Research Methodologies Reading No.1

THE LANDSCAPE OF GRAPHIC DESIGN EDUCATION
Meredith Davis

The role of colleges and universities now engaged in professional education is to develop students with respect to both the discipline and the profession of graphic design.

Several years ago, the AIGA and the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, the accrediting body for college programs in art and design, agreed that the Bachelor of Fine Arts with a fully-articulated major in graphic design is the first professional degree. As part of that agreement, the organizations defined “essential competencies” as learning outcomes that should result from study in these programs and have published briefing papers that expand discussion of conditions impacting professional programs.

I would argue that what distinguishes a professional graphic design education from a pre-professional experience (and a profession from a trade) is not the one-to-one match between curriculum and the current skill set necessary for entry-level practice, but the essential competencies that enable design practitioners to be predictive and responsible for transforming the field across their professional careers.

What excellent professional programs in design demonstrate, regardless of their structure and the particular skills of the faculty, is that it takes time to produce a professional and even longer to produce a leader in the field.

The goal for design faculty in professional programs, therefore, should not only be to monitor student completion of a cafeteria of required professional courses or to verify inclusion of each professional project type in the student’s portfolio (annual report, poster, website, etc.) Instead, the mission of professional curricula should be to instill in students a disposition for scholarship in both academic and professional settings.

As the economics of higher education encourage expanding populations of students to begin their baccalaureate studies in two-year institutions, the need is greater for four-year programs and community colleges to coordinate curriculum planning.

The field of graphic design has witnessed considerable change over the last two decades. The introduction of the computer and rapid growth of technology; increased public access to the means of production and dissemination; extreme highs and lows in the economy; public concern for the environment; and consumer activism have rewritten the value system of design and how it is perceived by others. In many businesses, design is now viewed as integral to an overall operational strategy.

Healthy professions transform themselves over time; they anticipate and respond to changes in the social, technological, and economic context by developing new knowledge, modes of inquiry, and critical perspectives. New practices emerge to meet new conditions.

So if graphic design education is to prepare future practitioners to anticipate and manage change, it must recognize the value of being well-educated in areas not currently defined as being about the profession and integrate this content into the normal discussions in the design studio.

More recently, design firms have taken on their own research initiatives, applying practices borrowed from more established research disciplines, developing new methods specific to design, and engaging audiences as co-creators of artifacts and services. Consistent with the evolution of any professional field, we now find firms and individuals devoted exclusively to providing research that informs the decisions of others. Regrettably, this emerging research culture currently resides almost entirely inside design offices that consider outcomes as proprietary, as trade secrets for which clients pay fees.

The last two issues deal with concern over who is minding the store in graphic design education. Nearly 30 years of burgeoning enrollments, unchecked by any concern for demand in the field or the skewing of priorities in multidisciplinary departments and college, has left the field with a shortfall of qualified faculty. Faculty searches continue to come up short and high-level master’s programs can’t produce enough young teachers to staff the current vacancies for assistant professors. Paired with shrinking academic budgets, many schools have turned to adjunct faculty who teach one or two courses a semester, receive no benefits, and do no advising, curriculum planning, or assessment. Many lack terminal degrees and receive little instruction from the department regarding what is to be taught, how the course relates to the rest of the curriculum, or appropriate student outcomes. At schools located outside of major metropolitan design centers, the pool of practicing designers is often limited to the institution’s own very recent graduates.