Becoming Designers

Description

Design Research is an area that is both current and growing, but texts on the subjects are in short supply. This book is a response to the vitality of discussion within journals and at conferences, and it intends to place Design Research in its rightful place at the heart of studio-based education and practice.

Offering a valuable context within which to understand the educational needs and aspirations of the designer, Becoming Designers is also a vital resource for students in this field, whose access to books on the subject is currently very limited.

Sujets

• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• General officer
• Graphic design
• Design
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2000
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841508177
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

First Published in Paperback in 2000 by Intellect Books , FAE, Earl Richards Road North, Exeter EX2 6AS,UK
First Published in USA in 2000 by Intellect Books, ISBS, 5804 N.E. Hassalo St, Portland, Oregon 97213-3644, USA
Copyright 2000 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
Commissioning Editor: Masoud Yazdani
Book and Cover Design: Joshua Beadon
Copy Editor: Wendi Momen
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Electronic ISBN 1-84150-817-9 / HardbackISBN 1-84150-032-1
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Wiltshire
preface
ud2k - designing the design student
Stuart Mealing
design for life: the lasting contribution of William Morris
John Astley
design praxis: towards a design context rooted in design practice
Kevin McCullagh
intelligent shape sorting
Esther Dudley
educating the multimedia designer
Stephen Boyd Davis
designing women: gender issues in graphic design education
Erica Matlow
what tangled webs we weave
Mike Hope
designers perception of development - development s
perception of design
Mirjam Southwell
globalisation
Stuart Durant
interview with a designer on becoming designers
Richard Hill
ethical design : the end of graphic design?
Alex Cameron
towards more ambitious agendas
Gerard Mermoz
The world is changing and the role of the designer is changing with it. As consumers in a twenty-first century western society we have little choice but to collude with its information-driven materialism. As academics we (the editors) research, discuss and disseminate ideas about the ongoing place of design in such a world and, in doing so, have discovered a paucity of books dealing with the subject. As educators, however, it is not enough to merely hover at the fringe of the world of design, we should be at its heart and with Becoming Designers we aim to contribute to a timely, and at times provocative, debate.
This work therefore, seeks to offer a context within which to understand the educational needs and aspirations of today's designer. It considers crucial issues of new technology, gender, ethics, globalisation and internationalism as well as more focused topics related to the teaching of design practice and theory and to the appropriateness of current methodologies for doing so. To this end our contributors are an eclectic assembly variously combining the roles of designer, teacher, researcher, writer, sociologist, philosopher and public speaker. They have extensive experience of, and varied perspectives on, the world of design and, most importantly, all hold strong convictions. We are delighted that, despite their hectic schedules, they have proved united in their willingness to find the time to write these chapters.
The arguments presented, as one would expect, are as diverse as the authors and the opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by either the editors or by other contributors - indeed the grounds for heated arguments lie within these pages (we hope). The styles of presentation also vary and by limiting our attempts to unify them we have sought to preserve the individuality of each writer's voice.
Currently a mood of reflection about the role of the designer has settled upon the design world. The influential manifesto First things first published by Ken Garland and signatories in 1964 was revisited last year and has resulted in the publication of First things first 2000. Uppermost in the minds of the supporters of this revised manifesto are the social responsibilities put upon them as responsible designers. Clearly this signals a profession in a state of introspective flux as argument and counter-argument ring out around design studios (and public houses).
Issues raised in this book will be of interest to practitioners, academics and students alike and hopefully comment from all these quarters will fuel fresh writing. Indeed at a time when names such as Brody, Dyson and Lambie-Nairn are common currency beyond the world of design and governments extol the value to the economy of design, the book might engage a wider audience.
Stuart Mealing is a reader in Computers and Drawing at the Exeter School of Art & Design (University of Plymouth), a founder member of their Centre for Visual Computing and teaches in the graphic design department. Trained initially in Fine Art, he exhibited widely and taught in art colleges for many years whilst maintaining an interest in the development of computing and artificial intelligence. He later took a postgraduate degree in Computing in Design and since then has been an Honorary Research Fellow in Computer Science at Exeter University, a founding co-editor of Digital Creativity , has published four other books and his papers have appeared in a range of journals.
With genetic engineering imminent it is tempting to prepare a recipe for the ideal design student. To define the sequences of nucleotide bases in the chromosomal DNA and the conditions of maturation that will, in about 18 years, produce ud2k - the perfect undergraduate designer for the new millennium. A Frankenstein wunderkind built to conceive, create, devise, discover, draft, draw, fabricate, figure, formulate, hatch, invent, mastermind, meditate, model, originate, plot, scheme, style and weave. In short, to design.
This chapter will consider what might be the desirable manifestations of these imaginary biological tinkerings as evidenced by the skills and traits of the monster itself, i.e. what makes a good design student. These qualities will also be considered in the context of tendencies within the university system (in the UK) that is invested with the task of converting this raw material into worthwhile practitioners. Is BA (Design) the ultimate hallmark of a good new designer or might the academisation of design, in order that it can be read as a legitimate subject alongside Law and Classics, have deflected the discipline s natural apprentices?
Any wish-list of key attributes is to be modified, not only in response to the changing needs of design in the real world, but also to the educational structure within which training takes place. It is implicit in the process of selecting students for design courses that there are qualities and standards that are sought by receiving institutions, though these are more likely to be tacitly understood than precisely defined. I suspect that staff conducting interviews across the country would reach a high level of agreement over which applicants are the best and which the worst but there perhaps would be less agreement on a prioritised list of the characteristics they believe aspiring designers should possess. Try placing in order of importance: drawing skills, intelligence, creativity, determination and literacy and state which, if any, are dispensable.
Creativity
Creativity knows no bounds. Its forms are legion, its sources obscure, its ways devious in the extreme, but its fruits are patent for all to see in every domain of human life. 9
It is hard to imagine a good designer who is not creative but perhaps in a design team there is room for people with a range of talents and their roles may not require the demonstration of classical creativity. I have on my shelves a book with a title that appears, at first glance, from the smug viewpoint of one trained as an artist, to be a classic oxymoron - Creative Accounting. You can be creative within other terms of reference. To apply creativity effectively, however, it needs to be coupled with other things. In studies of leading artists and scientists Anne Roe 23 found that the only trait that stood out in common among individuals was a willingness to work hard and to work long hours. Whilst this is a trait that is likely to contribute to success in many fields, her observation threatens the uninformed impression of casual creativity offering an easy alternative to hard work. Thomas Edison is often quoted as saying that genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.
The characteristics of the creative act have been widely discussed and there is general agreement in the field that a mixture of rational and intuitive processes are involved and that the result displays originality. It is tempting to think of creativity as not being domain specific, to think that a creative free-thinker could have original ideas in any domain - (original AND useful of course, since to be original one merely has to be wrong when everyone else is right) - but originality is often a re-combination of elements into new patterns, which implies that the elements must be present and that therefore a basis of knowledge in a field is necessary to permit original thinking in that field. 22 It is necessary to study design in order to come up with original design solutions. Indeed most researchers suggest an incubation period for the creative act primed by thorough immersion in the subject area - saturate yourself through and through with your subject... and wait . 21 Pasteur s famous dictum in the field of (scientific) observation chance favours those who are prepared expresses a similar thought.
Interestingly, however, it is often the newcomer to a field who displays the greatest originality, as the more often an individual has solved problems with given ingredients the greater is the set and the less the likelihood of attaining a further creative solution using them again. Our designer must apparently be both knowledgeable about the area and yet new to it. Hopefully for those with many years experience, newness can be equated with seeing the familiar afresh.
Educating the creative
Research has consistently suggested that general education does not reward or nurture the creative, Rogers 24 for example saying that in educatio