Rob hits the nail on the head with he alludes to the continued confusion in our discussion between designers educated in the art tradition and those in business and engineering. The confusion occurs because designers are often perceived to be artists and design to be art. Admittedly, some designers may share a similar ethos with some artists, i.e., the use of the visual language, a concern for self-expression, etc., but what has significantly changed between the two are the operational models. Most design is not about one-off but about quantity; most design is bottom-up not top-down. It is about business and industry. Of course, design in this context can be art but only when someone declares it to be. Museums, for examples, do this regularly by creating design collections. Charles Eames, however, was unequivocal about art and design. When asked if design was art he instantly replied, "No." And Paul Klee provided further insight about art when he wrote nearly eighty ago that the object was dead and what we should value is the sensation of the object.
There will always be the designer as celebrity, such as Starck and Arad. However, and as director of a school of design, I would be acting irresponsibly if used the design celebrity as a model for undergraduate design education. My faculty and I need to focus on what will be the opportunities for our graduates four years from now. When I am told that Intel can hire a P.Eng in India for $9,000 per annum and that the same engineer will cost $75,000 in the USA, I worry because I cannot ignore the fact that the same scenario can occur in design. I do not want us to be educating people for jobs that don't exist because our focus is the creation of artifacts. Graduate and doctoral education is quite another matter. This is how the practice taught at the undergraduate level can co-exist with the research undertaken at the graduate level, much like the general practitioner in medicine relies on the research of the scientists.
Jacques Giard, PhD
Professor/Director
School of Design
Arizona State University
480.965.4135
asu.edu/caed/SOD/html/SODHome.htm
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