CityTech COMD·Design Incubation·AIGA DEC / DRS workshop corpus

A Reference System for
Communication Design

Eight interlinked documents — a faceted glossary, three field atlases, two theory references, and two relational maps — built from workshop transcriptions, coursework vocabularies, and published scholarship. Every entry carries its source line; editorially supplied content is flagged, never silently attributed.

930glossary terms · 6 facets

8discipline domains

31theory frameworks

24adjacent fields mapped

5research traditions

5provenance tiers

How it fits together

The system, mapped

Sources flow into a shared data layer, and the data layer feeds the documents. Dashed boxes are external source material; the gold box is the shared dataset backbone; solid boxes are the eight documents of this site. Click any document node to open it.

Diagram is an editorial synthesis of the build lineage documented in each page's own methodology note.

IVocabulary

The term layer

The discipline's working vocabulary, consolidated across coursework, workshop tags, and reference glossaries — with per-entry provenance preserved through every merge.

Unified Faceted Glossary

3rd edition · interactive

Around 930 terms, browsable by concept or alphabetically and filtered across six facets: Domain, Kind, Medium, Provenance, Collection, and Scope. The 3rd edition merges the Consolidated Glossary (771 entries, six sources) with the Design Incubation tag supplement (101 supplement-only entries; 29 duplicates merged, consolidated definition winning with supplement provenance appended) and 58 newly added Spevack ADV 1100 terms — 16 Spevack terms already covered retain their existing sourcing.

930 terms
6 facets
2 views
strip-down guarantee

SourcesConsolidated Glossary (6 sources) · Design Incubation tag supplement (~1,500+ post tags) · CityTech COMD coursework: Brodeur ADV 1160/1200, Trager ADV 1161, Spevack ADV 1100 (Spring 2013). Item-level source lines unchanged; course-level traceability preserved under a single provenance value.

Open the glossary →Removing DI-supplement, Spevack & general-knowledge items leaves only consolidated-source terms

IIAtlases

The field layer

Three atlases charting the field itself: what two rooms of design educators said it contains, how it teaches, and how it — and its neighbors — conduct research.

Combined Field Atlas

Mapping design research & scholarship

The same crowdsourced sticky-note exercise, run independently at AIGA's Design Educators Community and a Design Research Society conference, merged into one reference document — with a unified field atlas, a full index of every named source across both rooms, and a clearly marked added layer filling gaps the two rooms left open.

2 workshops
21+ atlas categories
sources index
4-tier marking

SourcesDEC-Mapping of Design Research and Scholarship (AIGA DEC edition) and DRS_FoE_Mapping_of_Research_and_Scholarship.pdf — photographed corkboards of anonymous sticky notes, both apparently produced by Design Incubation. Named persons, institutions, publications, and URLs kept exactly as participants wrote them, compiled into a single index.

Open the field atlas →Participant · inferred · added layers marked throughout

Design Pedagogy, Process & Practice Atlas

v1.1 · 2026-07-11

Five chapters — foundations of design pedagogy, learning theory, design process models, practice, and assessment & critique — plus a 53-term glossary. Documents the Bauhaus/Ulm lineage, studio culture and the crit, the design methods movement, the IDEO/Stanford design-thinking lineage with verified process-model distinctions, and their critiques.

5 chapters
15 sections
53-term glossary
5-tier provenance

SourcesPublished pedagogy and design-methods scholarship, tiered: SRC (live-verified citations with venue/volume/pages), CAN (canonical attributions from standing literature), GEN (flagged editorial supply). ATLP/ATLI participant tiers are structurally present but empty — Design Incubation transcriptions were not available at build time, and nothing is attributed to a participant.

Open the pedagogy atlas →Rebuilds from data.json (included in /data)

Research Processes Across Disciplines

Reference atlas

A comparative outline of how five research traditions structure inquiry — design research, social science, humanities, empirical/experimental science — and the interdisciplinary processes that emerge where they meet in communication design. Each tradition is charted as a process arc with its methods and key sources.

5 traditions
process arcs
methods + key sources

SourcesVerified and canonical scholarship, keyed per claim in the document's numbered source list (e.g., Frayling's tripartite scheme of research into/through/for design; Cross's "designerly ways of knowing").

Open research processes →Sourcing keyed inline, verified & canonical distinguished

IIITheory

The theory layer

The theoretical canon underpinning communication design, in two renderings of the same map — a standalone reference and an atlas-integrated chapter.

Two editions, one map. The Reference Map is the standalone edition; Chapter VI is the same material integrated into the Combined Field Atlas's provenance system, where the entire chapter is tagged as added domain knowledge because the theoretical canon does not appear in the workshop transcripts. Publication facts marked Verified were confirmed against live sources on 9 July 2026; unmarked details are standard foundational scholarship pending catalog verification.

Theories of Communication Design

Cross-disciplinary reference map · standalone

Six clusters, thirty-one frameworks — communication & information theories, design theories & philosophies, the visual communication discipline, contributions from established disciplines, the fine arts, and design history & historiography. Each theory carries a definition, its key texts, and connection boxes tracing influence, opposition, and shared foundations across clusters.

6 clusters
31 frameworks
interconnection edges
consolidated sources

SourcesPrimary/foundational texts per theory. Several entries cross-checked against live sources; remaining references are standard foundational editions, flagged for verification against a library catalog before formal publication.

Open the reference map →Canonical theories, citation-forward

Theory Foundations — Chapter VI

Combined Field Atlas edition

The same cross-disciplinary map rendered inside the atlas's provenance system: every claim tagged by evidentiary basis (transcribed / inferred / added), individual publication facts carrying a finer Verified tag, and connection boxes explicitly marked as editorial synthesis rather than sourced claims.

~30 frameworks
tier-tagged claims
verified subset (9 Jul 2026)

SourcesIdentical canon to the reference map; provenance framing per the Combined Field Atlas three-tier system. The whole chapter sits at the "added domain knowledge" tier — supplied to fill an identified gap, not observed in the AIGA DEC / DRS source corpus.

Open Chapter VI →Connection boxes = editorial synthesis, marked as such

IVMaps

The relational layer

Two interactive visualizations built on the eight-domain taxonomy: how the domains connect to each other, and how the discipline connects outward.

Domain Intersection Map

Interactive network + faceted taxonomy

The eight domains of communication design charted as a network rather than a list — click a domain to trace its connections, or a line to see what specifically links two domains (a shared method, medium, or theoretical root). Beneath it, the consolidated glossary as a faceted hierarchical taxonomy: 596 terms in 18 categories, domain → category → term, with kind labels and source chips per term.

8 domains
596 terms
18 categories
kind + source facets

SourcesVocabulary terms and citations from five documents: the two workshop rooms via the Combined Field Atlas (tiers preserved), Brodeur ADV 1160/1200 and Trager ADV 1161 course lists, the Glossary for Designers reference, and the earlier Communication Design Glossary. The intersection descriptions themselves are a stated synthesis — a working analysis to test and revise, not a cited fact set.

Open the intersection map →Dashed-chip entries = requested editorial expansions

Interdisciplinary Crossover Map

Domain cards · field map · radial chart

Twenty-four external disciplines across eight domains, in four views: domain cards, a clustered field map, a radial chart, and a sources index. Each external field is listed once with colored dots marking which domains it intersects; every crossover claim opens to a detail panel with its supporting sources.

8 domains
24 fields
4 views
per-claim citations

SourcesAn original synthesis, not a reproduction of a single published framework — the cited works are the canonical texts and bodies of scholarship each crossover claim rests on. Claims reflecting widely held professional practice rather than a specific text are noted as such.

Open the crossover map →Synthesis disclosed; citations per crossover

Methodology

Provenance, everywhere

The documents share one editorial constitution: every entry carries its source line, editorial supply is flagged rather than silently attributed, and factual conflicts are preserved, not quietly resolved. The Pedagogy Atlas states the fullest form of the tier system; the other documents use compatible three- and four-tier variants.

Five-tier provenance system from the Design Pedagogy Atlas
Tier	Meaning	Status in current build
SRC	Source-verified — publication facts confirmed by live web search at build time; citations include venue, volume, and pages where available.	Active
CAN	Canonical — widely attested scholarly attribution from the standing literature, not individually re-verified against the primary document in this build.	Active
GEN	Editorial / general knowledge — supplied by the editor without a named source; removable without loss of sourced content.	Active · always flagged
ATLP	Participant transcription — direct language from Design Incubation workshop transcriptions.	Awaiting source material — no entries
ATLI	Participant inferred — relocated or paraphrased participant language from Design Incubation transcriptions.	Awaiting source material — no entries

The strip-down guarantee

Remove all GEN, supplement, and general-knowledge content, and what remains is traceable to a named author, document, or publication. This holds in the glossary, the pedagogy atlas, and the taxonomy views.

Merges are explicit

Where duplicate entries appear across sources, the consolidated definition wins and supplement provenance is appended, never overwritten. Near-match merges and ambiguous assignments are flagged for review.

Conflicts are preserved

Factual disagreements in the literature — such as the multiple circulating dates for the Double Diamond — are documented as conflicts in the atlas rather than arbitrarily resolved.

Verified ≠ canonical

Live-confirmed references (SRC, checked 9 July 2026 for the theory chapters) are labeled separately from standard foundational texts, which remain flagged for independent catalog verification before direct quotation.

Empty layers stay visible

Where source material is not yet available — the Design Incubation transcription tiers — the structure is built and left explicitly empty rather than papered over, so the participant layer can be added without rebuilding the rest.

One data spine

Documents rebuild from shared datasets — the pedagogy atlas from data.json (v1.1, included at /data/data.json), the glossary views from the consolidated term dataset — via Python and Node.js scripts, so corrections propagate rather than fork.

Sources

The source corpus

Every named source feeding the system, grouped by kind, with the documents each one feeds. Per-entry and per-claim citations live inside the documents themselves — this index is the corpus-level view.

Workshop material

DEC-Mapping of Design Research and ScholarshipAIGA Design Educators Community workshop — photographed sticky-note corkboard (PDF)→ Field Atlas · Intersections taxonomy
DRS_FoE_Mapping_of_Research_and_Scholarship.pdfDesign Research Society conference workshop — photographed sticky-note corkboard→ Field Atlas · Intersections taxonomy
Design Incubation tag supplementDerived from ~1,500+ post tags; 101 supplement-only entries, 29 merged→ Unified Glossary (3rd ed.)
Design Incubation workshop transcriptionsNot yet supplied — ATLP/ATLI tiers held open→ Pedagogy Atlas (pending)

CityTech COMD coursework

Vocabulary List A — Brodeur, ADV 1160/1200Course vocabulary list; anonymized at label level, per-entry traceability preserved→ Unified Glossary · Intersections taxonomy
Vocabulary List B — Trager, ADV 1161Course vocabulary list→ Unified Glossary · Intersections taxonomy
Spevack ADV 1100 vocabularyGraphic Design Principles I, Spring 2013 — 58 terms added, 16 already covered retain existing sourcing→ Unified Glossary (3rd ed.)

Reference glossaries

Consolidated Glossary771 entries across six sources — the merge substrate of the 3rd edition→ Unified Glossary · Intersections taxonomy
Glossary for DesignersReference document→ Intersections taxonomy
Earlier Communication Design GlossaryPrior-phase glossary→ Intersections taxonomy
UX Design Institute glossaryLive-verified reference→ Consolidated glossary lineage

Published scholarship

Theory canon (31 frameworks)Primary/foundational texts per theory — Shannon–Weaver, semiotics, Gestalt, Bauhaus/Swiss lineages, HCD & affordances, and more; consolidated source list in the Theories map→ Theories · Theory Ch. VI
Design research & methods literatureFrayling's tripartite scheme, Cross's designerly ways of knowing, the design methods movement, IDEO/Stanford lineage with verified process-model distinctions→ Research Processes · Pedagogy Atlas
Participant-cited worksWorks quoted inside the workshop corpus (e.g., an Audrey Bennett essay; Chris Jones's Design Methods diagram as redrawn in Meredith Davis's Graphic Design Theory; a Cheryl D. Miller line) — compiled in the Field Atlas sources index→ Field Atlas