Fox Friday: Fueling creative practice at the intersection of writing and visual design
This workshop will help participants expand their creative practice by bringing the craft of writing and visual design together. Participants will generate a text and spend time working on visual iterations that combine visual and textual storytelling. Workshop leaders will demonstrate and discuss models for making design-writing, and offer individual feedback on participants’ creative experiments. Schedule of workshop 9-10am —HC + SM Introduce goals and outcomes, and show introductory work examples from their own practice. —Participants will be offered three writing prompts to develop a generative text and spend time freewriting. —SM + HC will introduce the diptych as a form + read aloud from model diptychs. —SM + HC will introduce theories of practice by reading aloud from Eric Dean Wilson’s “Regarding Diptychs.” 10-11am –HC will describe the relationship between designed and written elements in examples of her own work —Participants will begin visual sketches based on their generated writing, seated in small groups. Sketches can be done on the computer or by hand, using materials such as cut paper, etc. Participants will be asked to develop multiple design possibilities and discuss. —SM + HC will circulate around the room and talk to participants about the interaction between design and text in each of their working drafts. 11-11:30am —Level up: SM + HC will share a more sophisticated round of examples of design writing in the form of installation and large-scale visual essays. –Participants will spend time imagining, writing, and talking about “leveled up” versions of their working draft. 11:30-noon —Participants will share their working draft with the group on screen or in person.
Instructors: Sarah Minor and Heather Corcoran
Sarah Minor is a writer and interdisciplinary artist and the author of Carousel (Yale University Press 2026), Slim Confessions: The Universe as a Spider or Spit (Noemi Press 2021) and Bright Archive (Rescue Press 2020). She teaches in the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction MFA Program and serves as the Video Essay editor at Brink Literary Journal. Heather Corcoran is a graphic designer and a writer whose work explores data, place, and belonging. She makes maps and books with text, numerical data, and image. Her visual essays examine isolation and connection in the visual landscape. One of those, “First Deployment,” was published in Collective Inquiry into the Visual Essay: A Special Issue of AIGA’s Dialogue in 2023.
about fox fridays
Fox Fridays is a weekly, low-stress workshop series introducing the WashU community to overlooked or lesser-known tools, resources, processes, and ideas. It provides a platform for students to develop hybridized practices of creative output that transcend discipline, medium, and experience.