Hi Alison, 

On 6 Oct 2011, at 17:41, ALISON BARNES wrote:

> With regard to design educators who don't draw or make, I was chatting to an
> Australian colleague recently who expressed concern that if all new
> appointments in Australia (as seems to be the current thinking) demanded a
> PhD, then there was a danger that graphic design courses would find
> themselves short of educators who could actually 'do'.

Unless, of course, they 'did' part of their PhD, as you 'did'. Perhaps as valid, if not more so, as the 'doing' I mentioned earlier in an industrial context.

> I would be no means
> subscribe to dishing up so much 'theory' that students' pencils remained
> unused, I think it's absolutely important to get the balance right and
> engage them in both theory and practice—preferably with the two inextricably
> linked via their studio projects.

My thought here is that in the context of a PhD 'pencils' are used as a tool in the service of research. In the context I mentioned earlier, it is used as a tool in the service of industry/commerce. This seldom required theorising beyond the development of a personal dialogue. The 'method' (or action) of using a pencil is the same in a research or industrial context, the difference for me is the motivation to report of the experience beyond, say, a client meeting.

> 
> Also, I often think of graphic design as like a vaccuum - it is empty in
> itself, and that vaccuum is only filled when one has content to work with.
> Given that on most projects that content is not usually graphic design
> based, but could be anything from banking to bowling, it seems it is, in
> some ways, inherently interdisciplinary and therefore perhaps that is why we
> have an ability to understand and work in  a broad range of settings and
> with a range of collaborators. Just ruminating, not a completely formed
> theory...

I don't ever see graphic design as a vacuum. For me graphic design is either 'relational', or not. If it is, it is always connected, integrative and interdisciplinary. Its defining properties (things or objects, e.g. line, shape, tone, colour, texture, form) at a basic level exist and are configured to create and communicate meaning. 

For me, the process of configuration, as I described it in the earlier email, is always informed by more than just oneself. Isn't that an impossibility? No client ever issued a brief and then disappeared. The meaning of any drawing is never not seen. Even a choice of typeface (say Gill Sans) benefits from some kind of 'posthumous' interdisciplinary collaboration with Eric Gill. I think I prefer the view that graphic design cannot exist without content. Is it possible to draw nothing?

Rob
   

> 
> Hope all good in Loughborough,
> Alison
> 
> On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 5:21 PM, Robert Harland <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> I therefore don't identify with much of what Don is saying. If design
>> education needs to change, we may need to carefully manage the expectations
>> of those who assume designers can 'draw' what they, as surveyors, bankers,
>> etc, can't. Perhaps 'designers' or 'design educators' who don't draw, make,
>> call it what you will, should colonise a different space. Maybe that's a bit
>> contentious, even defensive.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Regards, Rob.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Dr Robert Harland | Lecturer | School of the Arts | School of the Arts,
>> English and Drama | Loughborough University
>> http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/staff/robert-harland.htm<
>> http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/staff/robert-harland.html>
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> * * *
> 
> Dr. Alison Barnes
> 
> School of Graphic Design, LCC
> University of the Arts, London
> 
> www.alisonbarnesonlineportfolio.tumblr.com
> http://informationenvironments.academia.edu/AlisonBarnes/About
> http://geo-graphic.blogspot.com/