Reading 5

Why designers can't think ( Michael Beirut )

• Graphic designers are lucky because they can experience many fields for example: they can talk about real state with one client or cancer cures with another.
• American programs seem to fall into two broad categories: 1) process school and other one is portfolio schools or " Swiss school " , "Slick school"
• Process schools favor a form- driven problem solving approach. First assignments are simple exercises such as drawing letter forms, Translating three dimensional objects into idealized high contrast images and basic still life photography.
• In intermediate stages the formal exercises are combined in different ways : combine a letter N with a photograph of a ballet slipper , relate the drawing of a flute to the hand drawn letter N.
• In final stage, these combination are turned into real graphic design
• Advanced student gets an assignment to the design a poster for say, an exhibition of Thomas Edison, he or she is temped to revert to form: combine the letter E, drawing of a movie camera, etc.
• While the unspoken goal of the process school is to duplicate the idealized black and white boot camp regimen of far-off Switzerland, the portfolio school has a completely different, they want to provide student with polished books that will get them jobs after graduation.
• In portfolio school: problem solving is more conceptual with a bias for appealing, memorable, populist imagery.
• 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 Portfolio schools, the Swiss method is hermetic and meaningless
• to the process schools, the Slick method is commercial, shallow and derivative.
• East Coast corporate identity firms love the process school
• Package design firms are happy to get portfolio school graduates
• Both process school and portfolio schools have something in common: what is valued is the way graphic design looks, not what it means
• semiotics ( Swiss)
  
• Conceptual problem solving ( Slick )
  

I come to bury graphic design ( Kenneth Fitzgerald)

• Improving life is one of design's ambitions
• Increasing access to the means of production+desire=an explosive mix
• Rem Koolhass is a controversial architect who formed his own design studio. he came up with cool architectural theory like the Harvard guide to shopping
• His engagement to work could be another triumph for the field
• Mac temp Dave Eggars is another designer who's approach is an anti design style
• he uses classically readable text, set Garamond
• Edward Tufte believed that design training isn't necessary for someone to be considered a genius of information design.
• A successful design program is defined as one that (re)produces more professional design and designers
• Design has a death wish. It constantly seeks to eradicate itself.
• Designers are widely seen as possessing an elitist aesthetic agenda insensitive to people's needs.
• Design education is where little designers come from. reviled progressive and experimental programs
• Blauvelt believed that design study without application is unlikely. Academia promotes design education the way the field likes it as practical.
• An education through design rather than in design should be our goal
• A shift in education away from a professional emphasis may also benefit students
• Design constructed itself as professional service—formal speech to commune with industry. Business styles itself as rational, tangible, and methodical. But a glance at any day’s business news shows that those are affectations
• It’s no mystery that the most celebrated, expressive, and inspiring design is either self-motivated or when the designer is truly empowered and entrusted. You must have a personal stake. This is the norm. Its the itinerant artist model that’s an aberration.