Terence
Design education - and I mean education rather than teaching - will always embody the spirit and learning of Art. It does not exist without Art education and theory. Design education is not however reliant on art theory, it is important to be educated in the way of art theory.
Education not teaching. That is the crux.
Robin
PR Hodge MA, BA (Hons), PG Dip (Media), FAETC, MIDI
Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
Faculty Head of Collaborative Courses
Programme Director Master of Design and Communication
TEL: ext 75572
Foyle Arts
University of Ulster at Magee
L/derry
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design on behalf of Terence Love
Sent: Wed 09/06/2010 03:09
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Design - the problem of Art
A serious and unacknowledged problem in the development of the field Design
has been the connection of some Design fields with Art.
Design is fundamentally different from Art.
That many Design courses have been hosted within Art Schools has led to Art
hegemonically imposing its practices and ways of thinking on Design
education.
This 'forcing of Design into Art's way of thinking' has significantly held
back the development of the Design field, its theories, research methods,
growth of knowledge, and development of doctoral research in Design.
The essence of Design is to create instructions for making or doing
something. Design activity always has a *purpose*.
This is one of the things that distinguish Design from Art.
There are seven core issues in Design:
1. How to accurately predict the behaviour of a designed outcome in
part and whole
2. Explicit and verifiable theories about ways to identify parts of a
solution that contribute to a design filling its purpose
3. Explicit and verifiable theories about ways to chose between
different partial solutions
4. Explicit and verifiable theories for analysis and justification of
why particular choices were made
5. Explicit and verifiable theories that forecast the behaviour of the
combination of parts of a design in an integrated whole
6. Verifiable theories about how to explicitly evaluate how parts or
the whole of a design contribute to fulfill the purpose of the design.
7. Explicit and verifiable theories about reviewing how th3 outcomes of
a design did or did not fulfill its purpose and explain why in ways that can
be used to modify other theories.
Addressing these issues is central to the activity of Design becoming a
professional practice. They are not addressed where Design is controlled by
the culture and concepts of Art.
While they remain unaddressed, designers remain without the necessary
professional theories and practices. From a critical perspective, this gives
a picture of designers as unprofessional guessers and 'chancers' hoping to
get people to pay them money for their guesses and with the hope that no
claim will be made against them when things go wrong.
If acting as professionals, designers would be expected to be able to
explain and justify how and why their designs will behave and will result in
the intended outcomes. This implies that a core skill of professional
designer is to be able to evaluate how well designs fulfilled the intended
outcomes and explain why they achieved their outcomes.
In areas of Design associated with Art, these issues remain unaddressed
because of Design being taught as if it were Art.
Practically, problems are evidenced in, for example, in the strange
assumption that teaching Art information in Design converts them into
'design theories' (Gestalt, colour combinations etc come to mind. These are
simply background practical information and not theory - in the same way
that screw sizes are not engineering theory). Another strange practice, is
the teaching of a simplified version of Shannon's Communication hypothesis
as if it were a design theory. If it were a *real*design theory, one could
sensibly ask how many bits of information are being transferred by one
design of graphic communicate relative to another graphic. One could ask
'What is the difference in decibels of the relative noise between them?'
Instead, Shannon's theory is used trivially in a cargo-cult way - a bit
like using E=mc^2 and suggesting that the energy in an image has been
increased because more mass of paint has been used.
It is reasonable to ask which of two designs is better.
It is reasonable to expect a design field to have:
* theories that accurately predict the behaviour of outcomes of a
design
* testable theories that accurately predict how particular design
elements influence outcomes
* theories and methods for accurately evaluating whether a design
fulfilled its purposes
These theory foundations are essential to Design becoming a discipline and a
professional practice rather than an amateur guessing game.
None of the theories essential to Design are however needed in Art and most
Art 'theory' is not needed in Design. The problem then becomes how to
enable Design to develop as a discipline by removing and reduce the
influence of Art.
Four questions:
* Are designers and design researchers indoctrinated with the wrong
skill set and concepts due to unhelpful influences by those in Art?
* Are we prepared to critically review the way that Design has been
unhelpfully influenced by Art?
* What would Design look like if all Art influenced were removed from
it?
* Should Design as a matter of course be taught separately from Art?
(In the way that one would expect say Spanish to be taught separately from
Physics).
It appears this issue is becoming obvious in different countries and I
believe Design Forum will soon start a debate on it.
Best wishes,
Terry
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Dr. Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM
School of Design and Art
Director Design-focused Research Group, Design Out Crime Research Group
Researcher, Digital Ecosystems and Business Intelligence Institute
Associate, Planning and Transport Research Centre
Curtin University, PO Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845
Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask]
Member of(Internaitonal Scientific Council, UNIDCOM/ IADE, Lisbon, Portugal
Honorary Fellow, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
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