ART 418 · Charleston Southern University · Fall 2026
The semester project
One project across the whole semester. You take a real product or technology that has no market yet and use design to take it toward one. First the strategy and the brand: choose an audience, pitch it, set the directions, build the identity. Then the brand becomes the foundation: the brand book, with the product-market fit plan inside it, and a landing page for signup, all made against the brand's own rules. Four milestones, each presented to the class, and each built through dated checkpoints between them; the full run is on the project page.
You start where a startup starts: with a product or a technology that works, and no customers. Some are offered in class, real ones from biotech, hard tech and software, each with a real problem attached. You can also bring one you found yourself, using the same methods we teach for finding problems. Whatever you pick, enough has to be published about it that a semester of research does not run dry. You are not redesigning the product: you find the people it is for, frame the business problem in design terms, and build the brand and the plan that could sell it.
Milestones and due dates
Every due date is a class day. Work is turned in on Blackboard, presented in class, or both. The late-work policy is in the syllabus.
Written twice. A first pass in the second week, made with AI in the open, and a final one in the last week, after a semester of work has given you something to say. Say what the machine did.
MonAug 31checkpoint
Personal statement, first pass
Six hundred words on the work you do and the work you want to be doing, made with AI in the open. Keep the prompts and keep the versions, and hand the statement in with a short note: what the machine wrote, what you cut, what you kept, and where you overruled it. Close on the worlds you already know: they are where your first audiences come from. Turned in on Blackboard.
MonDec 7checkpoint
Personal statement, final
The same statement, rewritten in the last week of the semester. What changed in it, what changed you, and which of the two you would rather show someone. Put the August version beside it. The AI note is written the same way it was in August.
The opening argument, built across September and recorded for September 21: the product, the problem it poses, the audience you chose, and the ideas you want to carry into the brand, as a deck you talk over for ten minutes. Say what the machine did.
MonSep 7no class
Labor Day
WedSep 9checkpoint
The audience
Three audiences who could want your product, a paragraph each: what problem it would solve for them, what they use today instead, and what that costs them. This is segmentation the way Davis teaches it in chapter 1. Say which one you are leaning to. Turned in on Blackboard.
MonSep 14checkpoint
The problem statement
One page framing the problem for the audience you are leaning to: who has it and how you know, what it is and what signs show it, why it is worth solving and what it costs unsolved, and where it shows up. Compressed to one statement from the audience's side, with every claim naming a source. Say what the machine did. Turned in on Blackboard.
MonSep 21milestone, recorded
The pitch, recorded
Submit your complete ten-minute video pitch: your slides on screen, you in a corner with the camera on, and your voice over them, exported as an MP4. Upload it to the Blackboard assignment before class; if the video will not upload, put a link to it in the submission text. The pitch includes your audience, problem, research, design direction, and next steps in Brown's five sections: objectives and outcomes, the problem elaborated, the design direction, supporting details, and next steps. Include your principles and boards within that presentation. Next steps covers scope, outputs, fidelity, a timeline against the milestone dates, priority, and what the work would cost. The complete video is the submission; no separate PDF or individual worksheets are due with it.
The pitch distilled to a creative brief in class, then two weeks of exploration: at least three moodboards, with the research behind them, presented in your updated pitch deck. Say what the machine did.
WedSep 30checkpoint, in class
The creative brief
The pitch, distilled to the creative brief: the nineteen sections from the Sep 28 class, from the problem and the insight to what gets built. Every section needs an answer; length is up to you. Written in class. Turned in on Blackboard as a PDF, or as a link to a shared document. Not graded on its own: it counts toward Milestone 2, and a missed checkpoint is not made up. This is the document the brand answers to for the rest of the semester.
WedOct 7checkpoint
The moodboards, in progress
Two or three moodboards as they stand, in one PDF on Blackboard by 1:30, and on the screen at the start of class. None of it is graded on polish. It is there so the exploration happens in the open, and not the night before the presentations.
MonOct 12no class
Fall Break
WedOct 14milestone, presented
The explorations
Your pitch deck, updated and presented again in class. Add what you have learned since the pitch and the creative brief, then at least three moodboards, and talk through each one: what it is for and where the brand could go. Three minutes, latest version up first. Say what the machine did.
The brand itself, built as the answer to the brief, and the largest body of work in the semester. At minimum it carries a mark, a palette, the type, the voice, and three applications. Say what the machine did.
MonOct 19checkpoint, in class
The direction and the first rules
Out of your explorations, commit to one direction for the brand and defend it against the brief: which of its words it answers best, and what the alternatives would have cost. Then start writing it down the same day: the first rules, each named for the decision it came from, go into the repository before you leave. Made in the studio, in the room, so the build and the book start together.
WedOct 28checkpoint
The rules, written for a machine
Every choice in your brand, written down as a rule someone who has never met you could follow: a person or a machine. The parts with exact values, like colors and type sizes, become data a machine can read; designers call these tokens. The judgment calls, like what the voice sounds like, what the brand refuses to say, and where it says it, stay as plain written instructions. Then hand it all to a model and keep the receipts: what you asked for, what came back, and which rule each failure points at. Started in class on October 21 and built in the repository, not a new document.
MonNov 2checkpoint, in class
The system, reviewed
By now the machine has been making things under your rules for two weeks, so this is a review, not a rewrite. The whole system laid out: the brand data, the rules, the written instructions, and the skills you have built for the machine, read as one thing. What the runs taught you gets folded in, what drifted gets reconciled, and the rest of class is studio time on the brand, which is presented Wednesday.
WedNov 4milestone, presented
The brand
The built brand, pinned up and argued for. At minimum: a mark, a palette, the type, the voice, and three applications. That is a directed identity, not a finished system; the brand book is where it gets finished. Boards are up before class starts, so the three minutes go to the argument. The deck is rebuilt again and the brief rides in it; where the brand disobeys the brief, say so and defend it. Say what the machine did.
Where the semester lands: the finished brand book, with the product-market fit plan as its go-to-market chapter, and a landing page for signup, both made from the brand's own rules. Say what the machine did.
MonNov 16checkpoint
The brand book, drafted
The brand book in draft, holes marked as holes. Three parts. The brand: what it is and who it is for, the mark and how to use it, color with exact values, the type scale, layout and spacing, voice with worked examples, and misuse drawn from real mistakes. How it sells: the audience, the channels, the message in each place, the offer and its price, and the result that would prove people want it. The appendix: every color, type, and spacing value written as data a machine can read. I mark up the draft overnight and it comes back Wednesday. The finished version, page-numbered and free of placeholder text, is due December 2.
MonNov 23checkpoint
The landing page, first build
The signup page, first build: the brand's rules driving a real page with one call to action, and what failed on the way. Bring the run that made it: the prompts, the rules, the commits. A first run that fails is normal and useful.
WedNov 25no class
Thanksgiving
WedDec 2milestone, presented
The brand book and the landing page
The close, presented: the finished brand book, its go-to-market chapter included, and the landing page live enough to sign up on, produced with the machine under your rules. A one-page handoff README comes with it: what it is, how to run it, and what it gets wrong. The work is due December 2 for everyone; the room presents across the last two class days, half on December 2 and half on December 7.
MonDec 7presented
Presentations, day two
The second half of the room presents, same format: run the system, show what it made, name what it got wrong. The work was due December 2; nothing new is turned in today.
Final versions
Everything is due by the end of the last class, December 7: the final versions of the brand book, the landing page, and the personal statement, in the repository and turned in on Blackboard. There is no exam-week meeting and nothing is due after the last day. The room has already seen every part of the project.
Dec 7
The last class
What is in the repository at the end of class is what is graded.
Finding the audience
Your personal statement points at the audiences you already know. Bring three candidates, each found in one of these four places, due Sep 9.
- A world you know
- A craft, a job you have held, a subject you are inside. You already know what the people in it buy and what they complain about.
- Your community
- A group or place you belong to. You can ask people directly what they need.
- Yourself
- You would use this product if someone sold it to you right. The risk is that you are the only one; the research will tell you.
- A wild card
- An audience that simply interests you. Held to the same evidence as the other three.
Problem framing
Problem framing is discovering and defining a problem your audience shares. It comes from design thinking, which puts people at the center of the work. Skip it and nobody can see what your product is for. Answer four questions, then compress the answers into one statement.
- Who
- Who has the problem, and how do you know?
- What
- What is the problem, and what signs show it?
- Why
- Why solve it, and what does it cost unsolved?
- Where
- In what circumstances does it show up?
Your problem statement is the four answers written as one short statement from the audience's side, due Sep 14.
The creative brief distills what the pitch settled: the client, the budget, the date, the audience, and the business problem. It is the reference every later phase answers to.
The deck
You prepare and present a deck of your research and initial insights: nine slides, three minutes.
01
Cover
The subject, one line saying what it is, your name and the date. No version number; the repository tracks versions.
02
The product
What it is and what it can do, compressed out of your problem statement. One slide. The source is on it.
03
The audience
Specific people, named the way you would name them to a client. Not a demographic bracket.
04
The problem
One sentence, set large, alone on the slide. If it needs a second sentence it is two problems.
05
The evidence
What you actually found, sourced. This slide decides whether the problem is real.
06
What they buy today
What the audience uses instead, and what those choices cost them.
07
The four questions
Who, what, why, and where, answered short. This is where a bad problem gets caught early.
08
What you do not know
The open questions, written down as questions. Every honest deck has some.
09
What the machine did
The three lines. Same format as everything else you hand in.
How you show your work
The work lives in one repository, with a running log of what you decided and what the machine did. How to set both up, and what a good entry looks like, gets its own note early in the term.
- The stand-up
- Work sessions open with three minutes each, screen up: what moved, what is stuck, what you will have done by next time. Participation is graded here. The rest of the session is yours to work in, with me in the room.
- Say what moved
- When a piece is re-presented, one line on what changed and why: critique, evidence, or the machine.
- What the machine did
- Three lines closing every piece you hand in: the tools you used by name; what you asked for and what came back; what you changed, cut or overruled. "None" is a complete answer.
- The rule under all of it
- Use AI on anything in this course, and defend everything you turn in as your own decision. Check every fact a model gives you; when one fails in the room, the error is yours.
How it is graded
Every piece of work is graded on the same four counts, each a quarter of that piece's grade. Participation and presentations are graded on their own; their weights, and each milestone's, are in the syllabus.
- Process · 25%
- Contributing to discussion and critique, and improving the work as a result of research and iteration.
- Concept · 25%
- Responding to the problem inventively, and thinking critically about the work in light of critique and reading.
- Resolution · 25%
- Making work that is effective and appropriate to its concept and its context.
- Craft · 25%
- Care in the manufacture of the work, and technical ability in the making of it.