Readings 5

Why designers can’t think
Michael Bierut

Process vs. Portfolio Schools

Process schools favor a form driven problem-solving approach
Drawing letterforms
Translating objects into marks
Basic photography
Combining typography with illustrations & photographs
Creating communication using various combinations of acquired skills

Process schools attempt to duplicate Swiss/Basel teaching methods

Portfolio schools provide students with books that will get them jobs upon graduation
Product is more important than process

Portfolio teachers are impatient with idle exercises meaningless to the “real world”

Portfolio schools view the Swiss method as hermetic, arcane, and meaningless to the public

Process schools view portfolio methods as distastefully commercial, shallow, and derivative

Both process schools & portfolio schools value the visual aesthetic of graphic design

Some designers fill in educational gaps as they progress, some fake it

Mediocre design is a result of concentration on the visual

Every problem has a purely visual solution that exists outside and cultural context

The client must be touched with communication that is resonant, not self referential

Exposure to a meaningful range of culture would benefit graphic design students


I Come to Bury Graphic Design
Kenneth Fitzgerald

Procreation: assuring the creation of more professional design

The faster you go, the closer you get and the more weighed down you become

We seek a society where everyone is making art, being creative.

Increasing access to the means of production + desire

Design has a death wish

“In Search of the Perfect Client:’ Michael Bierut suggested we might have to psychologically condition future employers from childhood

Isn’t there a disconnect between advocating the free flow of information but allowing only a clique of specialists to direct it?

Design is an on-the-job learning experience

Students enter with a vague interest in text and image—often, not even that—and are channeled wholesale into professional design making

A successful design program is defined as one that (re) produces more professional design and designers

“Graphic Design is not a Profession”

“Can studying design be of general, not just professional, interest?”

“Do we really have anything to offer outside of the sometimes questionable promise of a job?”

The majority of design students will not go into professional practice

Does design care about anything other than producing more designers?

An education through design rather than in design should be our goal

Design is just a job to most of its practitioners

The majority of studios and corporate art departments are factories

The simple truth is that professional design will almost always fall short of touching hearts because it’s second-hand love

Designer’s love doing design, the client is just a vehicle

Why else do designers have creative side projects, as they describe it, to gratify their creative urges?

Shouldn’t this tell them that they’re in the wrong business?

Or that design shouldn’t be a business?

This does not mean, however, that designers must only do design

Maybe design should be left to people inspired by the nutrition labels on food packages