Prerequisite(s): VIST 102; and VIST 105 or VIST 106. This course considers the long history of visual communication design -- from the earliest forms of icon-making and the invention of writing to the rise and eventual industrialization of print culture, the development of modern advertising and brand identities, and the ways that ‘the digital turn’ and the proliferation of screen culture is currently affecting the field. Students will be introduced to key designers and to watershed designs, while also working to thematize and deconstruct many of visual communication design’s most central terms: type, transparency, modularity, the grid, pattern, and notions of rhythm and balance will all be considered both formally and ideologically speaking. Equivalent course ARHT 262 effective through Fall 2021.