Alexander Cheek

About Me

Hello! I'm Alex, Visiting Assistant Professor of Design at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (where?). I come from the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh where I received my M.Des. in Information Design. Areas that I'm most interested in are theories and philosophies of design, information design, design for interaction, design research methods, and the wide applications of design thinking. Undergraduate study in information and graphic design at the RIT School of Design.

Additional interests include technology, politics, news and media, higher education, urbanism, industrial design, photography, travel, books and writing, the outdoors, and cycling. I wanted to become all sorts of things growing up—inventor, teacher, scientist, journalist, and New Yorker cover artist — and as a designer I get to study and work in many of the interesting fields I once thought to specialize in.

I’m a New Yorker who likes the Red Sox; I also like milkshakes and bagels. Browse as long as you'd like and drop me a note to say hello!

// arwcheek (at) gmail

Courses

Selected Topics on Design and the Human Experience (CMU Q)
Information Design (CMU Q)
Communication Design Fundamentals (CMU, CMU Q, Grad and Undergrad)
Designing for Service (CMU Q)
Industrial Design mini (CMU Q)
Typography II (RIT School of Design)
Information Design (RIT School of Design)

Lectures

The Design Concern for Knowledge
Gestalt Theory & Visual Vocabulary
Information Design
Typography — History & Best Practices
Designing Services
Human-Centered Design Research

Online Work

View Portfolio
Genealogical History
Digital Newsstand
Neighborhoods of Manhattan / Buy a Print
Population = Dunkin' Donuts
Classroom Salon / Poster

Thesis Abstract

The New York Times has long been associated as the “paper of record.” In recent years it has faced economic changes and advancements in technology that has led them to rethink and change their means to disseminate information. The fields and interests of design have changed in similar ways to the Times by moving from the creation of tangible artifacts to broader areas of studying and designing for human interaction and systems design. In this paper I use the Four Orders of Design to study the changes at the New York Times, and explore the four orders as they overlap with the concern for knowledge. In spite of all the changes at the Times, information is still their product and knowledge its by-product. They have created new objects of communication and interaction, forming new possibilities for their readers to connect and creating new pathways to information. This builds into their by-product of knowledge, which I propose as a “fourth order” concern — a value to both the Times and its readers made possible today more than ever integrating their three primary design activities of communication, construction, and interaction.



An 1887 map of Vineyard Haven, Mass. that I like.