Aggie Toppins receives 2023 Design Educator Award in Teaching by Design Incubation

Associate Professor Aggie Toppins, chair of undergraduate design, has been awarded the 2023 Design Incubation Communication Design Educator Award in Teaching for her spring 2023 course “Making History: Teaching Design History Methods in Studio.”

The course — supported by a faculty teaching development award from the Sam Fox School — invited eight undergraduate and graduate students to explore historical research methods and contexts for design and apply them to their studio work.

Students learned to gather information, examine sources, interpret evidence, connect design to social contexts, and craft historical narratives in text and image. 

Throughout the semester, students visited local archives and museums, including WashU Special Collections and the Dowd Illustration Research Archive where they spent time with primary sources; the Gateway Arch; the Missouri History Museum, where they learned about the 1904 World’s Fair; and the George B Vashon Museum.

Toppins also arranged for guest lecturers, including Sarita Sundar, founder of Hanno, a consultancy that visualizes and curates diverse narratives with a particular focus on museum, heritage and social communication. 

Students kept a sketchbook or “field guide” throughout the semester, recording their ongoing reflections on activities, readings, and in-class debates, and notes on research. In most cases, the sketchbook helped students locate the topic for their final, self-guided project. Final projects ranged from a book about an abandoned city in China to drawings based on oral histories of trans experiences in St. Louis to a brand identity for a fake museum dedicated to the Pruitt-Igoe story.

Some of the student work from the course will be featured in Toppins’ forthcoming book, “Thinking Through Graphic Design History,” expected to be released by Bloomsbury in 2025. In 2023, Toppins shared the results of the course at the Midwestern Art History Society conference in Milwaukee and will do so again in Singapore at the 2025 International Conference on Design Principles & Practices.