Notes from-Fitzgerald-BuryDesign

“to make the world a better place.”

Most theory—whether it is “academic” or “practical”—also comes down to procreation: assuring the creation of more professional design.

Untrained design can make inroads into information design. This might be considered the branch of design impervious to unprofessional interloping. But we should consider the example of Edward Tufte, as practitioner and in practice.

If we imagine graphic design as an individual, we must explain why it doesn’t affirm its desired identity, then breed wildly. My explanation is

Freudian: design has a death wish. It constantly seeks to eradicate itself.
- Designers will instinctively reject this notion. We’re fighting for our lives! Indulgent clients are at a premium.

What is significant is that designers look outside their professional standard to a source considered pure and immediate. And, often—from hand-drawn and painted signage to ‘zines to desktop horrors no designer would uphold—distressingly effective.

The notion that design is an on-the-job learning experience continues to dominate. 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.

Gordon Salchow wrote “Graphic Design is not a Profession”
- He pointed out design’s resemblance to literature and music, calling design a “...fundamental humanist communications discipline...its peers are the Liberal Arts.”
- Design Education as a Liberal Art: Design and Knowledge in the University and the ‘Real World’,”

Andrew Blauvelt
- “Design as a field of study without practical application is unlikely and undesirable...it is the practice of graphic design that provides the basis of a theory of graphic design.”

Designers claim their activity is all about ideas—not software, not formal facility. Educators are called upon to foster a critical sensibility: a questioning mind capable of intellectual discipline. Design’s vital aspect of craft is a product of a
cognitive awareness.