Dear Terry,
you've recently been questioning the value of teaching design history in design education. In your discussion of the term 'graphic design' in this post you claim (without providing any evidence), that 'It is apparently less than 60 years since its first use as a term in any way'.
Not so.
Not by a long way.
I refer you to W G Raffe's 1927 text "Graphic Design".
Among many other benefits of design history to design educators and designers, design history enables us to develop evidence based research for our teaching and our practice.
Over and out,
regards,
Gavin O'Brien
________________________________________
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Terence Love <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 19 April 2015 03:35
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Design Studies and Design History
Dear Carlos,
Thank you for your message. From what you wrote, I can see we see things differently.
You seem to be saying 'This is the way graphic designers do design, and therefore anything that isn't this cannot be graphic design'? I suggest there are other ways to view and do graphic design (also see question at end of this post)
In contrast to what you wrote, I suggest graphic design is *primarily* an optimisation process - regardless of how it is done. The indicator is that some designs are considered better than others and people try to find better designs.
Second, graphic design buyers contract to buy designers outputs not outcomes. They hope the designers outputs will result in the design buyers intended outcomes.
Third, graphic design processes can be any process that will produce satisfactory graphic design outputs. Nowadays much of the detail of the graphic design process is done automatically by numerically-based computer programs, Increasingly that shift of process is extending into the conceptual design space. There seems so far to be no particular reason top prefer a process based on wetware over a numerically-programmed automated computerised design process as designers and design buyers have been happy with the increasing use of the latter for the last 2 decades.
Four, the way design instructions are delivered is not set in stone. There has been the tradition of the 'brief' and its responses by designers but see para 1. I suggest something better than the traditional brief is needed (and that is supported by your comment that designers occasionally have to participate in reframing the brief). Incidentally, the idea of 'reframing' in general is an indicator that design is better linked to outcomes rather than the outputs defined in the brief.
Five: Ownership of graphic design activity. If graphic designers are unable to manage the graphic design activity then, in terms of Stafford Beer's Viable Systems Model you have some or perhaps all of three problems: failure of level 1 management; inappropriate intrusion of level 3 management in level 1 management (i.e. micromanagement); and/ or inappropriate intrusion of level 1 management in Level 3 management. All are considered organisational pathologies resulting in reduced organisational viability.
And TGIF - also for atheists? - and for all those student designers who work in bars.....??
Question: What disruptive changes in design practices and technologies do you see would result in complete overthrow and re-envisioning of the current collection of traditions of graphic design practice and graphic design education?
In the above, it is perhaps useful to remember the activity and term 'graphic design' is recent and evolving. It is apparently less than 60 years since its first use as a term in any way, and less than 30 years since start of design education programs.
Warm regards,
Terry
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of [log in to unmask]
Sent: Saturday, 18 April 2015 2:51 AM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subject: Re: Design Studies and Design History
Dear Terry,
I'm not going to delve into the issue of your selective memory about what you call the "discourse path". For any interested reader, it is simpler to use Jiscmail's archive to see to what extent you have misrepresented this "discourse".
I'm writing this message to list the main things you still don't get about graphic design:
1. Graphic design is not an optimization problem. That is why you are utterly unable to come up with a proper example. In this email you start talking about graphic design, and then use the optimization of a gearbox (!) as an example...
2. Graphic design is a process. As a graphic design buyer, you don't pay solely for the outcome: you pay for the outcome and for the process.
This
process includes the huge "wetware" database that is the experience(s) of the designer you are hiring. This is what ties this discussion with the original topic, as that is the reason why "historical aspects" are important in design education.
3. Very often graphic design is actually the result of consultancy type of relationship rather than the type of transaction that you seem to be trying to model here. This is a corollary of 2.
4. Very often the graphic design brief is an open text that is rewritten with the designer. This is also a corollary of 2. Any experienced graphic designer will tell you that they have on more than one occasion dissuaded potential clients to hire them for something that they saw was useless to the client's ultimate goals.
5. Most of the time, graphic designers do not take ownership of the process.
85% of the 500 respondents to my survey on the creative process of designers say their creative process is to some extent collective. 30% say the process has input from a lot of people.
I would further argue that you could erase "Graphic" from the above issues, and the statements will still be true.
For the sake of brevity this ends here.
TGIF!
Have a nice weekend,
========================
Carlos Pires
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
