Launching the Imagination: A Comprehensive Guide to Basic Design

Designed for courses in Creativity, Two-, Three- or Four-Dimensional Design, Launching the Imagination offers a comprehensive framework on which students, teachers, and administrators can build. The approach in this second edition is refined, distilled, and updated, using over 600 examples drawn from traditional and contemporary sources. Profiles with interviews of artists and designers introduce students to working processes, career choices, and criteria for excellence from a remarkable group of masters.

Launching the Imagination is available in a comprehensive volume treating 2D design, Creativity and Problem-solving, 3D design, and time-based (4D) design; or in split volumes containing either 2D or 3D design, plus the material on Creativity and Problem-solving.

Launching the Imagination’s Core Concepts in Art CD-ROM, version 2.0, which engages students interactively with the elements and principles of art through numerous interactive exercises, has been re-organized and expanded. A copy of this CD-ROM is included free with every copy of the textbook purchased from McGraw-Hill, a student-value of over $30, and is also available individually through your local bookstore.

Mary Stewart the Art Foundations Program Director at Florida State University. She is also the Vice President for Regional Coordinators for Foundations in Art: Theory and Education (F.A.T.E.), which is the national organization for Foundation teaching.

As an artist, Stewart has worked extensively with visual narrative, both in the classroom and in her studio. She has received two grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts for collaborative choreography and has participated in over eighty exhibitions, nationally and internationally.