Dear All
Greetings from the so-far excellent CONFIA2015 in Braga.
1) How would design education look if you removed all aspects of history
from all the subjects in which it has any role?
Like this:' '
That¹s my jet-lagged attempt at capturing nothingness'.
I certainly wouldn¹t be using little arbitrary glyphs (that we, using
Latin characters and the English language have some, more or less agreed
meaning for) to answer this question. If we¹re talking about the absence
of history generally we can¹t even begin to have this conversation since
we need some shared history of communication to write to each other, some
commonality of communication platform: the text, email clients, the
internets, computerizators. And it¹s very easy to argue that all of these
things belong in a more particular design history.
2) Would design education be better or worse for it in terms of producing
innovative useful designs?
I don¹t think the historical focus per se is the villain in a design
education. The problems arise when the history is taught in a purely
linear fashion and/or goes unquestioned. Or if a design history looks at
cycles in aesthetics as if these aesthetics represent the same thing each
time they appear. The trick is to design our courses such that we approach
the historical contexts and content in innovative ways if we want to
produce innovative thinkers. One of my heads of school taught me something
in one sentence that transformed my design education and that was that
'design is about asking dumb questions': essentially because this
non-expert, non-assumptive view of the world allows us designers to
blunder into fields where we have no expertise and ask about things that
seem unusual to us. An example might be to ask of medical experts why are
all these patients in this hospital lying down in beds? This has
potentially transformative implications.
We should approach design history with this same approach I think. My
field is graphic design, and my research focus has been the role of
pictures in this field. You can¹t teach the history of graphic design
without noticing pretty quickly that there¹s a yawning gap surrounding
discussions of the image. Graphic design historians have been very
comfortable talking about typography but I haven¹t seen many examples that
look at the history of the image in design in interesting ways. For me
that was the clue that maybe design history itself is open to question and
that as course designers it¹s up to us to innovate the teaching of design
history.
And of course we have to look at other views of history outside of design
history. What does design look like through other historical lenses?
3) What would a subject of Design Studies look like?
See the above jet-lagged response to question 1. I certainly don¹t know
how to pull the two (design history and design studies) apart. But I think
we need to remember that design education needs to be designed all the
time. We need to bring our own dumb questions¹ to our own field of study.
Best regards
Stuart
On 4/11/15, 8:16 AM, "Ken Friedman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>A request to:
>
>Stephen Allard,
>Joćo Ferreira,
>Katherine Hepworth,
>Stuart Medley,
>Carlos Pires,
>Lubomir Popov,
>Keith Russell,
>Martin Salisbury,
>Cameron Tonkinwise
>
>Dear All,
>
>Sitting in Shanghai on a sunny Saturday morning, I have been thinking
>about Terry Love¹s three questions. I have read through this current
>thread several times this week, reading all your notes and answers and
>linked material carefully.
>
>While I believe Terry¹s position to be trivial and ill-informed, these
>questions are not trivial. The answers to these questions are quite
>significant. Together with pendant questions to which they give rise,
>these questions get to several fundamental issues in design education.
>
>To some degree, these three questions diverge from the issue of doctoral
>education, but they remain relevant in the sense that the undergraduate
>curriculum provides the platform for students who later go on to the PhD.
>
>I have asked Terry twice now to answer his own questions. He did not
>answer the first time. My guess is that he will refrain from a response,
>or that he will post an irrelevant reply.
>
>I am requesting that the nine of you offer your thoughts. If you¹ve grown
>tired of the thread, I can understand. I nevertheless hope that you will
>give these questions a few minutes of your time. I suspect the answers
>will shed real light on some of the topics that have been developed here.
>
>1) How would design education look if you removed all aspects of history
>from all the subjects in which it has any role?
>
>2) Would design education be better or worse for it in terms of producing
>innovative useful designs?
>
>3) What would a subject of Design Studies look like?
>
>For that matter, I¹d be curious to know what other list members think.
>I¹ll welcome answer these three questions.
>
>Yours,
>
>Ken
>
>Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Chair Professor of Design Innovation
>Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University |
>Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for
>Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne,
>Australia
>
>
>
>
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