I assume everyone who hasn't decided to stay in Montreal is back home
and somewhat rested. The art and design discussion had played out even
before people left for DRS but I finally got the time and energy for a
comment. I appologize for it being a bit long winded.
Since much of the conversation was explicitly or implicitly about
education as much as about design, it's worth mentioning something
that makes the question of the proper basis for design education
somewhat more complex. (Has academics saying "Let me problematize
this" gone out of style or have I just been hanging out with a better
class of bullshitter in recent years?)
I don't think much of the idea that seventeen year olds should be
sealing their fates. I'm old fashioned enough to believe that the
university is a place of self-discovery. Some people find design (or
find themselves in design.) Some find that design is not what they're
looking for.
If we could travel back twenty or thirty years and ask why students
started in graphic design, I suspect that most of them would have
started from liking to make stuff. A fair number of them now start
from liking to play with computers. Everyone has to have some entry
point. Form making is one reasonable place to start. Art programs are
the place where people with an interest in the way things look tend to
go.
Where I teach graphic design, East Carolina University, anyone
accepted to the university can become an art major by checking a box
on a form. That's fine with me. I know people who teach at schools
where prospective freshmen have to submit portfolios for admission.
They claim they can tell the difference between a talented eighteen
year old and one with good high school art teachers. Maybe they're
more perceptive than I am. I not only don't think I could tell, I
don't even fully believe in the premise that some are "talented" and
others are not.
After a joint foundations year, students at ECU take introductory
classes in different areas. At the end of their sophomore year,
students submit portfolios of one year's worth of graphic design
classes for admission to the graphic design major.
More students think they will become graphic design majors than ever
get around to taking graphic design classes. (I suspect some discover
that art classes in general are more work than they thought and some
buy into the anti-design propaganda of the art foundation faculty.)
Around a quarter of the students who take the first class and are sure
that they want to become majors quit after the first semester. About a
third of the students who enter the second class intending to become
graphic design majors don't bother applying. In the end, just over a
quarter of those who started the year convinced that they would be
graphic design majors are accepted into the program.
Right now we have a common Bachelor of Fine Arts program with the rest
of the School of Art & Design. Students who discover that they
shouldn't be graphic design majors can become sculpture majors.
Students who thought they wanted to be illustration majors can become
graphic design majors.
Of course there are a lot of other possible arrangements; we're
actively working on one. And just about anyone teaching graphic design
in the US can tell you tales of art faculty making decisions (through
their relative numbers and their seniority) about graphic design
curricula based on considerations that have nothing to do with godd
graphic design education. The linkage of art and graphic design is not
wholly absurd, however.
Gunnar
----------
Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA
[log in to unmask]
+1 252 258 7006
http://www.gunnarswanson.com
|