Why designers can’t think
Michael Bierut
Graphic design as structures of the world’s communications, we get to vicariously partake of in as many fields of interest as we have clients. more and more programs in graphic design at art schools, community colleges, and universities.
There are many ways to teach graphic design, American programs seem to fall into two broad categories: process schools and portfolio schools. Or, if you prefer, “Swiss” schools and “slick” schools. Process schools favor a form-driven problem solving approach. The Swlss-style process schools seem to have thrived largely as a reaction against the perceived “slickness” of the portfolio schools. Portfolio school aim: to provide students with polished “books” that will get them good jobs upon graduation. The problem-solving mode is conceptual, with a bias for appealing, memorable, populist imagery. The product, not process, is king. Unlike the fulI-time teachers of process schools, the portfolio schools are staffed largely by working professionals who teach part time, who are impatient with idle exercises that don’t relate to the “real world.” To the portfolio schools, the “Swiss” method is hermetic, arcane, and meaningless to the general public. To the process schools, the “slick” method is distastefully commercial, shallow, and derivative.
Both process schools and portfolio schools have something in common: what’s valued is the way graphic design looks, not what it means. Programs will pay lip service to meaning in design with references to “semiotics” (Swiss) or “conceptual problem solving” (slick), but these nuances are applied in a cultural vacuum. In many programs, if not most, it’s possible to study graphic design for four years without any meaningful exposure to the fine arts, world literature, science, history, politics or any of the other disciplines that unite us in a common culture.
Modern design education is essentially value-free: every problem has a purely visual solution that exists outside any cultural context. The design result will fail without exploring to a meaningful range of culture.
Extracts from I Come to Bury Graphic Design
Kenneth Fitzgerald
Author agreed that improving life is one of design’s ambitions, but it’s just not design’s primary objective. Design’s first concern is reproduction. It is assuring the creation of more professional design. To assure its existence, design strives to create a class of expert professional practitioners with high social standing. Design deliberately makes little real substantive effort to reach out to non-designers to explain what it’s doing and why.
A broader and deeper appreciation of design can, it leads to its demise as a specialist profession. A thorough appreciation of design should elicit the desire to do it yourself. It’s also the ultimate purpose of all the arts. We seek a society where everyone is making art, being creative. But if everyone’s an artist, then no one is.
Author agreed that untrained design could make inroads into information design. This might be considered the branch of design impervious to unprofessional interloping. Edward Tufte route into design shows design training isn’t necessary for someone to be considered a genius of information design. However, Tufte fails to account for the subjective realities of culture—culture as broad social forces and as smaller group dynamics. Design has a death wish. It constantly seeks to eradicate itself. Designers will instinctively reject this notion.
The notion that design is an on-the-job learning experience continues to dominate. A successful design program is defined as one that (re)produces more professional design and designers. There is the accumulation of knowledge for its own sake: the goal of the liberal arts.
It’s also surprisingly self-deprecating when comparing design to “true” liberal arts. Blauvelt said design education should strive for the idealism of education. Blauvelt is also correct that, at present, design study without application is unlikely. Academia promotes design education the way the field likes it—as practical. Swanson’s article makes no suggestion to dissociate from practice. Some students might find design study of interest while not intending to go on to a career of professional making. There is an oversight in Blauvelt’s critique that is reflexive for designers. For them, design education is entirely about producing designers. Swanson, however, is discussing education, in a design context. Here is a real world certainty every design educator must confront: the majority of design students will not go into professional practice. What is our responsibility to them? A shift in education away from a professional emphasis may also benefit students dedicated to a career of making. Designers claim their activity is all about ideas—not software, not formal facility. How it puts that idealistic pursuit into practice—education as menu of courses—is a major concern.
Business styles itself as rational, tangible, and methodical. The relationship between business and design is prickly because of the similitude. Still, design strives to be taken seriously on the business playing field.
Brenda Laurel Video: The Human Face of Research
Human center research informs creativity.
Design research used a lot of the same methodology as market research at human center form. Market research tells you how to sell something, design research inform how you decide at the first place.
Design shapes the future we are living in from the tool of design research.
Design process is about people and situated contexts. Part of design research is designing tools that helps you understand human subject and cast your finding in the way that let you see patterns.
Begin human center research and hang up by the door. Diploid different media types strategically to cohesive together.
The course of first year research, they deal with qualitative research and secondary research, conducting human center research. Design tools to look at the data. Formal research explores materials and forms- research topic and subject. From there, we move to scenario building and strategic analysis. Form a grand strategy and economic model. Proto-testing and branding.
Understanding people and situated contexts.
How can human-centered design research be conducted economically?
Deploy methods strategically, begin with quantitative data, identity patterns, use qualitative methods with sample sizes, and confirm findings with follow-up qualitative studies.
Focus group is complete waste of time among kids. Example of 14 years old situated contexts.
Research video shows more about situated contexts in terms of the experiences of the person.
Probes, example of six-year-old research. In our business, photo probes is common.
Analysis: reality maps, personas for baby boomers.
Outcomes from studio:
Missions: to inform, expand, and connect and hybrid car community
Missions: to inform and activate Baby Boomers around crucial social issues
Missions: to provide an attentive, personal means for tweens to relieve stress.
Tune your intuition: become a zeitgeist taster
Query the future: human change, human crises, sustainability and new ecologies of people and things
Human change: demographics, emergent social topologies
Human crises: health, extremism and conflict, climate change
Sustainability: design book “cradle to cradle”, materials and technologies
New ecologies of things: sensor networks, locative technologies, IP everywhere, open-source everything
Hope is an active verb, design is an active verb.
No comments:
Post a Comment