The lecture series, titled Counterforms: Practices, Theories, and Methods, hosted by the Graphic and Digital Design department (GDD) and organized by assistant professors Trevor Embury and Marcia Higuchi, provides a platform to explore the complexities of design across multiple modalities, including practice, advocacy, discipline, and ways of knowing. Participants will engage with academics and practitioners who challenge conventional understandings and reveal often overlooked dimensions of design.
By framing design as a catalyst for community building, boundary-pushing, and social transformation — as well as a disciplined practice grounded in theory and exploration —each session is designed to broaden perspectives, provoke critical inquiry, and foster pluralism.
The series invites participants to examine design as a field of study, tracing its historical foundations, engaging with contemporary challenges, and approaching it as a reconfigurative act — one that shapes experiences, interactions, and meanings. This exchange between academics and practitioners promotes dialogue and scholarship, cultivating an environment where diverse perspectives are not only valued but actively explored.
This year’s invited speakers include:
Leo Vicenti is an assistant professor of communication design at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and a member of the Jicarilla Apache Nation. He holds a BA in graphic design from Fort Lewis College and an MFA in visual communication design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Vicenti’s design practice focuses on revitalizing Indigenous languages through typographic innovation, including the development of the daanazaa typeface for Jicarilla Apache and Béshí, a revival of Menhart’s Parlament typeface adapted for Indigenous language use. He co-leads the Ezhishin Scholarship, established in partnership with the Type Directors Club and Google, to support Native and First Nations type designers. His teaching emphasizes Indigenous language preservation, typographic representation, and decolonizing design, while fostering curriculum and collaborative initiatives that centre Indigenous perspectives and sovereignty.
In his lecture on Thurs, Sept 24, Vicenti will examine how visual communication design can serve as a tool for Indigenous language revitalization, cultural representation, and design justice.
Joni Low is a Vancouver-born writer, curator, and SSHRC doctoral fellow at Simon Fraser University, where she explores intermedial and intersensorial art practices, synaesthesia, and interdisciplinary resonances across art, neuroscience, and the humanities. She served as curator-in-residence at Or Gallery (2016–17) and has curated and guest-curated exhibitions including Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau: 5 Tableaux (It Bounces Back) and Hank Bull: Connexion. Low is also the co-editor, with Jeff O’Brien, of What Are Our Supports?, a public, relational art project turned anthology. Her writing has appeared in Canadian Art, C Magazine, Fillip, The Capilano Review, and Yishu.
In her lecture on Mon, Oct 6, Low will explore the invisible supports that sustain creative communities, including relational infrastructures such as friendship, memory, and interdependence. Drawing on her curatorial practice and the What Are Our Supports? project, she will examine how non-material forms scaffold artistic engagement and foster collective resilience.
All lectures will start at 6pm in Building C, room C1422.
Leo Vicenti
Wed, Sept 24
6-8 pm
Abby C1422
Joni Low
Mon, Oct 6
6-8 pm
Abby C1422
https://field-of-study.com/CntrF
For more information, contact Trevor Embury at Trevor.Embury@ufv.ca
10/11/2025