PROFILE

Gary Rozanc is a designer, educator, programmer, & researcher living in Chicago Illinois.

Profile

Biography

Things don’t always turn out as planned and sometimes that’s a good thing.

In 2001 Gary Rozanc dreamed of transitioning from production and occasional freelance designer to Principal of his own firm. To achieve this dream Gary decided to arm himself with knowledge of the design practice beyond production.

What came after enrolling at Cleveland State University in 2003 was a complete surprise to Gary. Instead of running his own firm, Gary fell in love with design education. This love for education motivated Gary to earn a Masters of Fine Arts degree from the University of Arizona.

This path lead Gary to a tenure track, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design position at Columbia College Chicago. Now Gary gets to design curriculum that has been recognized and presented nationally.

Gary still loves to design and his work has been published and exhibited nationally. Currently, Gary’s practice is focused on humor and design’s role in K–12 education as a method for teaching Social Studies and Language Arts.

TEACHING

Teaching

Upon finishing graduate school at the University of Arizona I was hired as an Assistant Professor of Art at Truman State University where I started the blog Use A Concept for my students. Currently, I am an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Columbia College Chicago and co-faculty advisor of the AIGA student group Students in Design.

AIGA Student Group

Students in Design Blog
Show Us Your POSTERior
Flickr Page

Class Blogs

History of Design
Website Design
Motion Design

Student Centered Initiatives

Use A Concept
Proof Positive

PROJECTS

Projects

Being a full time tenure track professor will radically change your design practice. Client meetings are replaced by committee meetings, cold calling is replaced by grant writing and design competitions are replaced by conference proposals.

However, the freedom teaching provides allows me to pick projects that are close to the heart, ranging from civic to silly.


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Out of Left

Ongoing
Letterpress & Silkscreen

Project Overview:

I often get the urge to craft. Wether it's a poster, a card, a notebook, etc. However, that urge to craft doesn't always seem to follow any pattern or theme. That's when it hit me. The lack of a theme is the theme. So when I randomly get the urge to craft it becomes part of my Out of Left series.

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365 Project

August 2011–December 2011

Project Overview:

In August 2011 I decided to start a 365 Photo project. Each day I take photographs of items I find interesting, capture the essence of the moment or are just silly. You can follow along with my daily progress at 365 Project. You can go to my Flickr 365 Project Collection to see an archive of all the 365 Project photos I've taken.

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Holiday Cards

December 2010–December 2011

Project Overview:

In December 2010 I decided to start designing and letterpressing my own holiday cards. The cards are meant to be silly and capture the spirt of the holiday.

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Room 612

March–June 2011

Project Overview

For eight weeks William Gray Elementary School's room 612, headed by teacher Monica Gil, collaborated with Associate Professor Gary Rozanc of Columbia College Chicago and it's Center for Community Arts Partnerships (CCAP). Ultimately the partnership encouraged the use of design and technology to reenforce the learning outcomes of the classroom and increase student achievement and deepen student engagement and motivation.

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Sweethearts®

February 2011

Project Overview:

To commemorate and commiserate Valentines Day I payed tribute to one of the most iconic, and chalky, pieces of Valentines Day ephemera, the NECCO® Sweethearts®. To create this homage and demonstrate both the ephemeral qualities of Valentines Day and Love, children’s sidewalk chalk created messages of love eternal and love ephemeral.

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The Arts of Life

May 2010

Project Overview

The Arts of Life website and rebrand, a group of amazing artists with mental, physical and developmental disabilities, was a true collaboration between a team of graphic designers as part of a creative rally for EPIC.

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Pavement Memoirs

May 2008

Project Overview

Pavement Memoirs seeks to understand the effects of population shifts in urban environments by inviting community members to share stories and photographs that define the particular environments they live in.

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Relief?

May 2007
17" x 22"

Project Overview:

As one portion of a larger campaign, the Relief? poster series revealed the inefficiencies of the federal government and the mismanagement of taxpayer funds.

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Relief?

May 2007
Video

Project Overview:

As one portion of a larger campaign, the Relief? video series revealed the inefficiencies of the federal government and the mismanagement of taxpayer funds.

RECOGNITION

Recognition

February 2012

Gary will be co-chairing an authoring session titled Citizen Designer: Authoring a Definition at the 2012 College Art Association Annual Conference.

May 2011

Gary and Alyson Beaton participated in a panel discussion at the Open Engagement conference held at Portland State University.

April 2011

Gary served as an interactive judge for the 2011 Summit Creative Awards competition.

February 2011

Gary was selected to participate in the Typeforce 2 exhibition.

January 2011

Gary was selected to participate as a graphic/interactive designer for EPIC’s creative rally, hosted by Element 79, for the 100 Black Men of Chicago.

January 2011

Gary and Alyson Beaton had two papers, Empathy Through Research: Shifting Generation Me From the Focus of Self and Examining a Problem Based Design Curriculum, accepted to be presented at the Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities.

October 2010

Gary and co-author Alyson Beaton presented their paper Citizen Designer: The education of sustainable design at the conference Green, Greener, Greenest: Romancing Nature Again, hosted by the Humanities and Sciences Department of the School of VISUAL ARTS.

October 2010

Gary and Alyson Beaton participated in a co-authoring session at the AIGA design education conference New Contexts/New Practices hosted by North Carolina State University.

August 2010

Gary took part in the online judging of over 2000 posters for the international Poster for Tomorrow competition titled Death is Not Justice.

June 2010

Gary and co-author Alyson Beaton presented their paper Designing Designing: Examining a problem based design curriculum at the 6th Annual National UCDA Design Education Summit.

May 2010

Gary and co-author Alyson Beaton presented their paper Re-Claiming Leadership: The designer’s overdue response_ability at the AIGA Design Education Conference response_ability: ethics and sustainability in design education.

February 2010

Gary was selected to participate as a graphic/interactive designer for EPIC’s creative rally, hosted by Plural, for the Arts of Life.

September 2009

Gary’s student centered blog Use A Concept was one of HOW’s top ten websites for designers.

COLOPHON

Colophon

Designer/Coder

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MediaTemple (dv)

HTML/CSS Editor

Coda

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TypeKit

Fonts

Museo + Museo Slab

Background Photo By

Kyle @ ishootrockstars.com