RIT Creates Cross-Media Innovation Center to Address Concerns of Graphic Communications Industry

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The first summit will be Oct. 18–19 in downtown Rochester at the Hyatt Regency hotel to coincide with RIT’s Brick City Homecoming & Family Weekend.

The School of Media Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology has created a Cross-Media Innovation Center to promote interdisciplinary research between RIT faculty and the graphic communications industry. These research areas may include the creation and organization of digital content, analysis of consumer and business data to better understand behaviors, the layout and assembly of graphical images and the deployment of content to all media channels.

The center will be a vendor-equipped laboratory with the most current software and systems from firms that make up the cross-media value chain such as Adobe, HP and Xerox Corp. RIT’s School of Media Sciences is expanding its labs to accommodate a cross-media innovation lab, a marking technology lab (lithography, flexography, screen and digital printing systems) and a material science lab. All these labs will be used for research and education for the school and the Cross-Media Innovation Center.

“The time is right to build a new model of collaboration for the School of Media Sciences and the industries that it serves,” says Lorraine Justice, dean of RIT’s College of Imaging Arts and Sciences. “With the new faculty and administration in the School of Media Sciences and the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences where the school is housed, I am eager to start a dialogue on how we can serve the graphic communications industry in a meaningful way.”

The center will foster on-going dialogue with industry partners by hosting an annual summit. Participants will come from all areas of the graphic communications industry. To register for the conference, go to RIT's Cross-Medial Innovation Center Summit website and click on register.

Adds Chris Bondy, administrative chair of RIT’s School of Media Sciences: “The changes in our industry require that future graphic communications professionals understand the integration of all types of media. They must learn how to design, compose, and deploy content across media including print, Web, mobile and social channels.”