Mission
To support the college curriculum and the mission of the LRC by creating media-rich web projects for Colby faculty, while collectively developing technical skills and production methodologies using the latest technologies.
To freely share with the academic and internet communities through Creative Commons licensing, GPL, and open content approaches.
To strike a healthy balance between developing deliverable products for faculty while allowing studio members to progress in directions of interest of to them.
Philosophy
The Design Studio is a creative team that uses project management structures to maximize the productivity of a small, dedicated staff. The Studio is built on a cooperative, non-hierarchical model in that there is no seniority, and no one voice counts more than another. The LRC Director is a studio member, not the chief or supervisor. We strive to teach and learn from one another, to learn by doing, and to constantly stay current with the state of the industry in web design.
Our aim is progressive design, with an eye to the future evolution of the web. We write in XHTML/CSS and aspire to migrating to XML/XSLT and Semantic Web applications in RDF. We actively seek the latest developments in design standards, applications, media codecs, and project management methodologies.
The Studio is a place for non-computer science majors to learn code, a place for scientists to explore their their artistic abilities, a place for students with the broad academic training garnered from a true liberal arts education to bring radical and critical thinking to a forum that encourages experimentation with a new media lexicon.
How We Got Here
The LRC Design Studio was founded in 2004 with the notion that an enormous amount of creative talent among LRC staff was going untapped, and Academic ITS staff could only handle so many faculty development projects at once. Enter the Design Studio. A team of creative and tech savvy students, with the guidance of the LRC director, could in theory develop media-rich web projects for faculty while continuing to grow and development their own skills, and, hopefully, have fun at the same time. Our pilot project and continuation is sponsored with the generous support of Information Technology Services.
We are the beneficiaries of a remarkable New Media Studies program, ASTP, offered once each Summer at the Center for Educational Technology at Middlebury. This competitive program draws applicants from colleges throughout the mid-atlantic and northeast, yet at least one Colby student has been admitted every year. The LRC has been very fortunate to employ all of the alumni of this program, and these students have formed the core of the Design Studio.
We welcome applications from any interested Colby student. Faculty interested in exploring project development should contact the LRC Director.
| Current Members | |
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Zachary Chandler:
Language Resource Center Director Zach manages everything at the LRC. From the more mundane inquiries on the location of staplers and other such stationery, to the more pertinent requests for the development of web or multimedia tools. Zach is the Studio's concept artiste and supervisor/ardent-fan. |
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Szymon Mikulski '05 (chemistry/psychology major):
Founding member/Senior Multimedia Specialist Szymon's specialty is web design. In particular, he is a self-taught PHP and MySQL guru. He is responsible for the dynamic nature of the Studio website and the Studio project websites. Szymon is also the originator of many bright ideas that come out of the Studio. |
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Clara Koh '05: (biochemistry/religious studies major):
Senior Multimedia Specialist Clara's area of excellence is design. And that is all she does...She is also known for spending hours drawing something only to trash it the next moment. Yes, she is not known for good foresight. |
