Critical thinking means to think in a manner that is directed, monitored and corrected by the thinker. It involves constructive communication and the ability to solve problems in the presence of exacting standards. To be a successful critical thinker, one must step out of one’s comfort zone and separate himself from the topic in question (Paul and Elder, 2009). Any discipline is only benefitted by the questioning nature of its practitioners, the quality of the works increases as a direct result of it. Critical graphic design came about as a school of thought due to the nature of commercialism and its relation to design. It is only when the designer questions the practice of graphic design that he can become better at it.
There are three types of design criticality that exist today. The first one is where the designer is critical of his own practice. He is aware of himself and knows why he does what he does. It is a way for the designer to question himself and see how he places in relationship to his field. The second kind would be the construction of a discourse about the discipline, to add criticality to graphic design, to try to move against the current, change conventions. Expansion and evolution have always been something that designers have worked towards. The final one is where designers try to work with issues of note in their environments, aiming to question a social or political issue. These three don’t exist independent of each other but together, sometimes converging and impacting each other in a myriad ways (Laranjo, 2014).
The first two types of criticality are still found easily but the third is a little bit trickier to track down. The scope of work that designers do while being primarily focused on the aesthetics can have great social impact. However, if they have no idea or interest in their subject matter, how can they do justice to it? One can argue that they are a fresh set of eyes that have no idea of the issue and can therefore bring new perspective. The only way that fresh eyes can lead to astute results is if the eyes are well informed on the issue (Norman, 2010). But what is happening is that the result they produce is superficial and bereft of meaning. This is an issue which can be tackled at the design schools where these designers come from.
There is a rise in the number of schools teaching design all around the world but there is still a major lacking in the education that they provide. These programs teach their students how to design but forget a very important aspect of being a designer, a curiosity to know more about everything because design is about everything but design. It is possible to argue that this curiosity cannot be taught but it can be inculcated by providing education in history, political science, music (as a few examples) that is complimentary to design. If this need is not addressed soon, we will be left with a crop of designers that can create aesthetically great pieces of work but nothing that has real meaning because meaning making is not a task that can be made possible without a deeper understanding of the subject. This leads to superficiality. If there was more of such a kind of design education, there would be greater understanding of what design is, eventually filtering the number of students in graphic design programs around the world. In this essay, this theory will be analysed through the lens of Michael Beirut’s essay titled ‘Why Designers Can’t Think’ supported by comments made by design critics such as Rick Poynor, Francisco Laranjo and Don Norman. And an entirely different perspective provided by Dan Saffer will also be taken into consideration.
Rick Poynor says of communication design, “It is a communicative surface, a connective tissue: the visible part of an object or experience that pulls in the viewer or reader.” It is quite impossible to work in the field and not get interested in the subjects that it is trying to propagate. Since much of the world’s communication is decided upon and directed by graphic designers, they get to be involved in as many fields of interests as the number and type of clients that they have (Poynor, 2014). In one day, a graphic designer can discuss classic rock music’s impact on the design of album art in the present age with one client, possible eradication of AIDS using design with a second one and ways to translate semi precious stones’ ethereal quality holographically with a third. Graphic design provides its practitioners the opportunity to learn and talk about more than just itself. It must be so boring to be in a profession where one has to channel all energies towards one thing and is unable to expand his horizons.
Not that long ago, there were no schools that specialised in graphic design as a result of which the people that made up the design world of the 20th century were mostly self-taught. They didn’t have a basic training in typography, visual problem solving and aesthetics and yet they thrived. They possessed an unquenchable thirst to know more about more than just design, they wanted to be informed about science, culture, politics and history. “It was my passion for the media to which design gives form ― books, magazines, art, music, and films ― that led me to design in the first place,” says Poynor (Poynor, 2014).
There is a rise in the number of programs that teach graphic design and this figure is still growing. More and more young people are deciding that they have a bright future in graphic design without understanding fully the depth of the field and what it entails. They are taken in by one of the many colleges and universities that now offer graphic design education. And sooner than anyone realises, they are done and ready to take their places as designers in advertising agencies and design studios for what everybody hopes is an ever-growing cache of clients (Bierut, 2007).
Out of the many ways to teach graphic design, American programs for graphic design fall into two major categories: process schools and portfolio schools. One that can be called ‘Swiss’ and one that can be called ‘slick’. A form centric direction to problem solving is the defining characteristic of process schools. The exercises are relatively uncomplicated in the beginning; the students are asked to draw and three dimensionally render letterforms with images that have been enhanced and blend it with some still life photography. In the intermediate stage, the exercises that are conducted are a combination of the different tasks done earlier: a hand drawing of the letter D combined with a tripod is fused with the photograph of the lens of a camera. This is then translated into graphic design that is ‘real’. The letter D along with the tripod and the picture of the lens plus Helvetica results in a poster for Patrick Demarchelier, the French fashion photographer. After moving on further in their education, the students possess a tendency to go back to what they had been taught first, creating forms as a response to a brief. Many of these process schools have been derived from the program in the city of Basel in Switzerland at Kunstgewerbeschule. The teachers that are conveying these methods of approaching design are likely to have experienced the effects of the program in Basel from second or third hand sources (Bierut, 2007).
These process schools that attempt to ape the swiss style largely thrived as a reaction to the perceived slickness of the portfolio schools. The latter have been around since as long back as the 1950s whereas the former have only come to be in the last fifteen years or so. The apparent goal of the Swiss inspired design schools is to very obviously copy a country that is far away. On the other hand, the portfolio schools have an entirely different agenda, their aim is to ensure that upon graduation, each student has a portfolio that will get them the most coveted jobs in the design industry (Bierut, 2007).
Portfolio schools would like to have the world believe that their end aim is not to have imagery that is engaging and not easily forgotten by presenting the many number of pages in their students’ portfolios that are dedicated to the ‘process’ of arriving at the final image. But do not doubt that at the end of that series is an attractive portrayal of the product. Portfolio schools are unlikely to spend a time period as long as six months on a multi-part analysis that is structured on how and why the Campbell’s soup Can label is more than just an end. While the swiss process schools have full time teachers that are devoted to teaching their students, portfolio schools are led by professionals from the industry that are unable to teach as more than part time teachers and have no patience for exercises that do not have a direct connection to the ‘real world’ (Bierut, 2007).
The two types of schools may act nicely when discussing design education but it is safe to say that they utterly dislike each other. The portfolio schools find the ‘Swiss’ style to be irrelevant now and senseless for its audience. And the process schools feel disdainful about the commerciality of the ‘slick’ method (Bierut, 2007).
Graduates from either type of school are sought after equally for their abilities. Corporate Identity firms like to make use of the graduates from the ‘Swiss’ style of education. because they would not mind being drowned in the fat corporate manuals for as far as up to a period of two years. And at the same time, package design firms take on the portfolio oriented school graduates because they can produce numerous options that are different in the way that they are made to display to clients that cannot make up their mind (Bierut, 2007).
If there is a demand for the different kinds of skill sets. What is the issue with graphic design education then? The answer is not in how schools are different, but how they’re the same. Both of these schools whether slick or Swiss have some elements in common. Their project could be the beautifully photographed product or the Demarchelier poster, at the end of the day, what is most important to them is the way that the design looks and its meaning. These programs talk abut semiotics and conceptual problem solving but they don’t do more than pay lip service to these design terms. In most of these programs, it is very possible that the students would study graphic design for a period of up to four years without ever having any meaningful exposure to aspects of social science such as history and politics which are essential for growth as a designer (or in any other discipline). They help in uniting designers with those from other fields creating a common culture (Bierut, 2007).
Design continues to primarily still be taught as a technique. There is no science to it and a questionable lack of foundation. The creation of a new abiding curriculum for design education is the only way that design can achieve its full potential. A curriculum that combines all the different fields that a university may have to offer. The true nature of design is such that it brings together all the different spheres of knowledge. There is tremendous opportunity in the world today for the students that have learnt design in this blended way (Norman, 2014).
Employers need designers that are trained to design not ones who are well versed with writing and economics. And therein lies the deficiency in design education. At first, yes, the young graduates don’t need to know economics any more than other professions. They need skills that are largely technical to execute their ideas which have been guided by their seniors. But somewhere, much sooner than they would expect, down this road they would incur problems. A designer cannot create the layout of a book without a basic curiosity where literature in concerned or design the logo for a technological company without an intrinsic understanding of science. Or even plan out an annual report for a company without some knowledge of economics (Bierut, 2007).
As is evident from the work that we often see, designers can create works without an intrinsic understanding of the subject matter and they do. Many designers even fill in the gaps in their education by learning themselves whereas some just fake it for as long as possible. But some of the most average designs come from designers who still faithfully do what they have been taught; paying attention to only the way their designs look and nothing else (Bierut, 2007). Much has changed in the world, and today, taking the example of industrial designers, designers have to work on structure of organisations and social problems on interaction, service, and experience design. Many of these problems comprise of intricate social and political issues. And as a result, designers have also had to take on the role of behavioural scientists. However, they are highly under qualified in terms of education for the task. They find it difficult to understand the complexity of the issues. It is often claimed that fresh eyes have the ability to produce solutions that have never been seen before, but then again at the same time the designers wonder why these answers are very rarely put to action and if they are, why they fail. There is a requirement for a level of knowledge of the subject matter for even this fresh set of eyes to provide results that can change the course of things. Designers often do not possess this requisite knowledge . Design schools do not teach their students about these convoluted issues, about how human and social actions are interlocked. (Norman, 2010)
The reason that the work which originated in the 1940s and the 1950s continues to still hold the attention of designers and excite them whereas the designs that followed it fail to do so in any way at all is because all the works from that period are grounded in their culture. Since those designers did not have access to a variety of programs on specifically graphic design, they inevitably ended up becoming well rounded (Bierut, 2007).
Design education of the current times at large has no value. Each problem is supposed to have a visual solution that is independent of any context. And most of the victims are from the world of low culture and not the high. In the case of a food delivery company that asks the products of this American design education to create a new logo to bolster the their brand identity. They would receive as a result, a logo that holds no real meaning in their world. They possess a blatant disregard for the context. They could just as easily have said no but this option never occurs to them. The clients that come to designers generally possess no knowledge of design. And where the work will finally find itself is not somewhere that has many designers. Therefore, the clients must be given something that actually communicates to them their purpose. To find this language is a designer’s job (Bierut, 2007).
While most designers are rallying for education that is centred around critical thinking, Dan Saffer of Adaptive Path has a different perspective. He says that as he looks at résumés and portfolios of fresh graduates, he can see a noticeable change in the education of design since he first started out. The schools are beginning to focus and limit their approach to design thinking according to him and this seems to be a problem (Saffer, 2007).
The process of design constitutes three things; they are thinking, making and doing. Doing is the amalgamation of thinking and making. The increased concentration by design schools on the thinking part of the procedure seems to be alienating the rest of it. The craft of design is just as important as the thought behind it. Especially in the job markets where thinking becomes redundant without making and doing unless the designer is working for a consultancy firm or think tank. It becomes difficult to find opportunities at studios with just a strong grasp of the thinking part (Saffer, 2007).
Dan says that design schools are damaging their students’ chances at illustrious design careers by concentrating heavily on just design thinking. A separate class on something like image-making or editorial design might help the students build a skill that will be of value to them and also teach them all three aspects (thinking, making, doing) of the creation process. Design as a discipline requires its practitioners to be good at all three instead of just one for it to be successful (Saffer, 2007). The learning that occurs while going through different versions and ways of approaching the brief goes a long way in the development of the designer’s sensibilities. Execution of an idea is what teaches one what works and what doesn’t work. Theory doesn’t always translate well in practice.
Constraints are an aspect of actual production that get lost in the thinking. They become real only when you are faced with them and the challenge that they provide to your design. After all, design is problem solving. Another thing that does not have much value in the thinking stage of the design process is detail. When you see the actual layout of a page is when you are going to know whether it works cohesively or not. Details are also what set designers apart from each other and mark one out to be better than the other (Saffer, 2007).
The employers of the field are on the lookout for designers that can’t just think but can execute too. They want designers that have the ability to conceptualise and produce designs that have meaning, that are mindful of details and invoke a response from the viewer not ones that just create pretty works which have no meaning. Design schools should have a comprehensive approach to design which incorporates all these aspects (Saffer, 2007).
Michael Beirut and Don Norman have propagated the idea that the inherent problem with design education is that it is primarily the teaching of skills and seems to think that it has no need for the learning of anything else which is culturally relevant. Whereas, Dan Saffer says that the problem he faces with most designers that have come his way is that they are sure of their ability to think and not as much of their ability to do. Their opinions seem to be entirely contradictory. But what is glaringly evident in both cases is that the gap in learning is happening at the university level. And that is something that needs to be addressed.