Dear all, particularly Clive, Rosan, and CD Evans,
I feel a provocation coming on.
I want to agree and and disagree with Clive and Rosan, and endorse
something said by CD Evans
I agree with Clive when he says:
> that 'art-and-design' is an intellectually vacuous field.
> The disciplines within art-and-design have
> an extra-ordinary capacity to avoid major issues.
But this is too sweeping a generalisation, since some of us--within
the art-and-design discipline--have been doing our best to engage in
intellectual work and tackle major issues. I refer, in particular, to
my own field of information design. Consider, for example, some of
the major contributions to this work arising from Reading University
Typography and Graphic Communication Department. People such as
Michael Twyman, Paul Stiff, Sue Walker, Lynda Reynolds, Rob Waller--
to mention just a few--have massively contributed to the development
of intellectual effort in information design. None of these people,
I'm pleased to say, 'avoid major issues'. I could mention other
people and institutions in our field, but I think the example of
Reading is sufficient.
What Clive is referring to, with which I do agree, is the art school
system in tertiary education. I am particularly familiar with the UK
and Australian system for graphic design education which seems to me
little changed since I left it in 1975 after ten frustrating years.
These schools were and remain profoundly anti-intellectual
enterprises. I could go on
But I think Rosan is wrong when she asserts:
> It is a habit of some to suggest that Art and Design is a sub-
> (field,discipline,tradition-you pick the word/concept you like) of
> DESIGN. This overarching (field,discipline, tradition) DESIGN, I
> believe, has never existed, but is under
> construction...retrospectively...from our present point of view.
I don't know how far back you want to go, and I make no pretense of
being an historian, but when I began my own research, within the art-
and-design world in the mid sixties, I automatically went back to the
foundations of contemporary art-and-design--the arts and crafts
movement, the bauhaus, etc. I also looked at cognate design areas
such as architecture, town planning, engineering etc. Somewhere
within that I also came across the design methods group, drs, bruce
archer's thesis on design etc. My first conference paper and one of
my earliest refereed publications was on DESIGN research. Indeed, for
a time I was a Member, of the International Editorial Advisory Board
Editorial Board of *Design Studies*. And I was doing this from WITHIN
art-and-design. I don't think I invented the idea that art-and-design
was part of DESIGN. Indeed it never occurred to me that it wasn't! So
the 'construction' of DESIGN is a lot older than 'our present point
of view'. And some of us have found it a useful construction within
which to position our work for some time.
To many in the art-and-design system this may be new, but that is
because it is a system that neither encourages nor sustains
intellectual effort nor reading. There seem to me three pillars of
belief that hold that sad edifice aloft. First is a belief that the
history of design is a history of design heros rather than changing
methods and contexts. Second is a belief in the value of and
contemporary use of the basic design course originating the bauhaus.
Third is a romantic belief in the special nature of designers instead
of the special nature of designing.
But there was one area of belief that the art-and-design world shared
with other fields that I find most objectionable. Many of the authors
of manifestos of contemporary design seemed to think that it was OK
to suggest to others to act in a particular way, without necessarily
doing so themselves. 'Do as I say, not as I do'. That was the
'heroic' world in which I grew up!
I prefer a world in which doing and saying are much closer, in which
we accept that the critical judgement we apply to other people's
actions, is also applicable to us.
Which brings me in a roundabout way to my endorsement of CD Evans' plea:
> Is it possible that a bunch of designers could send nicer looking
> emails, you know validate your thoughts by creating a clear statement?
With so much talk about design being 'user-driven', 'sustainable'
etc., perhaps we need to practice what we preach. If design is such a
force for good, let's apply a little to design thinking and
scholarship. Now that would be a unique contribution to scholarship!
I suspect, if we did, we might get DESIGN scholarship taken more
seriously, 'as service'.
David
--
Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
Director Communication Research Institute of Australia
helping people communicate with people
60 Park Street Fitzroy North Melbourne Australia 3068
Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795
Phone: +61 (0)3 9489 8640
web: http://www.communication.org.au
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