Schools of Thoughts : 3

Photos + Surveys

Photos from the conference are now online at Flickr. After you browse and reflect, please respond to our brief survey to help us plan for an even better Schools of Thoughts in the future. Your feedback is very important to us!

Conference Reflections from Louise Sandhaus

Phew! It’s over and I’m overwhelmed by all the weighty words and thoughtful reflections. For me it was like trying to attend a 3-ring-circus while simultaneously keeping the lions and elephants in command. Now I’m trying to wrestle into some sense my observations – what resonated and what to grapple with. Hopefully others will contribute to this effort and together we can cull a valuable collective consciousness that results in much needed and required rethinking of our pedagogical models.

SOT3 Mapping Project: Where is the discipline heading and in what contexts are graphic designers working?
N Silas Munro, Terry Stone, Chris Vice, Florencio Zavala

We organize information on maps in order to see our knowledge in a new way. As a result, maps suggest explanations; and while explanations reassure us, they also inspire us to ask more questions, consider other possibilities.
—Peter Turchi, Maps of the Imagination

As the discipline of graphic design becomes more “media agnostic” we can no longer chart it's territories solely by the products of its practice. We must define the ever-“slippaging” borders of graphic design by the ideas and methodologies of its practitioners. What is depicted is an expanded, but ruptured field in constant flux. One that is loosely joined together by a wider definition of [graphic] “design as a conceptual operation.”
—N Silas Munro

For the duration of Schools of Thoughts 3 all conference attendees are invited to collaborate in creating a map of graphic design today. This map will attempt to locate graphic design at this very moment while considering what constitutes or delineates the current field and practice and in what direction it might be heading (or not). In Art Center cafeteria will be a magnetized chalkboard where you can write, draw, deviate, derive, dérive, pinpoint, and post. This collective activity will drive this work-in-progress (to wherever it ends). As we progress, we will be recording the procession of the map with periodic photographic documentation in order to preserve this—your most spontaneous form of scholarship.

Check out a mapping project done at CalArts

Southern California is a center for communications media:
television, film, and music production, web production,
video gaming, public entertainment and cultural spaces,
to name the more obvious.

These ubiquitous industries coupled with branding
concerns and ever penetrating advertising (to say nothing of
an emerging “do-it-yourself” ethic) is dramatically
changing the terrain that graphic designers navigate.

In such a territory, discreet disciplines that generate the work—
graphic design, advertising, interactive and motion design,
environmental and exhibition design, and even writing content—
seem increasingly difficult to discern.

How is education meeting these challenges?

How is design and other curricula teaching students to sort
through the tangle of options and prepare for a career,
or more likely careers, within them?

Specifically, what belongs in a graphic design curriculum,
or is a graphic design curriculum becoming a quaint notion?

Please plan to join co-chairs Denise Gonzales Crisp,
Louise Sandhaus and Petrula Vrontikas for the third
Schools of Thoughts Graphic Design Educators Conference.
If you absolutely cannot attend, please consider participating
in the discussion at the conference blog
Discussions among and tales betwixt.

"In his book Maps of the Imagination, Turchi not only inspires confidence about navigating and recording unknown territory—the creative process—he indirectly points to the defining role artists of every sort play as they translate their worlds. Turchi the writer reminds us that the practice of design is story telling at base, and eloquently illustrates how individual perspective and imagination produce the traceable contours of our moment." (dgc)

Announcing a moderated blog forum
Field Trip Like its namesake, this FORUM is meant as serious fun, a diversion from the regular curriculum, but still an important learning experience. Moderated by Kenneth Fitzgerald, the forum is open to all.