“Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides.”
- RITA MAE BROWN
The 2026 Graphic Design Senior capstone exhibition, TRACEWORK, explores language, its layers, and its complexities. The exhibition examines intersections where perception, perspective, and power converge, revealing critical layers that inform, disinform, empower and/or disempower.
TRACEWORK presents seventeen transmedia projects that use communication design to share compelling stories. It serves as an invitation to recognize the intricate web of affordances within language and its capacity to impact society by shaping and reshaping narratives.
The Senior Graphic Design Capstone Exhibition is a culmination of each student-designer’s development within the program, creating a platform to present their evolution, practice and interests.
Designers
Instruction of course and Direction of Exhibition led by Professors JENNIFER BERNSTEIN and REBECCA PAULINE JAMPOL
featured PROJECTS
Venue
Established in 1979, the Paul Robeson Galleries’ mission and programming embody Paul Robeson’s life-long commitment to unfettered artistic freedom, cultural democracy, and transnationalism. The Galleries are dedicated to presenting art and cultural artifacts as well as educational and public programming in the spirit of the diverse metropolitan context of Rutgers University – Newark.
Upcoming Event
The Department of Arts, Culture & Media at Rutgers University–Newark is pleased to announce the 2026 Senior Graphic Design Capstone Exhibition, TRACEWORK, presented at Project for Empty Space at Ironside Newark, located at 110 Edison Place, Newark, NJ 07102 (Parkside).
The exhibition will open with a public reception on Thursday, April 16, 2026, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. It will remain on view and open to the public from April 16 through April 30, 2026.
“Language can be a weapon or a remedy; it's all about how you wield it.”
- AVA DUVERNAY
Photos above: Rachel Fawn
Department of Arts, Culture and Media
Rutgers University - Newark
University Heights, Warren Hall
110 Warren Street, Newark, NJ 07102
© 2026 ACM Graphic Design
