineteen fellows worked both individually and collaboratively to interrogate the idea of the visual essay, to support and give critical feedback to each other, and to ultimately research, write, and design a visual essay for this publication. Once created, these works went through an initial peer-review process specific to visual essays conducted both in-person and online as part of the AIGA National Design Conference in Seattle, Washington from October 20-22, 2022. Once the feedback was collected and shared with the fellows, a first draft of the visual essays was achieved. These essays then went through a more traditional academic peer-review process, leading to the final versions of the essays you see here.

The topics and outcomes presented within these pages represent a wide range of ideas and visual language, from examining our negotiations with nature, using design as a tool to address issues of racial justice and civic engagement, exploring the reproductive life-cycle through the lens of a designer, concepts centered on the idea of the visual essay itself, and many others. Each essay takes into account the characteristics of visual language as a powerful mechanism for delivering a message.

As facilitators of this inaugural fellowship, the AIGA Design Educators Community is pleased with the outcomes and see this publication as a reminder and perhaps starting point for further elevating creative and scholarly research in the discipline of graphic design.