www.dezeen.com: Design has expanded in all imaginable directions, but the world of education doesn't know how to respond to the new situation. What on earth should you teach future designers? For what profession are we actually educating them? Will they be entrepreneurs? Or artists? Engineers? Writers? Innovators? Researchers? There's no time to reflect on the answer, because courses and programmes must be developed quickly in response to the crazy growth in the market for design education.
5 comments:
This is certainly an intriguing article. I think design school offers some benefits and new ways of thinking that simply cant be obtained in a management school. For instance, many people who graduate from the school of drama don't actually end up doing anything in the entertainment industry. These are people who end up making promising careers as doctors, lawyers, architects etc. etc. However, these people prove themselves to be better equipped for their job because design school has given them valuable schools that you would not get anywhere else. One example I can think off of the top of my head is students in design school are constantly asked to consider multiple solutions to a problem, even the outrageous ones. This forces young designers to consider all possibilities and pick the best one opposed to an engineer who may simply take the least complex option available. That being said I think I'm more on side that teaching art or design in the out school way is more appropriate than shoving it off of schools of computer science or management.
The challenge of trying to teach a field that is constantly innovating is definitely a tough one. It's exciting to see an article that addresses this, because it is something I have given a lot of thought to over the last year. I think that the key point in this article may be the idea that design is more of a mentality than a skill. You may not be able to teach people to be designers but you can train them to think like designers. If they can obtain this mindset, it won't matter what they actual object being designed is. Earlier this year, I did not understand much of the reasoning behind the curriculum of our Basic Design class, but I have since developed an understanding that its been helping us to think in a way that will allow us to become designers. This type of education seems like the right direction. An understanding of design technologies also seems valuable however, maybe like our new IDeATe program.
Design education is one of those things that will never be set in stone. Education for design will be continually changing because what humans see as visually appealing will always be changing. Styles change so quickly in our modern era that the education on how to design what each generation thinks is interesting must also always be changing. I have come to find that within the career of a design education, there is a lot of subjugation over what professors think looks good and that will determine how well you do in school. I sometimes couldn't stand the way things were graded in architecture because everything was so subjective and you would have to design according to what your professor wanted. In education for design, like in the real world, there will always be people telling you what looks good and what does not.
This is a really cool article, I think about this all the time after having talked to art majors. It is a tough life going into the art freelance world especially as a strictly fine arts major. It sounds like this article is trying to address every major under the art major, but it is defiantly targeted towards the industrial designers and those who have more opportunities to be with firms and have full time jobs in the future. That being said skill is something that is really harped on at CMU from what I can tell and it is a shame if the importance of skills is not heard loud enough at other educational facilities.
I think this touches on the challenge facing modern education in general. With the world changing so fast, half of the careers that us in college will have, dont actually exist yet, and how do you prepare someone for that? I think the the key lies, especially for designers, in the foundational skills, way of thinking, and soft skills. Everything else your specific employer will teach you. Schools should be encouraging creative thinking, problem solving, communication skills, as well as fundamental skills like drafting and drawing. But when it comes to the fundamentals- the key is not the finished product of the skill itself, but rather the theory behind it- a theory that can be applied to that job that doesnt exist yet.
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