Designers are strategists, communicators, makers and entrepreneurs. We make cool stuff, and we make stuff cool. Oscar Wilde said, "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." How can we make our work stand out as distinctly ours in the midst of the many thousands of visual and verbal messages that we absorb each day? Are we able to be visible in the ocean of images produced by artists and designers around the globe? By bringing to attention the preconceptions, unconscious assumptions and beliefs, and the multitude of influences that shape us, we will open a path toward your personal, creative identity. An exploration of the fundamentals of two-dimensional design and how they relate to visual communication will take place through experimentation and critique in my course. Through hands-on exercises, assignments and independent projects, students will develop and refine their own visual language.