Introduction

In the Environmental Design (ED) program at OCAD we spent the last semester of our third year in a thesis preparation course. In this course, we go through a huge number of exercises to figure out what we're going to spend the next year working on. These exercises range from collages to poetry to inspirational maxims and thesis statements. Finally, we gather up our scraps of paper, edited documents and bubble diagrams, scan them, print them and test the taut boundaries or our graphic design knowledge by making the pages into a 45-odd-page "book".

The industrial Design (ID) student go through a similar process, researching and compiling the information and sources that will serve as the groundwork for their thesis explorations in the fall. We in ED look at their neatly labeled and organized binders with interest and a touch of envy, curious to see what such diligent investigation will grow into.

The essays you are about to read are explorations of the contents of our respective thesis books and binders, before they become thesis projects. We trust that their scop and idealism will speak to our mission, which is to showcase the broad research subjects we engage with daily, as design students. We hope further that the Shift series, of which this book is the first, will evolve into a resource not just for the students at OCAD but for students and designers everywhere.




Published Spring of 2007.