Design Educators Conference

Where: George Brown College, Toronto

The RGD invites design educators and researchers from across the country to attend our annual Design Educators Conference, which will take place in Toronto on October 3.

Organised in collaboration with George Brown College, the 2025 conference theme is ShiftShaping.

This year's Design Educator Conference represents our commitment to transformation—viewing uncertainty as a canvas for innovation, failure as a stepping stone for learning and bold experimentation as the pathway to evolution. 

Join us as we explore design’s potential to adapt, flourish and influence through a mindset rooted in curiosity, resilience and the courage to challenge the norms.

The conference takes place immediately after the RGD's DesignThinkers Conference at the Meridian Hall on October 1 and 2.

Keynote speakers for the conference:

• Opening Keynote by Danah Abdulla 

  Danah Abdulla is a designer, researcher and educator whose work explores new narratives and practices that challenge traditional disciplinary boundaries in design. She is a Reader in Anti/Post/Decolonial Histories, Theories, Praxes at the Decolonising the Arts Institute, University of the Arts London. Danah is the author of Designerly Ways of Knowing and Design Otherwise: Transforming Design Education in the Arab Region, and is a founding member of the Decolonising Design platform. She also founded Kalimat Magazine, a publication dedicated to Arab thought and culture. Danah will also be speaking at DesignThinkers Toronto.

   

• Closing Keynote by Lesley-Ann Noel

  Lesley-Ann Noel is a designer, researcher and author of Design Social Change, known for her equity-centred approach to design. Now Dean of Design at OCAD University, her work focuses on inclusive, community-led practices in education, public health and social innovation.

Please send questions to programs@rgd.ca

9:40 - 10:40 AM | Opening Keynote

Design can, but design won’t, presented by Danah Abdulla

Over the past 15 years, the world has faced a series of severe disruptions—including economic recessions, the COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes, ongoing wars, widespread wildfires, industrial accidents and the unfolding climate crisis. Although the design field has responded to these challenges with new discourse and has broadened the discipline’s focus, meaningful structural change remains limited; efforts to adapt often appear superficial and cosmetic rather than substantive.
Trapped in a world that no longer exists, design education is fearful of change, producing 20th century solutions to 21st century problems. What are the possibilities of transformation in design education to ensure its relevance in the world we live in today? In this talk, Danah uses pessoptimistic thinking – teetering between hope and despair – to outline the issues faced by design education and presents possibilities for visions that are legitimate and viable.

10:50 - 11:50 AM | Concurrent Session 1

Option A: Decolonizing Pedagogies

A framework for shifting colonial grounds in design education, presented by Jananda Lima & Nadine Hare
OCAD University, Graduate Studies
In this presentation, Jananda and Nadine share a case study for design education that is grounded in relationality based on their experience of teaching in the Master’s programme at OCAD U and their lived experiences of collaborating with marginalized communities. They present their process for developing this framework (including the impasses that got them there), the key principles within this framework (collaborative, embodied, pluriversal and equitable), techniques and tools to apply it and feedback from learners. Our hope is that the audience will be inspired to experiment with underexplored ways of “teaching” and practising design. 

Creative Emergence Through Story and Land: Indigenous pedagogies in transnational design education, presented by Herman Pi’ikea Clark
OCAD University, Faculty of Design
“ʻUpu aʻe ke ola” — words give life. This presentation shows how Indigenous pedagogy reorients creativity, curriculum and practice in design education. Drawing on experiences across Canada, Hawai‘i and Aotearoa/New Zealand, it positions Indigenous ways of knowing not as cultural content, but as methodological ground. Central to this framework are Talanoa (dialogue as pedagogy), mo‘olelo and ko‘ihonua (story and genealogy as epistemology), land-based learning (‘āina, whenua) and kinship-based teaching figures that embody accountability and care.
These structures expose the limits of conventional approaches rooted in Western philosophy while generating new practices of continuity, responsibility and creative emergence. Indigenous pedagogy is already reshaping how we imagine design education’s future.

Option B: Experimentation, Form & Fundamentals

Is This Even Design? Teaching critical design through interrogation and provocation, presented by Amy Pirie-Ford (Pierrson)
St. Lawrence College, Graphic Design
What happens when students are asked to design something that doesn’t need to be useful, marketable or even recognizably “design”? In this Shape Shifting session, I explore how introducing critical design in the classroom can move students from hesitant problem-solvers to engaged makers of provocative, socially resonant work. Drawing on communication theory and critical pedagogy, I scaffold projects that disrupt conventional design thinking and invite students to question inherited norms. Through a classroom case study, I’ll share strategies, readings and project prompts that help students navigate discomfort, embrace experimentation and ultimately expand their sense of what design can do and what futures it might imagine.

Genre as Scaffold: Reframing design pedagogy through genre theory, presented by Wayne Williams
MacEwan University, Design
This paper presents findings from a two-year pilot study that positions Genre Theory as a dynamic pedagogical scaffold in design education. Rather than treating genre as a static category, the study demonstrates how it can bridge students’ intuitive literacy (from music, film and media) with the disciplinary practices of visual communication design. Attendees will gain a practical framework for introducing genre theory into studio courses, strategies for critique and assessment that reframe failure as insight and insights into how genre awareness lowers barriers to engaging with complex concepts such as semiotics, rhetoric and audience positioning. By reframing genre as a flexible, inclusive and process-driven tool, the session equips educators with actionable approaches for cultivating more reflective, critical and experimental designers.

Option C: Media & Research

What If the News Looked Like This? A student exploration of visual narratives, presented by Xiaojun Huang
Bowling Green State University, School of Art, Graphic Design
This presentation shares the results of a 16-week classroom experiment in which students used news headlines and articles as raw material, generating images through AI tools. Without step-by-step instructions, they explored independently and developed their own approaches to turning text into visuals.
Beyond a technical exercise, the project raised fundamental questions: Can an algorithm capture urgency, tragedy or hope? Who is the true author of an image—the human, the machine or the news source? Through making and reflecting, students confronted these questions, navigating the space where creative potential meets ethical responsibility in the age of AI.

Applying Interdisciplinary Design Research Methods in Media Education, presented by Rupsha Mutsuddi & Greg Gulyas
Conestoga College, York University, Bachelor of Design and Global Health
As design challenges become complex and multi-faceted, we as designers are expected to expand our research toolkit to enrich our design projects and solutions. In this presentation, you will hear about how affinity mapping was used by Greg Gulyas, a Bachelor of Design Student, to craft design requirements for his self-directed 3D modelling and packaging project. Affinity Mapping originally arose in the discipline of anthropology by Jiro Kawakita. Affinity Mapping or Affinity Diagramming was used as a means to facilitate brainstorming and qualitative data analysis. It is now commonly used by UX practitioners as a way to understand user needs, behaviours and preferences. Affinity Mapping allows students to rapidly assess an existing body of literature and graphic objects and to develop themes which can then be transformed into design requirements. Rupsha, Greg's Studio Instructor, will begin the presentation by describing the Affinity Mapping research technique. Greg will then follow by describing how this research guided his design explorations and outcomes. Participants can expect to walk away from this presentation with an understanding of how students can adopt Affinity Mapping to guide their design research processes systemically. Participants will also learn how Affinity Mapping can help students frame their explorations, production and refinements accordingly.

Option D: Workshop 1 | Assessing with Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose

Unicorn Assessments, presented by Diana Varma RGD
Toronto Metropolitan University, Graphic Communications Management
An exploratory workshop with the goal of ideating and sharing new assessment ideas with like-minded educators. ‘Unicorn assessments’ are magical, in that they are fun for the instructor to develop, valuable for students to engage in and (dare I say) enjoyable to grade. They typically involve one, two or all three of Daniel Pink’s motivational framework components of autonomy, mastery and purpose.

12:50 - 1:50 PM | Concurrent Session 2

Option A: Global & Intercultural Design

Multiculturalism: Opportunities and challenges, presented by Isabel Meirelles & Diane Mikhael
OCAD University, Faculty of Design
Toronto is often regarded as the most multicultural city in the world with 45% of the residents speaking at least one non-official language at home according to the City of Toronto Census 2021. Our classrooms at OCAD University reflect this ethnocultural diversity, which is further amplified as we account for international students, who bring their lived experiences from other parts of the globe.
How can we embrace such cultural diversity in design education? How can we shift away from a single Eurocentric perspective to a multiplicity of positions? This presentation aims to critically examine the opportunities and challenges of multiculturalism in the context of decolonizing design education. We will discuss a set of pedagogical approaches focused on multilingualism and the theoretical frameworks informing them. We will share practical classroom activities and outputs from students in the past three years. We will look from two perspectives: the visible form of language, that is typography; and the verbal/vocal/visual aspects of language used to tell stories in different media.
As we embark on decolonizing design education, we argue that multicultural pedagogies can contribute to a more equitable and diverse society. The presentation invites an open and constructive dialogue with other educators who work in culturally diverse teaching and learning environments.

Morphing shapes between languages as if we never knew them, presented by Liyang Zha
Simon Fraser University & Emily Carr University of Art + Design
To serif or sans to serif, that is the question for ye who design in English. At least that’s what we think about both concepts when they have been around for a long while before the year 1982.
But 1982 was the first time the legendary type designer Xu Xuecheng defined “Sans Serif” in Chinese type design with a typeface. As Xu introduced his 无饰线体 (“Sans Serif Type”) as a modern take on the traditional, print-oriented type style, he credits his inspiration to “the rising popularity of sans serif typefaces in the Western world”. Revisiting this inspirational typeface and its pitch in 2024 made me think: what would this kind of appearance-based alteration mean for the English and Latin alphabet? Can I reintroduce a concept to whom it came from? And if so, what would it look like
This presentation walks audiences through a year-long type design process of revisiting marginalized typefaces, constant code-switching and endless reflections on technology and human behaviour, to discuss a core question in multilingual design: how will we shift our shapes to appropriately present our message to different audiences?

Option B: Risk & Practice

Take Risks in Teaching, Get Rewards, presented by Rafael Peixoto Ferreira RGD
Mohawk College, Advertising Program
What happens when educators dare to break the rules? Rafael shares how shaking up conventional teaching methods can spark creativity, ignite student engagement and even lead to top-tier industry recognition. From redesigning assignments to rethinking an entire program, he shows how taking smart risks transformed Mohawk College’s Advertising Program into one of Canada’s best, with students winning globally competitive awards. This session is full of stories, insights and practical ideas for making learning immersive, dynamic and meaningful. Attendees will leave inspired to challenge the status quo, experiment with new approaches in the classroom and discover how bold moves in education can pay off in unexpected and exciting ways.

Tactile Transformations: Risk, failure and the analog shift in graphic design education, presented by Carol Fillip, Keli DiRisio & Lorrie Frear
Rochester Institute of Technology, Graphic Design
This presentation shares a case study of an interactive workshop that reimagines how second year graphic design students engage with historical analog and pre-digital processes and blend these experiments with current and emerging digital technologies. The interactive workshop takes place during class time and involves approximately 60 students exploring analog and pre-digital methods with which they are not familiar. The workshop is a space where students can take risks, shape their own process and begin to see design as something alive and responsive. Working with these processes challenges students to step outside their comfort zones of digital mastery to embracing unexpected outcomes where the act of making is physical, tactile and non-linear.
The workshop encourages alternative ways of thinking through design problems, emphasising resourcefulness, adaptability and improvisation. Working hands-on forces students to stay present in the process instead of rushing to polished digital outcomes. This expands understanding of composition, narrative and graphic design history. Students are encouraged to include their results in personal and course projects, merging the old with the new. The workshop also encourages fresh teaching approaches, making the studio classroom into a space for experimentation and transformation for both faculty and students.
Attendees of this presentation will gain practical strategies for emphasizing process over product in their classrooms and programs, discover ways to embrace accidents and failure as a vital part of learning and explore methods for encouraging curiosity through tactile, hands-on engagement using analog and pre-digital methodologies.

Option C: Collaboration & Evaluation

Co-Designing a Syllabus, presented by Dani Sayeau
Sheridan College, Illustration
As we face increasingly complex structural issues as a society: from socio-economic stratification, climate change and the rise of AI in creative industries, intentional design will become more important than ever. As will having design practitioners who are unafraid of tackling complex problems and the systems they’re a part of. This starts in the classroom, in fostering an environment where students feel safe and empowered to question their curriculum and take an active role in shaping their learning.
Presenting a case study examining taking a co-design approach to designing a course. In the first week of term the students participated in a workshop aimed at assessing their interests, learning goals and building consensus across the group for where they wanted the course to go over the term and what topics they would like to cover week to week. By including students in the process of designing a course, they get first hand experience with primary research - it takes hypothetical concepts and turns them into a tangible experience, helping learners understand how these methods are used in practice as well as meaningfully engaging them with the structure of their own learning.
Each student brings their own experience and knowledge to the classroom. Can we design courses that meet students where they are at and encourage them to become courageous practitioners who are unafraid of trying something new? Can the classroom be a place where we can “take chances, make mistakes and get messy”?

Hybrid Ungrading: A gateway into the ShiftShaping world of alternative grading frameworks, presented by Diana Varma RGD
Toronto Metropolitan University, Graphic Communications Management
Since 2018, Diana has embraced alternative grading to foster collaboration, curiosity and growth. In 2024, co-teaching a course that couldn’t be fully redesigned, she developed hybrid ungrading—a blend of traditional and competency-based assessment. This flexible yet rigorous approach gave students more autonomy and opportunities to improve through feedback and iteration. In this talk, Diana shares how hybrid ungrading was implemented, its benefits and challenges and how it aligns with Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Participants will explore how grading for growth can transform classrooms into inclusive, student-centered spaces that prioritize learning over competition.

Option D: Workshop 2 | Disrupting the Format

This Is Not a Book: Subverting the format of the design thesis, presented by Dominic Ayre RGD
George Brown College, School of Design
Dominic challenges the idea that a design thesis must fit a neat, conventional format. This session explores how thesis work can be experiential, ephemeral, edible, awkward or even ritualistic, pushing students to rethink how their ideas exist in the world. Through rapid prototyping, sensory prompts and speculative exercises, Dominic will show how to guide students in creating outcomes that are unexpected, resonant and deeply connected to their intended context. Attendees will leave with strategies for encouraging experimentation, supporting bold approaches to communication and helping students craft work that surprises, engages and truly reflects the potential of their ideas.

2:00 - 3:20 PM | Concurrent Session 3

Option A: Critical & Political Design

The Cost of Creativity, presented by Chris Lange
George Brown College and OCADU, Graphic Design
What happens when the tools we rely on for creative work stop working for us—and start working against us? In an age of subscriptions and gated ecosystems, creative workers are paying a kind of “rent” just to make. This session uncovers the hidden costs of digital dependency: what’s gained, what’s lost, and how these structures shape creative agency.
Through an introduction to The Anti-Subscription Catalogue, Chris offers practical strategies for loosening tech monopolies’ grip, reducing reliance on proprietary tools, and empowering students, educators, and practitioners to reclaim control of their creative practices. Attendees will explore ways to integrate open resources and collaborative approaches into classrooms and studios, build cross-disciplinary bridges, and advocate for digital sovereignty in design education and beyond.

New Arguments: Queer(ing) typography, presented by M. Wright
University of Tulsa & Concordia University
How do we shift the way we teach design histories, to disrupt the dominant narrative with voices from the margins? New Arguments is an effort to complicate an easy retelling of histories shaping the contemporary practice of graphic design. As a hybrid publication, it brings together scholarly research, writing, interdisciplinary conversations and pedagogical resources to introduce new perspectives to the field.
This presentation will provide an overview of the New Arguments series as a teaching resource for design educators and will offer an in-depth look at one of the publications in the series, focusing on queer typography. We examine how the traditional type specimen sheet has been subverted by contemporary typographers, who are reimagining this familiar format as a site of queer, trans and nonbinary resistance. These type designers draw upon archives of grassroots political graphic design, pushing the limits of legibility and producing letterforms that reject the norms of conventional language. This talk will explore how queer typography does not conform to the tenets of clear and legible design, yet through this failure it gets at something more essential about how typography reflects and shapes the ways we understand ourselves and our world.
New Arguments is a project conceived by Jimmy Luu, with contributions from J. Dakota Brown, Andy Campbell, Bonnie Mak, Emmanuel Ortega, Tuan Phan, Edith Valle, Rebecca Wilkinson and M. Wright.

Option B: From Classroom to Community

Theorizing Practice: Student projects as catalysts for educational shift, presented by Eric Lee
University of the Fraser Valley
Design education is evolving from traditional problem-solving paradigms toward more inclusive, inquiry- driven approaches. This presentation explores a pedagogical shift from "Practice of Theory" to "Theorizing of Practice"—where students become researchers of their own interests rather than passive recipients of predetermined outcomes.
In this presentation, projects range from repositioning children as creativity experts to exploring indigenous approaches to cultural preservation to developing community-centered healing experiences. Each challenges conventional boundaries—between expert and learner, tradition and change, individual and collective care.
Students consistently break boundaries between disciplines while addressing complex societal challenges, demonstrating that transformative education emerges when we honor student agency and diverse perspectives.
This presentation offers concrete pedagogical conditions that enable perspective-shifting and boundary-breaking. Participants will gain transferable frameworks for fostering student agency, implementing inquiry-based learning and creating inclusive educational environments that maintain academic excellence.

Oh, Poop—The colon cancer prevention design lab experiment, presented by Roberta Schultz
Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
Who knew design students would get excited about creating solutions for poop collection? In 2024, a novel partnership between NSCAD University and Nova Scotia Health (NSH) got a third-year design studio class to shed light on the provincial Colon Cancer Prevention Program (CCPP).
Designed as an academic investigation, the course asked students to develop a thoughtful assortment of holistic solutions that integrated systems thinking into the traditional design process, thus exposing both students and the NHS to new ways to work with ever-changing systems. In addition to further graphic design training, the goal was to introduce students to complex problem-solving and explore the possibilities offered by human-centered design.
The course’s two instructors—Schultz and deWolf—divided the coursework into two deliverables: an analysis of the existing products and related programs and the development of options for its improvement. Students conducted an analysis of the CCPP system, identifying key players, mapping out their interactions and analyzing how multiple factors influence patients’ outcomes. After identifying gaps and opportunities, students made recommendations on how to move forward and proposed a variety of ways to enhance the CCPP home test kit and related products.
The success of this undergraduate course was such that the students’ work was featured on local news, including radio and TV shows. While we were clear that this was an academic exercise—none of the designs were meant for immediate production—the proposed solutions helped the NSH team see their product from different perspectives and opened the doors for future in-class partnerships.

Shift Happens: Lessons learned through client projects and unexpected outcomes, presented by Carol Fillip, Kennedy Intihar & Keli DiRisio
Rochester Institute of Technology, Graphic Design
In today's fast-changing design world, the path from classroom to creative practice is rarely linear. Design education often emphasizes polished outcomes, but real client work is unpredictable with tight deadlines, vague feedback, revisions and tricky dynamics can overwhelm even experienced designers.
Student-run studios, guided by faculty but led by students, are redefining how designers prepare for professional practice. They immerse students in real client work with high stakes, evolving challenges and collaborative problem-solving, while also fostering leadership, adaptability and entrepreneurial thinking far beyond a typical classroom project.
This session shares candid stories from a faculty-mentored, student-run studio where chaos is embraced as a learning tool. From miscommunications to scope creep, students learn that failure isn't just inevitable, it's essential to the process. Along the way, they gain hands-on experience with contracts, pricing and client relationships, while thoughtfully integrating new tools into their workflow to create meaningful, effective solutions.
Through peer-led workshops, debriefs and emotional check-ins, the studio builds a culture of resilience, collaboration and agency, ensuring students grow not just as designers but as leaders.
Tangible takeaways for attendees:
Strategies to bridge academic theory with real-world practice
Frameworks for peer-led support and leadership growth
Approaches for balancing client needs with creative integrity
Actionable ideas to launch or refine student-run design studios

Option C: Panel Discussion

In Conversation, presented by Blair Francey RGD & Guests
George Brown College, Brand Degree Program / Graphic Design
Blair brings design education out of the classroom and into an open forum for dialogue, reflection and learning. This session is a fireside-style conversation with current students and recent graduates, exploring what teaching methods resonate, where gaps exist, and how educators can adapt to better support learners. Attendees will hear firsthand insights into what works in today’s design programs and discover strategies for making course material more engaging, accessible and responsive. Through facilitated discussion, Blair encourages educators to listen, reflect and share, uncovering blind spots and uncovering new ideas for teaching. This session offers a unique opportunity to learn directly from students and peers, inspiring approaches that foster meaningful learning experiences, stronger engagement and continual growth in design education.

Option D: Workshop 3 | Foundations of Form

Inflection Points: Type design fundamentals in graphic design curricula, presented by Carl Shura
George Brown College, School of Design
Participants in this workshop will explore fundamentals of type design through a combination of theory and practical exercises that can in turn be integrated into general graphic design and typography lessons, ultimately positioning students to explore and experiment with more clarity and confidence.
In my approach as a type designer and educator, I expose students to critical theories and practices of type design education, drawing from the work of Gerrit Noordzij’s contrast theory in “The Stroke,” Frank Blokland’s modular “letter model” for rhythm and harmony and Sofie Beier’s scientific explorations into legibility and reading.
I find that this shift to focus on the elemental letterform can give us a new perspective where design principles are exposed in a more clear and raw form. Through the lens of type design (an area of study and practice still relatively opaque and niche within the wider design field) graphic design students can explore underlying concepts of form, space, contrast and balance that help to develop a deeper understanding of the typographic rules and design principles that they learn in our general curricula.
This workshop is a revised form of a presentation first delivered at ATypI Copenhagen in 2025.

3:30 - 4:30 PM | Closing Keynote

Designing the worlds we need right now! A designer’s responsibility to create social change, presented by Lesley-Ann Noel

What kind of worlds do we need right now? Creating social change requires time, determination and unwavering commitment. Abilities that most designers use every single day. Lesley-Ann shares the backstory, key ideas and activities from her book, Design Social Change, emphasizing ways in which designers can lead a wave of social change.