256

The 256 Project is an intensive image-gathering and editing exercise designed to help you uncover and articulate your creative and intellectual interests. It approaches the designer as an editor: someone who does not simply make images, but selects, connects, frames, and gives meaning to what is already around us.

The collection becomes a way of thinking — a visual research process through which your interests begin to take form. This is both a research exercise and a design project. It asks you to think expansively, develop a critical position toward the images and information you encounter, and sharpen your ability to create meaning through selection and relationships. The questions that emerge will become a starting point for your year-long capstone project.

An initial research question will emerge from the 256 Project and serve as the starting point for two prototypes, each exploring the question through a different medium. Making is a form of thinking, so your question may shift and evolve naturally through this process of experimentation and iteration.

Prototype I

Develop a first prototype that explores an aspect of your research question through communication design. A prototype does not need to be a first version of the entire thesis project; instead, it should focus on something specific: a question, an interaction, a fragment of visual language, a material, or a connection you want to investigate. Document the process, including iterations and the feedback you receive, in your Living Archive. The prototype may become part of your final Thesis 1 presentation.

Prototype II

Develop a second prototype that takes a different approach to your research, building on what you learned from Prototype I. Continue to experiment through the means and perspectives of communication design, considering how the work communicates and connects to a larger system or context. Use this process to further define your own position and practice as a designer. Document the process, including iterations and feedback, in your Living Archive. Both prototypes may be further developed or incorporated into your final Thesis 1 presentation.

Thesis Proposal

Your thesis proposal brings together the thinking and making you developed throughout the fall semester. Drawing from your Living Archive and Prototypes I and II, it articulates a clear direction for the spring and proposes how your thesis might take form. Consider what you want the work to communicate, who you want to engage, and what impact you want it to have.

Living Archive

Throughout Thesis, keep a Living Archive of your process.

Finished images and texts can be generated by AI in seconds. The process behind your work becomes increasingly important. That is why documenting and materializing that process is a key aspect of Thesis. This is not additional work — it’s a practice of collecting all your research, notes, references, experiments, failures, questions, conversations, observations, and even seemingly random visual inspiration in one place.

You can choose a format that works for you. It could be a physical notebook, a Google Doc, a website, a collection of images, a film, or something else entirely. What matters is that you keep it alive throughout the year.

Think of the archive as a record of how your project — and your thinking — develops. It will become an interface for conversations with your faculty and peers, but it can also become part of how you communicate your practice beyond Thesis. When applying for future jobs, residencies, or graduate programs, how you think and work may be just as interesting as the final outcome.