Leslie Atzmon, Professor of Graphic Design in the Department of Art
Professor Atzmon’s Fulbright project is based on the premise that design
thinking was key to Darwin formulating
evolutionary theory. Designers use
sketching to help them think through the
parameters of and solutions to design
problems. “Thinking” sketches invariably
lead to design artifacts that embody the
ideas conceived during this approach.
Darwin sketched “tree-of-life” diagrams
to help him determine the nature of
evolutionary processes, and he published
a “tree-of-life” diagram in Origin of Species
that depicted evolutionary processes over
time. For her Fulbright research, Professor
Atzmon will investigate how Darwin
used sketching, information visualization,
and graphic representation as mechanisms for both externalizing his thoughts
while he refined them and for communicating his ideas to the public. She will
first analyze how Darwin used rough “thinking” sketches as a brainstorming
method, and then study his published diagrams as infographics—a kind of
information graphics (charts, diagrams, etc.) that communicates complex
information in a succinct fashion. Professor Atzmon will also study how
evolutionary infographics have themselves developed in response to changing
ideas about information structures in the 20th and 21st centuries, and to new
information in the field of molecular evolution.
Leslie Atzmon received her MFA in graphic design at EMU, and her PhD in
design history at Middlesex University in London, England. She has published in
the journals Design Issues, Design and Culture, Eye, Visual Communication, and Book
2.0. Atzmon edited the collection Visual Rhetoric and the Eloquence of Design
(Parlor Press 2011), and she is currently co-editing the anthology The Graphic
Design Reader (Bloomsbury 2015) with Teal Triggs of the Royal College of Art and
the collection Encountering Things with industrial designer Prasad Boradkar
(Bloomsbury 2015). Atzmon and colleague Ryan Molloy were awarded an NEA
grant to run experimental book workshops, and to edit, design, and produce the
book The Open Book Project. The Open Book Project explores the history and future
of the book through written essays and an exhibition catalogue. Atzmon is an
editor for the new Journal of Communication Design (Bloomsbury, first issue
forthcoming spring 2015).