Oct 8
2012
The contribution of creative education has never been more important. Yet in the U.K. and the U.S., design schools are losing their pre-eminence as new centres–places such as Singapore, Eindhoven, Berlin and China, where design schools have been or are becoming more important–for design emerge. Is the existing approach toward teaching in the U.K. and the U.S. dated? Or is there a bigger global shift occurring?
How can we make design education better?
Michael gave the final word
‘the designer as ambassador at large is an area of essential development’
Monday, October 15 at 11:03am
Design education in the US is mired in bureaucracy. One has to be a department director (as I have been) to know how many forms, reports, assessments, evaluations have to be filed every week. In addition, there exist many levels of external accreditation, which essentially force the design departments to conform to a set of (often outdated) rules and curricula. The Deans, the Presidents, the Boards of Advisors, are all unwilling to stick out.
Even at Eindhoven Design Academy, the Department Chairs recently had to submit their resignations en masse in order to protect their creative educational freedoms. Fortunately and promptly, the administration relented. I am afraid that in the US the outcome of such confrontation would end up with a very different result.
The educators in the US have to be trusted to try and experiment with new ways of teaching design. Why not give someone a carte blanche? We write about conditions that are expansive and fluid, yet our programs are narrow and rigid. First, we need to open up the classroom, to re-imagine it as a critical collaborative experimental space, to connect it with the world at large. Then, we can worry about our lost pre-eminence.
Monday, October 15 at 10:27am
Michael gave the Final Word
I see this in three pieces;
The first would be method based, and the idea that in the best of the design school curricula, Design Academy Eindhoven, by example, the orientation of disciplines is more loosely based than our classic silos of industrial, graphic, fashion and environmental design, by example. At Eindhoven, these are all interwoven under the auspices of more broad based bracketing enabling student’s creativity to intelligently and necessarily wander. Departments like Man and Activity, Man and Living and Man and Mobility foster a healthier, holistic approach to design.
The shift that is occurring in the schools in the States is about a more intensive focus on the occupational realities of design education, and ensuring that students have adequate real-world practice and awareness of what lies ahead. In the past, post-graduate efforts at design schools were largely placement oriented, though the necessary emphasis is (and should be) about explicit expectations of one’s future employer, the needs of the client, an understanding of the basic practices and rigorous disciplines required to excel in the community of a workplace and a sense of the distance between idealized concept and the everyday constraints of the typical project.
Lastly, in the societal macro, the designer as ambassador at large is an area of essential development which, perhaps, is more prevalent in Europe where sensitivity to lifestyle is more evolved than in the States. A great deal of this is about government embrace of design, art, and the applied arts. With this in mind, through RISD we have funded the Maharam STEAM Fellowship in Applied Art and Design, which provides stipends for select internships with a government agency or nonprofit organization uniquely designed by students to focus on strengthening the role of visually acute critical thinkers and problem solvers in helping to improve public policy and tackle large social issues. Both RISD and Maharam support the notion that economic progress and breakthrough innovation comes from the coupling of art and design in combination with the Obama administration’s emphasis on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), thus the acronym STEAM, a program which is being fostered internationally by RISD’s John Maeda.
Monday, October 15 at 11:03am
Hello,
As a past graduate of the “li edelkoort” Design Academy Endhoven, in the department “man and well being” I was very happy with the education I received.
I feel the two factors that attributed to this most are that the majority of the teachers are working designers, generally having their own studios and who teach one or two days a week, thus keeping them “relevant” within the current design movements.
And second the structure of the classrooms, where students and teacher gather at a large table each week, with each student presenting their progress/work for that week in front of both the teacher and fellow students. Giving the opportunity for the teacher to critique each student independently and specifically in regards to their work. This also of course allows the fellow students to gain additional insight to others work, through process and ways of working, design solutions/problems and voice their own opinions, creating a dialogue not only for that week/lesson, but over the whole course of the project. Allowing for all the students to follow the development of multiple projects and ultimately the results.
This open and fluid way of presenting was great as students could come and go through out the lesson to continue working and gave the first presenters the opportunity to show changes to the teacher before the end of the lesson, or those less sure to hold back and gain additional insight through their classmates presentations in regards to the project and the direction it was heading.
I feel I learned as much from my fellow students as I did from my teachers. This is also a product of the actual layout of the school with no doors, walls or windows separating classes, years, course or departments.
Sunday, October 21 at 4:02am
In the UK creative education has reached a crossroad where it has to make a decision about which direction to go. This decision has been made more acute because of the recent imposition of higher fees that have already had a substantive impact in the number and quality of applications. Students from other European countries – traditionally a strong source – are looking elsewhere and we will miss them. Many of our design stars came here to train and stayed.
I am a strong believer in reputations. Courses, institutions, cities even, benefit from a reputation that acts as a magnet to talent. Yet it is easy to argue that our creative institutions have become dependent on them rather than using that position of strength to push forward.
The dynamic now is more students, less staff, same space, more cost. Inevitably this means serious erosion in quality. So before we address an approach to teaching – as the other contributors all have done – we must look at the structure itself.
Back to the crossroads. The choice is stark. Either continue down the road of scaling up, processing ever higher numbers of disaffected indebted students, or accept that less is more and focus on quality where contact time is absolute and freedom to think and create is the priority.
Monday, October 22 at 6:09am
Keywords
Selected list of words appearing in this and other conversations.
Emily Leibin Ko
Communications + Digital Media, The Glass House
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I consider myself experienced in the area of design education – having been a student in design-related education twice–first as an undergraduate student at The Pratt Institute, studying Industrial Design, and then again as a graduate student in the School of Visual Arts Design Criticism program known as D-Crit (http://dcrit.sva.edu/).
I think something that I yearned for as a student at Pratt was more connections to outside organizations, more communication in addition to the terrific hands-on design experience I had there. D-Crit fulfilled this need with a great curriculum, faculty and public lecture series that included U.S. and international leaders in design and criticism.
I think that to stay relevant design schools need to engage in a dialogue with schools and organizations in other countries. Study abroad is available to some students with the financial means to participate–Pratt had (has?) an amazing study abroad program in Copenhagen–but with communications technologies such as Skype that are now available to everyone for free, an international exchange/dialogue could be part of every day studies – it certainly is part of a working industrial designer’s daily routine!
Wednesday, October 10 at 2:30pm