Media Design and Information Technologies

August 29, 2013

Department of Media Design and Information Technologies

The Department of Media Design and IT for Media, though having an over-40-year history and thus being one of the earliest to appear at the Faculty, is today the department most open to innovation and future-oriented. Its strong focus on media practices - rather than on theory or research - has been creating a stable demand for its alumni both within and outside the media industry. Today this focus is supported by further orientation to digital technologies for media production.

Main subjects of study and research at the Department include:

    Media design (design and redesign for all media types, including web design and desktop publishing, app projecting and 3D animation) for journalism, as well as for advertising and public relations;

    Photo journalism, photo editing, illustration practices for book&media publishing industries, as well as photo+caption / photo+text interaction;

    Infographics, including interactives;

    Media technologies (from print to mobile journalism) and organizational principles of editorial offices;

    New media formats, rich media and digital publishing inter alia.

We teach several basic disciplines including ‘Media Technologies’, ‘Design for Media’, and ‘Basics of Visual Journalism’. But the main focus of the Department is on its profiling subjects that are taught in Years 3 and 4; it is one of the four ‘profilization’ departments of the Faculty of Journalism. The Department is also responsible for the Master Program ‘Media Design’.

The theoretical basis of the Department, as it is being developed today, is visual media anthropology. The scientific challenges that researchers face with the rapid development of visuality in today’s communication bring along a new, integral approach to studies of both production and perception of form, image, interface and emblematic objects. The interdisciplinary approach is based upon novel findings of arts and design theory, cultural and visual studies, classic and modern anthropology, semiotics, hermeneutics, journalism studies, aesthetics and usability studies, as well as on several other research areas.

The Department is deservedly proud of its methodological achievements in the area of teaching media design and photo journalism. A unique school of teaching media design rests on two pillars: best practices in graphic design&typographics plus the communicative aspects of the work of a designer, publisher, or picture editor. Media design is understood as not just a layouting practice but as, at least partly, a decision-making practice of the architecture of a media product based on usability, aesthetics, ergonomics, and perception theory. This is why practical teaching of media design in our basic modules - profilization classes, special and optional courses, creative studios and media labs - is intertwined with the theory of visual media anthropology. This allows media designers to be trained without having the first educational level in the area of arts or design.

Photo journalism is taught and studied on the basis of another unique development, which is typology of genres of media photo, as well as the ‘photo+text’ semantics&semiotics studies. The latter is really a point of strength of the Department, as media pics are considered irrevocably surrounded by the textual ‘con-text’, and our major works have so far been on this topic. As to practical photo journalism, it is taught by leading professionals in both Russia and the world, including Sergey Maximishin (several World Press Photo Awards) and Alexander Belenky (Best Photo of Russia Award 2011).

Our international connections include Germany, Italy, Finland, the US, CIS countries and other regions of the world. The Department regularly hosts international speakers and visiting professors, among those in 2012 Professor Ronald Inglehart (University of Michigan), Professor Horst Poettker (University of Dortmund), Chris Canipe (Wall Street Journal), David Herszenhorn (New York Times) and others.

Regular events of the Department include:

    A Section at the Annual graduate conference ‘Mass media in the modern world. Emerging scholars’ (March)

    A Section and a Roundtable Discussion at the Annual conference ‘Mass media in the modern world. St Petersburg readings’ (April)

    PhotoDay (April)

        International conference ‘Infographics and InfoDesign’ (May/June)

    DesignDay (December)

Besides its regular and single events, the Department is known in the city for its active exhibition activity. Starting from February 2013, it will be enriched with a ‘SketchBook’ («Tetrad’») project on alternative performance&action practices, lecturing on today’s arts and exhibitions of student works.

YAKUNIN Aleksandr

August 04, 2017

YAKUNIN Aleksandr Chair, Assistant Professor(‘Dozent’), PhD in Letters (‘kandidat nauk’)

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BELENKIJ Aleksandr

August 26, 2011

BELENKIJ Aleksandr Senior Lecturer

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BERTELS Vasily

August 25, 2011

BERTELS Vasily Senior Lecturer

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HAN Pavel

August 20, 2011

HAN Pavel Senior Lecturer

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KIPREEVA Nataliya

August 19, 2011

KIPREEVA Nataliya PhD in Philology (kandidat nauk), Senior Lecturer (starshy prepodavatel) Read more

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KRILOVA Lolita

August 18, 2011

KRILOVA Lolita Senior Lecturer

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MALINOVSKAJA Alena

August 16, 2011

MALINOVSKAJA Alena Senior Lecturer

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PODSHIVALOVA Natalya

August 11, 2011

PODSHIVALOVA Natalya Senior Lecturer

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