2019-2020 Spring Semester, brought about unforeseeable changes in our lives. As the pandemic precautions limited our face-to-face interactions, we found ourselves in a constant, full-time interaction with and through the screen. Though we would probably prefer a more balanced life with limited screen time, this forced interaction caused a worldwide awareness for visual communication design. Almost all users, from all walks of life realized the significance of a well-thought, well-designed visual interface and how it affects our computer-mediated communication. This year, despite the compulsory changes in our daily lives, the Visual Communication Design department stuck with its tradition of letting the senior year students pick any theme that they like for their graduation projects. Hence our 20 candidates for graduation tackled their self-defined design problems in various media with the objective of producing work at a professional level. This year, the VCD projects range from board games to illustrated books for children, from UI design to body positivity projects to designing your better self in the near future. A tribute to Zeki Müren comes alive in an illustrated book, while our regrets haunt us in another one. While some create meta-VCD solutions to inform our future students, others work on ways to encourage children to start recycling at a very early age or collect and illustrate children’s stories. User interfaces ranging from an app covering the cultural activities in İzmir, to an interface for video project management salute our current obsession with the screen. These are just a few of the creative solutions that our graduates-to-be bring to their self-authored problems, as our online exhibition is rich with visual stories that cover all the range from animation to wayfinding, from synesthesic to dyslexic tales. I send my warmest regards to the Class of 2020, may the force be with you!

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zeynep ARDA Department Head of Visual Communication Design