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Maria Goncharova

Lecturer

Availability:

Education:

BFA
MDes

Bio

Maria Goncharova was born in the USSR (for real) and raised in Türkiye. She loves the sun and sea, but not celery. She designs systems, experiences and resources to improve lives. She is Director of Strategy + Creative at Canvas Method and the OG Academy and senior associate of Design Thinking + Research at Bethink Solutions. She sometimes makes it to her studio to build colourful sculptural beings. She is perpetually hoping to spend half the year on a beach.

Websites:

Research Interests

Maria is a multidisciplinary designer, creative writer, researcher, educator and workshop facilitator. She is always working on untangling complexity and synthesizing chaos into order. She is great at building resilient frameworks and experiences that are user-friendly, socially impactful and a joy to live with. Maria is passionate about exploring the power of design activism and design dissent, especially within the fields of research-driven, educational and nonprofit sectors. Her formal preferences are deeply rooted in playful and participatory design; her professional expertise is built on visual storytelling, collaborative systems of exchange across disciplines, and the enhancement of human experiences through inquiry-based approaches.

24/25 Courses

Course Name Department Course Code Term
Professional Practices PROF 311 26/SP

Description

This professional practice course prepares students for further professional and educational opportunities. Students gain practical and critical, conceptual, and theoretical skills. Topics include project management, business formations, the fundamentals of proposals and contracts, intellectual property and the complexities of authorship, budgets and financial administration, the market planning process within the private and public sectors, and the social role of the artist or designer. Larger societal constructs are examined as well as assumptions about the nature of professional practice research and discourse. The goal is to provide students with the knowledge and skills to enter the cultural or design sectors with assurance, awareness and integrity. Through faculty and guest presentations, individual and group research projects, students learn to identify the ways in which the artists and designers respond to their cultural, social, and economic contexts.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Communication Design COMD 225 26/SP

Description

This course is an introduction to design techniques, technologies, and working processes/workflows for digital and print communication design projects. Students will gain an understanding of various production techniques how these can contribute to the successful execution of a design project. Topics include: software packages for particular formats, file management and workflow, scanning, printing, digital input and output techniques, and best practices for working through projects in collaboration with service providers and suppliers.

This course is subject to priority rules; see here.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.

Foundation Studio Courses FNDT 130 26/SP

Description

In this elective studio course students explore elements and principles of graphic communication and typography, with an emphasis on understanding, generating, visualizing, and representing meaning. Through project-based learning students will gain initial experience with the practice of typography, principles of visual communication, analog making, and relevant design software.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites.