Four-Stage Task-Driven Teaching Reform for Applied Undergraduate Software Design Courses: A Case Study of Illustrator Commercial Design Instruction from the Industry-Education Integration Perspective

Abstract

For software courses in the visual communication design major of applied undergraduate programs, three long-standing challenges have restricted teaching effectiveness: students find it hard to break away from long-established bitmap-based design habits, creative expression often fails to align with industry standard specifications, and teaching content arranged by software menus is disconnected from real workplace workflows. Taking the "Icon Design and Commercial Logo Implementation" module of the Illustrator Software for Commercial Design Applications course as a research sample, this paper follows the concepts of industry-education integration and the "job-curriculum-competition-certification" comprehensive education philosophy, and constructs a four-stage progressive task-driven teaching system. The system covers standardized systematic icon design, creative web icon development, data visualization icon creation, and vector-based commercial logo delivery. This paper summarizes the core characteristics of the teaching system and puts forward optimization directions including deepening industry-education integration and building a school-enterprise dual-mentor system.