Watching a video from the AIGA New Contexts presentation on shifting paradigms, Holly Willis was talking about the changing classroom. At one point Willis asked if the term “graphic” was even necessary in the term graphic design. She wondered if the nomenclature had been outgrown given the changes in the industry today. Of course she alluded to the loss identity many designers would feel if that word was dropped. We are in a phase of emergent technologies and the way we communicate is shifting daily. As well as the role of a designer. If we are moving away from artifacts and into systems of design, then what does the artifact designer do? And what if? Is it wrong to want to create?
Willis continues with this move away from artifacts and isolation as designers and what they might mean to the classroom. Is it necessary to be tethered to a drafting table anymore? Or can the classroom move away from the indoor lab. And if we do retain the lab should we consider it the making lab? Because eventually there will be a merging of what happens in this classroom.
Another idea that came through as a way to teach was to allow for less determined outcomes. This is what we experience as MFA students. Can it become part of earlier levels of education as well?
This year I was asked to teach advanced projects at the community college. This course has print, web, illustration, multi-media and animators in the course all creating advanced projects. My role is not to teach software rather art direct the students as they create final portfolio pieces and a book. In effort to keep in mind the work the students had already accomplished, and the direction of five different tracts, as a whole I offered suggested projects and listened intently for their thoughts. The students were decidedly surprised that we were collaborating and they not being told exactly what to do. For the most part we all left excited to do this one last promotional piece. There were outcomes required yet the outcomes are fluid to some extent.
After watching the video, I was pleased that I had gotten rid of an old one size did not fit all project in favor of a more fluid approach. The students who are equally divided between continuing their education and hitting the work force, just got their first lesson in self direction. Either way this idea of being able to brainstorm an idea and work fairly independently is a lesson that will serve them soon as they move forward into the next leg of the journey.
References:
NEW CONTEXTS/NEW PRACTICES: SIX PERSPECTIVES ON DESIGN EDUCATION
Report/ Shifting Paradigms: Tools and System Anne Burdick (moderator) and Holly Willis (writer)