schoolsofthoughts3sub


Panel Discussions

  • Designing for Multiple Devices
  • Designing Systems for Designing
  • Field Trip
  • Research, Research Practice, Practice? What Good is a Terminal Degree?
  • Models for Integrating Media
  • How is Curriculum Anticipating Emerging Practices?
  • Design Opportunities in the Research University
  • The Thorny Generalist/Specialist Question
  • Graphic Design Off the Page
  • Look Left, Look Right, Look Up, Look Back: History, Theory and Writing in Studio
  • Literature, Graphic Design, Literacy
  • Models for Cross, Trans, Multi Disciplinary Practice

Additional Thoughts

  • More Topics to Come

Minority Rules

Let’s start with a truism: graphic design programs exist to produce graphic designers. It’s what the schools advertise they do and what students expect. That makes it only responsible for this (and every other) design education conference to discuss methods that will serve to turn out more qualified potential designers.

However, it’s a simple fact the majority of our graduates will not become working practitioners, irrespective of talent. There simply aren’t enough existing openings to accommodate the influx of new designers. Changing this reality in any significant extent is beyond our ability. (Economic forces are the primary determinant but designers need to work more of that “creating desire” on themselves.) For the foreseeable future—or longer—we will graduate more eventual non-designers than practitioners.

Should how and what we teach be affected by this reality? What, if any, responsibility do we have to these majority who will not become designers? Should we measure our success in number of graduates, number of working designers—or something else?

At ODU, twenty percent of our graduates have historically found work in design or design-related fields. (Our definition of the latter category may be too fluid for some but it’s always been a squeezing and stretching activity to define design.) For us, a design concentration under a studio art major at a regional state university, that’s good. But what about those other 80%? Even if the numbers were reversed, it’s a lot of people.

Of course, your results may vary. The mission, approach, and final results of an ODU, as opposed to a Portfolio Center, are different. (Do folks from Portfolio Center and such schools attend these kinds of conferences? Just wondering.) And there are a variety of institutions between and to either side of these two.  Plus, while we faculty should have a good sense who will join the profession after graduation; there’s plenty of unknown variables. We can’t be sure where someone will wind up.

At universities, we have a broader mandate within which the design study resides. It’s all those lib ed requirements that keep students out of the studio and require frequent rationalization for their utility. Art schools will also have liberal art cores. Arguably, these studies produce a well-rounded, broadly educated individual. As we know, being paraded through a curriculum doesn’t guarantee learning. But you get a better shot than not.

Design faculty may rightly feel that it’s the job of other departments to provide depth, breadth—and options. Our role within this structure is to support and partner with other studies. We can and should concentrate on graphic design. Issues of students’ personal fortune, interests, and ambition after graduation—the aspects that determine what they’ll do after school—are ultimately not our province.

But we’re affected by both the “successes” and “failures.” With design programs continually burgeoning, an increasing number of design-trained non-designers will hit the street. There’s good and bad to this. The good is that they might have a heightened appreciation of design. This increases the pool of design-aware and design-friendly citizens. Unless we’ve alienated them in the process of educating them. The overall climate improves for design. Perhaps we should consider that we’re educating potential clients as much as practitioners.

Another way of framing this issue is how we define success as design educators. I placed “success” and “failure” in quotes above because it would be shortsighted to merely count numbers of design-employed alumni/ae. I count as successes those design-talented students I inspired to other pursuits (for a while, I was driving them all to art therapy—make of that what you will). Instead of solely listing graduates who are in distinctive design placements, should we name and number those holding worthy positions in other fields?

How much credit could we take for non-design success? I often find it often problematic how much credit I can take for design-successful students—even when they give me a shout-out. However, if we’re really providing an education, imparting things the field claims makes an exceptional practitioner (insight, discipline, articulation, critical thinking, social and cultural awareness, responsibility), we should be able to stake a claim. But do we want to?

Do you think about the majority who don’t become designers? If so, does it affect your teaching, and how?

Posted by Kenneth FitzGerald | Permalink | Comments (1)

Field Trip

Field Trip is a moderated, informal discussion forum. Like its namesake, the forum is meant as serious fun—a diversion from the regular curriculum, but still an important learning experience. Field Trip offers the opportunity to share ideas and concerns related to the conference that are not quite ready (or right) for formal papers. We hope for a lively, possibly contentious, yet respectful conversation. (Kind of what might transpire on the bus back and forth from school.) As moderator, I'll be contributing prompts that will be part question, part musing, part challenge. However, they're not meant to be representative of all that might be offered.

This online panel is open to all. I invite you to begin a threaded discussion by sending your written piece to be considered to me via e-mail. If your essay is posted to the blog anyone is free to respond by selecting the "comment" link featured at the end of each post. And I invite you to be a part of any discussion posted here—for instance The New and Improved, my first contribution, awaits your thoughts.

So, consider your permission slip signed and admission paid. Let's hit the road.

Kenneth FitzGerald

Posted by Kenneth FitzGerald | Permalink | Comments (0)

The New and Improved

Now that another semester’s evaluation of students is completed, I can move onto step two: evaluating myself. As with grading, it happens constantly over the term but gets most intensive at its end. Before rating my specific performance of my duties, I always need to answer this question first: what exactly is it that I (should) do? “Teaching graphic design” provides the label but not the essence of the task.

While I’m no fan of dualities, one way I view my charge is that I oscillate between two perpetually opposing concerns. Academia is a place that both conserves and advances knowledge. As graphic design’s an artifact of culture shaped by Modern principles, the latter takes prominence. We’re supposed to be constantly fostering the New. That leads to a basic question.

How can we be sure that we’ll know something new when we see it?

Continue reading "The New and Improved" »

Posted by Kenneth FitzGerald | Permalink | Comments (4)


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