Prof Eugene Young Discusses Future-Making Conceptualization with Product Design 2 Class
As in every Fall semester, the second group project in Prof Carvalho’s Product Design 2 class focuses on the relationship between design and climate change. Students are challenged to conceive and execute projects looking at improving the health of communities, peoples, and other living beings, while addressing issues of climate justice, within the broader global environmental crisis we face as a society.
To support the development stage of the group’s projects in their attempt to design for desirable futures, Assistant Professor Eugene Young came to the class and presented his creative work in design and illustration to inspire and guide the imagination of the students.
Prof Young’s long-standing career as a world-maker of Afrofuturistic alternative realities provided conceptual and technical food for thought for the class, in a moment they were dwelling on the creation of their original designs. His research and commercial work on sci-fi and fantastical narratives presented an avenue for innovation free of constraints that complemented the more pragmatic, solution-focused requirements of the assignment.
Thank you, Prof Young, for sharing your talent and thoughts with the class!
Eugene Randolph Young, M.F.A. is a graphic designer, illustrator, fine artist and educator. Since 2007, he has served as part-time faculty in City College of San Francisco’s Visual Media Design department. There, he developed new curricula for courses in Adobe Illustrator, storyboarding, visual development for animation, rapid visualization and the recently-launched Practices of Making maker studies course. At Dominican University of California, he taught courses in graphic design, digital painting and graphic novel. At the California College of the Arts, he teaches the first and longest-running open enrollment digital drawing and painting intensive.
He received his Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) degree in Illustration from the Academy of Art University, Bachelors of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) with distinction in Graphic Design from the California College of Arts and Crafts and an Associate in Arts (A.A.) degree in Graphic Design from City College of San Francisco.
His professional practice currently focuses on the independent production of original afrofuturism-inspired comics, science fiction and fantasy illustration.
