January 12th Early Registration Deadline Approaching!

The third biennial NC State Master of Graphic Design graduate symposium is just around the corner. We want to hear what you have to say!
The time: January 22–23, 2010
The place: College of Design, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
The topic: The rhetoric of authenticity within design practices and for community experience
Register Early and Save!
Our website is up and running, complete with information on registration, travel, and lodging. A tentative schedule and further information on the weekend’s speakers and events can be found there. Please be aware that seating is limited, so we encourage you to register now.
Registration fees through January 12: Graduate Students ($34.99), Educators and others ($64.99), and Friday night only ($9.99)
After January 12: Graduate Students ($44.99), Educators and others ($79.99), and Friday night only ($14.99)
Call for Student Panel Participants
We’re searching for graduate students interested in serving as part of a concluding panel to reflect on the events of the symposium weekend. The panel will take place at the closing of the symposium program, Saturday, January 23rd. If you’re planning on attending and would like to participate on the panel, please contact David Raymond (dsraymon@ncsu.edu) for more information.
Share Your Work
We’ll be holding an informal graduate student work-sharing session on Sunday morning, January 24th. This casual affair will provide an opportunity for students to talk about the work they’ve produced at their programs and see what other grad students in design are making and doing. If you’re interested in participating, please contact Tania Allen (tanialallen@gmail.com).

Official call for participation
From the built environment to the virtual realm of interface, design persuades individuals and communities of the truth, honesty, and realness of objects, spaces, and systems. These tactics of persuasion amount to what may be called a rhetoric of authenticity. Though designers employ this rhetoric, communities ultimately decide what is authentic to them.
Design anthropologist Dori Tunstall describes five requisites of communities: commonality in terms of historic consciousness, life goals, organizational structures, relationships, and conceptions of individual agency. Can considering how the rhetoric of authenticity relates to these defining characteristics of communities help identify points of engagement with complex and discriminating audiences?
This symposium will explore the rhetoric of authenticity within design practices and for community experience. We will confront provocative issues relating to designers’ roles and responsibilities to communities and the individuals who comprise them. Join us in this dialogue.
NC State’s Third Biennial Graduate Symposium in Graphic Design is brought to you by the grad students: Brooke Chornyak, Cady Bean-Smith, Caroline Maxcy Prietz, Dan McCafferty, Kelly Bailey, Lauren Waugh, Liese Zahabi, Lincoln Hancock, Rebecca Knowe, Ryan Gottfried, Samyul Kim, Sidney Fritts, Tania Allen, TJ Blanchflower, Tony Fugolo, Gary Dickson, David Raymond, and Laura Rodriguez. Plus Denise Gonzales Crisp, Graduate Symposium Advisor; Meredith Davis, Director of the MGD Graduate Program; and Santiago Piedrafita, Head, Graphic Design and Industrial Design Department.