CommDe’s Open Studios are elective courses for students and leading practitioners to come together and share theories and practices from various fields and aligned to the CommDe curriculum. 2023 has seven outstanding programmes that run from February to May.

Cabinet of Curiosity: Hands-on Bookbinding and Mill Board Box-Making

Phantipa Thanchookiet

Cabinet of Curiosity explores the age-old craft of bookmaking, with hands-on traditional bookbinding in various methods also mill board box-making. During the programme, basic skills will be a foundation for students to experiment with other forms of construction, new techniques and materials. These practices can be applied to publication design, packaging design as well as personal projects. Student will learn to make books and boxes in various formats, exploring suitable materials and formats.

Tangible Interactive Art

Palodh Pitanpitayarat

This programme starts from illustrating how technology-new media-influenced the design industry; and how it continues to affect the way artists and designers now work. Students acquire basic tools on Touchdesigner and Arduino to make generative, interactive artworks or control simple electronic elements such as led-light and sensors. Building their own simple project, students will focus on specific tools based on their own interests while guided by the lecturer. The programme completes with student presentations.

Designing Brand Identity with Farmgroup

Tap Vorathis and Farmgroup

Students spend eight weeks developing the brand strategy and brand identity for an assigned brand. This will include name, tagline, visual identity, look and feel, and a design experience mood-board to develop a deeper understanding of the branding process. Students gain an understanding of best practices for building brand identity.

Guerilla Thinking Through Making–An Innovation Workshop

Graham Newman

When we are making ‘things’, we are doing more than merely reproducing an abstract idea or an image in our mind. Whether it’s coding using a high-level language or physically putting material together with tools or using robotics, making activities allow the mind to be in a constant state of learning throughout the experience.This four day workshop will explore how design can play a strategic role in Thai society and the economy, by using design methods and approaches to collaborate with people and organisations outside the design discipline itself. Putting product service systems at the heart of the workshop requires designers to think and work more broadly and more strategically in response to large-scale societal challenges such as Thailand’s S-curve industies and the disruption of traditional industries.

Reflexivity Revisited

Sulki and Min

This programme explores and experiments with ways to incorporate a designer’s personal, critical view of graphic design in the designer’s work itself. Reflexivity–a work that refers to its own reality in the world–has been an important feature in art history. It has also been a crucial aspect in the critical practice of graphic design. Indeed, one can say that reflexivity is the key feature of critical practice, or practice as critique, that differentiates it from critical discussion of the subject. With the capacity to reflect on its own construction and materiality, a practical work can also be discursive and illuminate the dominant assumptions and conventions of graphic design. We have always been fascinated by this reflexivity in design, and tried variously to incorporate the quality in our work. But we also need to start talking about it, since there is a need for shifting the focus of contemporary graphic design discourse from semi-automatic responses to “top trends” or obsession with “optimal solutions” to more mature and nuanced discussions. In this program, we will discuss reflexivity in the context of critical practice of graphic design, and conduct a workshop with the theme.

So You Want To Pitch to Netflix?

Nigel D’Sa

With the emergence of major streaming networks and the increasing democratization of content production, the new generation of storytellers and filmmakers have opportunities like never before to bring their ideas to the screen. If you dream of writing your own feature film or TV series, the first step is understanding traditional story structure and the art of the pitch deck. Student groups will craft a 20-30 slide pitch deck for an imagined feature film or tv series. Students will also have the option to ‘reverse-engineer’ a popular film. This course teaches students how to prepare a pitch deck for streaming giants such as Netflix, Disney, and HBO. It is not a course in screenwriting, but in pitching a story concept and presenting your main characters in a compelling way. The session aims to convey the art of three-act structure, character arcs, and themes. We will learn story design, how to write a logline, drafting an ‘elevator pitch’, using cinematic references to present the genre, mood, and aesthetics, and even selecting an ideal cast to play your characters. Session outcome will be to prepare a story concept pitch deck that is ‘Netlfix-ready’. Students will know how to format and what to highlight in a PPT pitch deck for a feature film or tv series concept.

3D Aesthetics

Eiji Sumi

It is more and more imminent that 3D aesthetics and the use of 3D contents are changing the creative landscape. Recent development in 3D-related industries may be more influential for our life in the near future, such as Games, NFT, VR, A, Metaverse, Online Contents and countless others. In this programme, Autodesk Maya, one of the leading 3D program to create state-of-the-art visuals and animation for 3D designers will be introduced. The workshop aims to open opportunities for students to learn Maya and and also open the doors of the world of Character Animation. Students will study Maya 101, Rigging, and Pose, developing foundational and a deeper knowledge of 3D software.

Next