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1950 // Design becomes "Academic"
The first regionally accredited graphic design program in a North America University was established at Yale University in 1950 (Kelly, 2001). Housed in the newly founded Department of Design, the sequential graphic design program sought to disassociate itself from traditional fine arts, presenting design, like architecture and like the historic roots of design, as an applied/professional discipline. By separating graphic design from both its traditional ties to fine art and its more recent ties to advertising, the Yale program opened the way for graphic design to become viewed as a discipline, enfolded into academic hierarchy and moved to a professional practice (Kelly, 2001).
The small, core full-time faculty were primarily European educated, some from the École des Beaux-Arts, others with ties to the Bauhaus (Kelly, 2001). Together they created a curriculum focused heavily on graphic design as a means of problem-solving and visual communication. Designers were steeped in visual theory, visual principles, and developed both, "strong handskills and perceptual sensitivity" (Kelly, 2001, p. 13).
Critique and project reviews were conducted as group activities, with several teachers working together to create a communal discussion. The end of term assessment was also a formal panel review where each student first presented their current portfolio to faculty members and then received counsel and feedback on its progress. In liu of grades, students were marked as pass or fail.
In this studio space, students spent the majority of their days alternating between printmaking, photography, and typesetting. The studio space was the fertile ground where graphic design was treated as a "slow and evolving process dependent on highly developed hand skills" (AIGA). The Yale design program experienced tremendous success, paving the way for other universities to develop their own graphic design programs and design to be viewed as a discipline in its own place.
Academic Design Education -- Uneasy Tensions
Within the context of design schools today, there exists an uneasy tension between professional practice and scholarly work (Littlejohn, 2011). Following restrictions of a traditional academic calendar, design pedagogy has become fragmented and piecemeal--consisting of discrete chunks of information rather than a universal complex presentation of full integration as is often encountered within professional practice.
The porous borders between here/there + digital/physical
"Design teachers should teach basic principles of form and communication, but are, by teaching what they were taught, teaching the graphic designers of the twenty-first century how to be mid-twentieth century graphic designers?" (Swanson, 1994, p. 58).
Though design is still fundamentally a creative act, design education is increasingly being called upon to move from a singular mission of making students form-givers and practitioners to the pursuit of integrating form-making with "nontraditional competencies" (Littlejohn, 2011) such as research, communication, audience awareness, empathy, etc.
The design community is constantly calling for a re-visit into teaching and learning methodologies particularly regarding what, in the context of a global, interconnected economy, constitutes design education and being a designer (Souleles, 2011; Swann & Young, 2000). Professional organizations such as the American Institute of Graphic Artists (AIGA) have called on educational organizations to expand and re-evaluate their curriculum, emphasizing greater attention to audience context, formal research analysis, collaborative competency, and a broader understanding of social context for design (2007).
The National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) too identifies the following five key concepts as being essential for design educators to begin integrating into their curriculum so that students are prepared for the future workplace: complexity, innovation, technology, globalization, and relationship (NASAD, 2010). NASAD calls on design educators and administrators to actively pursue growth in these areas so that students are better prepared for the future. Notably, all areas are predicated on design education incorporating some practices that incorporate reaching out and moving beyond the traditional sacred studio spaces and becoming adept at engaging to a much greater extent in relationships with those traditionally outside of the design studio.
The tools, both regarding communication and practice for professional design activity have changed dramatically in the past three decades. Digital tools and digital media are now the dominant means of generating design concepts and conducting presentations and the internet has become the dominant means to share ideas and communicate information. Incorporating these changes into the design education curriculum is now a “critical issue for design education” (Chen & You, 2003, p. 3).
Though there is acknowledgment that changes in practice must be predicated by changes in pedagogy, there is a distinct resistance to anything in design education that takes education outside of the traditional space of the studio (Souleles, 2011).
That said, increasingly there are educators shifting and subverting, acknowledging that studio can be more of a mindset than a space--more a skill set than a physical, walled place. It is to these educators that our story now turns.