Chris, you articulate something very fundamental in a clearer voice than
mine, and I just wanted to peel it back a little more.

Something in your list-message spoke to an idea of the dispersal of focus
from professional engagement that PhD study can propose - I've used
dispersal rather than loss of focus because my sense is that it is crucial
to find a personal method for permitting the myopic scrutiny PhD study may
require to be mixed with a keen and true eye kept on the wider professional
and practical needs one continues to have through and beyond PhD study. This
mix can then create an individual passionate about the detail of his/her
personal study, but aware of and practicing within a wider context.

Timing is crucial - considering when is a good time to commit to the focus,
graft and detail of PhD study, but also there's something about still
(because art and design PhDs are still in flux) being a contributor to a
developing practice-discourse and a creative knowledge economy - this is
intellectually exciting and creatively stimulating for both academic
activity AND professional art/design activity! Those who favour PhD study
and those who don't have places within these discourses and economies
because they provide complementary inputs....

Also it engenders pride, confidence, authority in those registers where
these characteristics are valued. And, in practice-based doctoral study, it
brings creative enquiry, issues of material practice, questions of the
making and the object into an academic field that must include practice at
its core to stay relevant.

Thanks, Catherine

Dr Catherine Harper
Reader in Textiles / Research Coordinator
Editor UK, Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture

University College for the Creative Arts at Epsom
Ashley Road
Epsom KT18 5BE

Tel.     0044 (0) 1372 202204
Email    [log in to unmask]
Web      www.ucreative.ac.uk



On 4/12/06 18:43, "Chris Rust" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Glenn has raised a big issue (as Jacques points out) and it needs some
> unpicking
> 
> He is right to say that  PhD might take you away from the kind of focus
> needed to work as a designer and there's no reason to believe that
> Jonathan Ives would benefit from having one in his present role,
> although if he decided that he would like to change direction in his
> work, doing a PhD might be a good way to examine possibilities and
> develop an original new position.
> 
> However it's not that simple. For a start we don't know yet where PhDs
> in design will take us. Anna Calvera described this very well a while
> ago when she said* that we will have to wait until this new generation
> of "Design Doctors" have found their feet before we will know how they
> will change the profession.  More recently we have begun to see the
> effects and some designers are showing that a research-led practice can
> be very powerful, especially when there are genuinely new challenges to
> meet.
> 
> Per Mollerup has built a very successful design practice which
> consistently wins awards and his PhD thesis became an important book for
> designers (Mollerup 1997). Karel van der Waarde made a doctoral study of
> the problems of designing packaging and instructions for medicines and
> has been successful in working for pharmaceutical companies who need the
> kind of rigorous thinking that a PhD provides, although they need to get
> it from a genuinely creative designer. And there are new design areas
> emerging where we may lose out to clever people from other disciplines
> if we don't have the intellectual preparation to collaborate/compete
> with them.
> 
> A lot of the fuss we hear about practice-led research is a response to
> this same issue. If designers have to hang up their creative skills when
> they undertake a PhD then the doom merchants will be proved right and we
> will have an academic community that lacks the ability to teach
> designers how to think and operate. You cannot teach a practical
> discipline if you have not lived in that discipline and mastered its
> practices. (you can support some of the learning that is needed but that
> is not the same thing).
> 
> But we need people to do PhDs because we have a discipline that is
> confused about its place in the world. No matter how successful we are
> out in industry, designers in universities need to buy into the mission
> of the academy. Academics do not just pass on knowledge, they create it.
> As long as design academics defer continually to star practitioners they
> do not deserve to be thought of as more than technical instructors. We
> may not have the opportunities or even the ability to match Jonathan
> Ives' contribution but we have other opportunities and we can build a
> different set of skills that will allow academics to complement leading
> practitioners and really "own" their discipline. In the end Ives has to
> work within the priorities of business but we have the freedom to look
> further and speculate more widely. If we cannot use that freedom to
> shine a light into the future for our professional colleagues then we
> should stand aside and let somebody else try.
> 
> Incidentally, I don't have a PhD. But I'm a leftover from another era
> and when I see the confidence and clarity of some of our best PhD
> students I envy them the opportunity they have had to become a new kind
> of designer. If I wanted to employ a really good teacher I would look
> for somebody with a PhD who is still producing good creative work to a
> professional level Of course they will not have the same portfolio as a
> colleague who has been in professional practice full time while they
> have been doing their doctoral research but they will have a more
> flexible and critical mind which will still be working for them long
> after their professional experience is out of date.  (I had nearly
> finished this message when I saw Tao Huang's post and I feel he has
> expressed that aspect very well, thanks Tao. I'd better send this quick
> before somebody else comes along and makes my effort completely
> irrelevant :o)
> 
> best wishes from Sheffield
> Chris Rust
> 
> 
> * I think this was a remark she made informally a few years ago but she
> has written an interesting description of the PhD programme at
> University of Barcelona. (Calvera 2000)
> 
> Calvera. A, (2000) "The PhD program typographic revolutions held by the
> design department of the University of Barcelona: some thoughts about an
> experience and some general conclusions concerning research on design."
> In Design Plus Research. Proceedings of the Politecnico di Milano
> Conference, 18-20 May 2000. 330-337
> 
> Mollerup, P. (1997) "Marks of Excellence, The History and Taxonomy of
> Trademarks" London, Phaidon
> 
> ********************
> Professor Chris Rust
> Chair of Design Research Society Council
> Head of Art and Design Research Centre
> Sheffield Hallam University
> Psalter Lane, S11 8UZ, UK
> +44 114 225 2706 (direct)
> +44 114 225 2686 (research admin)
> [log in to unmask]
> www.chrisrust.net