Speak Up � A Teacher�s Point of View

I've just been looking around the Speak Up site and found an old discussion on whether it is appropriate for teachers to espouse opinions on things like politics and religion to students.
For what it's worth, I think it's okay so long as it's relevant. I like to get students to think and will often act as a devil's advocate, putting forward a point of view I don't agree with, just so that it is considered. I like passion, but ignorant passion is a waste of time.

Politics comes into my courses a lot - we discuss globalization and the anticapitalist movement, reasons why American visual culture is universally consumed but equally, it seems, reviled. We talk about the ideology of advertising and ways in which designers and illustrators can use and abuse the power they have. A common comment after my course is that students feel less inclined to be designers, more cynical about the industry. That's an immediate reaction, but I suspect that those who say it are more likely to go on and be good, conscientious designers. In fact, not so much conscientious as conscious.

You cannot study any subject out of context, and graphic design has a political, sociological and ideological context. It plays on and with psychology, class, taste and whatever dominant economic system is in force at the time. It can be used to tell massive truths and untruths. Making students aware of that is not inculcating them, if handled appropriately.

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The comment below struck me, however, given my earlier comments about whether it was important for a design teacher to be a "good" designer themselves. This student, from the USA, thinks that it is. I have to say I've only met one student who had a problem with me not having a BA in Graphic Design, and only a handful have ever asked if I would show them some of my work (but they were all out of interest rather than to check my qualification to teach them).

The comment below suggests this student is focussing on the wrong things. Would she accept a place on a course taught by award winning designers who were inept at teaching, and reject one delivered by mediocre designers who were exceptional at realising the talents and intellects of their students?

In the UK it's traditional to look at graduating students' work, not their teachers', as a quick measure of the quality of the teaching. Even that is not without its problems (I know of a couple of courses that deliberately recruit already "good" students and then abandon them for three years, letting the staff get on with being artists and designers, so the work is effectively produced in spite of, not because of, the teaching) and efforts are in hand in the UK to change the information applicants have about courses and the quality of the teaching.

The later comment "Sometimes a student can get frustrated over a teacher's crits and question their knowledge and expertise -- if people knew what teachers were capable of early on, this line of thinking would be in the backburner" is fine - but what evidence does a portfolio show? Often the work is the result of a creative collaboration between a client, an art director, account manager, copywriter, photographer and artworker. The piece itself tells you nothing of the talent of the person who carries it in their portfolio, particularly in relation to their teaching ability. The best way to challenge a teacher's opinion is through discussion, not a duel with portfolios at twenty paces.

"I wish they had detailed information about faculty as well. Also, for some reason, the teachers I had didn't pull out their portfolio (to put their money where their mouth is so to speak) until later in the course or until asked. I think it's should be a pre-requisite for students to peruse through faculty's portfolios before deciding to go to that school.


Sometimes a student can get frustrated over a teacher's crits and question their knowledge and expertise -- if people knew what teachers were capable of early on, this line of thinking would be in the backburner. You can have a LIST of credentials, awards, and everything -- but if no one SEES the actual WORK, students are cynical and quick to judge."

Great designers do not necessarily make great teachers

I never went to design school, and I don't have a degree in graphic design. In fact, I never went to university.
I did attend a visual communications course, but specialised in audio and video production, got a job accidentally to experiment with then-emerging DTP technology, ended up running a large in-house design department for ten years, and did a degree and MA in the evenings while working full-time.

I say this because I was recently asked, rather rudely, to show someone my design work, as without it they couldn't determine if my views of design education were valid or not. This is actually a common view in design education - your skills as a designer are somehow linked to your skills as a teacher.

Believe it or not there is a view in some circles that if a student is in the same room as a "great" artist or designer, they will learn something. I think that's bullshit, to be frank.

I've met lots of well-known designers and artists, some who've won prestigious awards such as the Turner Prize and D&AD yellow pencils. Very few of them would have made good teachers, but were all in constant demand to go and talk to students.
Almost without fail, these people would address the students and undo years of work - one told a crowded lecture hall that sketchbooks were a waste of time. Several questions from students followed that suggested this one nugget of information was the most valuable of the day. Thank you very much.
Another told students to stop writing and start drawing, as no one was interested in a designer who could write. What fun we had after that one! (Fortunately quite a few students took him to task on that one).

Two years ago I was interviewing for a teaching vacancy on my graphic design degree programme. Before the interviews I told my boss that I would rather employ a teacher than a designer. In other words, I wanted someone with a teaching qualification (a rarity in UK higher education) who saw themselves as a teacher first, a designer second (if at all). It was a good decision, and one that students immediately commented on. Suddenly they were getting "teaching" rather than "art direction".

For the record, I have met good designers who were also good teachers!

The fact is I am an okay designer, I think. I've never won an award, but then I've never entered any. I did work for a company during a period in which they saw a massive increase in sales, some of which I'd like to think was down to my role managing their publications and web site. That suggests some sort of effectiveness.

But on the whole I don't think I will ever be viewed as a "great" designer. I stopped designing when I went into teaching - it's difficult to devote yourself to both without one suffering - though I've done a few web sites recently. And I wouldn't be keen to show anyone the work I was doing five years ago because it will look outdated and, to be honest, I've learnt far more about design through teaching it than I ever would have done doing it.

Does that mean I can't/shouldn't teach design, or write about it?

10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School

Michael McDonough's list of ten things they never taught him in design school, first publushed in The Architect's Newspaper makes interesting reading. Of course the trouble with lists like this is that it's easy to read them and say, as some commentators have over at Design Observer, these are the sort of things that should be taught in design schools. But should they? Are most of them not the result of experience?

A famous designer came to talk to some of my students last year and basically put his success down to going to the right parties. But the fact that he was a "wide boy" able to mix easily and con his way into private parties shouldn't have made him say, in effect, that if you can't do that you're never going to be successful. For every egotistic designer getting their photo on the front of Design Week there are a hundred or more shy, retiring types getting on with their work.
(It made me wonder if we shouldn't teach networking skills alongside everything else. I needn't worry - looking at the list of contacts my current dissertation students have made through interviews and case studies, I think they have uncommonly large address books for their age. The trick now is to use it - send invitations to the graduation show, write a short tahnk you note, invite them out for lunch, just keep the contact warm until the day it becomes useful.)

There are lots of things designers look back on and say "they never taught me about that at design school" but it's difficult to predict what specific knowledge will come in useful for each and every student. For my money I'd stop teaching students technical type terms as I've never had to use them except in conversations with other people who've been taught them but never used them. But the number of employers I've spoken to in the past five years who bemoan students' lack of type skills (by which they mean terminology) you'd think it was holy scripture.

So here's the challenge: what are the ten things they did teach you at design school that you think they needn't have, or shouldn't have (and lay off the critical studies - I'm talking about skills here!)

The Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School
by Michael McDonough

1. Talent is one-third of the success equation.
Talent is important in any profession, but it is no guarantee of success. Hard work and luck are equally important. Hard work means self-discipline and sacrifice. Luck means, among other things, access to power, whether it is social contacts or money or timing. In fact, if you are not very talented, you can still succeed by emphasizing the other two. If you think I am wrong, just look around.

2. 95 percent of any creative profession is shit work.
Only 5 percent is actually, in some simplistic way, fun. In school that is what you focus on; it is 100 percent fun. Tick-tock. In real life, most of the time there is paper work, drafting boring stuff, fact-checking, negotiating, selling, collecting money, paying taxes, and so forth. If you don�t learn to love the boring, aggravating, and stupid parts of your profession and perform them with diligence and care, you will never succeed.

3. If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important.
You hear a lot about details, from �Don�t sweat the details� to �God is in the details.� Both are true, but with a very important explanation: hierarchy. You must decide what is important, and then attend to it first and foremost. Everything is important, yes. But not everything is equally important. A very successful real estate person taught me this. He told me, �Watch King Rat. You�ll get it.�

4. Don�t over-think a problem.
One time when I was in graduate school, the late, great Steven Izenour said to me, after only a week or so into a ten-week problem, �OK, you solved it. Now draw it up.� Every other critic I ever had always tried to complicate and prolong a problem when, in fact, it had already been solved. Designers are obsessive by nature. This was a revelation. Sometimes you just hit it. The thing is done. Move on.

5. Start with what you know; then remove the unknowns.
In design this means �draw what you know.� Start by putting down what you already know and already understand. If you are designing a chair, for example, you know that humans are of predictable height. The seat height, the angle of repose, and the loading requirements can at least be approximated. So draw them. Most students panic when faced with something they do not know and cannot control. Forget about it. Begin at the beginning. Then work on each unknown, solving and removing them one at a time. It is the most important rule of design. In Zen it is expressed as �Be where you are.� It works.

6. Don�t forget your goal.
Definition of a fanatic: Someone who redoubles his effort after forgetting his goal. Students and young designers often approach a problem with insight and brilliance, and subsequently let it slip away in confusion, fear and wasted effort. They forget their goals, and make up new ones as they go along. Original thought is a kind of gift from the gods. Artists know this. �Hold the moment,� they say. �Honor it.� Get your idea down on a slip of paper and tape it up in front of you.

7. When you throw your weight around, you usually fall off balance.
Overconfidence is as bad as no confidence. Be humble in approaching problems. Realize and accept your ignorance, then work diligently to educate yourself out of it. Ask questions. Power � the power to create things and impose them on the world � is a privilege. Do not abuse it, do not underestimate its difficulty, or it will come around and bite you on the ass. The great Karmic wheel, however slowly, turns.

8. The road to hell is paved with good intentions; or, no good deed goes unpunished.
The world is not set up to facilitate the best any more than it is set up to facilitate the worst. It doesn�t depend on brilliance or innovation because if it did, the system would be unpredictable. It requires averages and predictables. So, good deeds and brilliant ideas go against the grain of the social contract almost by definition. They will be challenged and will require enormous effort to succeed. Most fail. Expect to work hard, expect to fail a few times, and expect to be rejected. Our work is like martial arts or military strategy: Never underestimate your opponent. If you believe in excellence, your opponent will pretty much be everything.

9. It all comes down to output.
No matter how cool your computer rendering is, no matter how brilliant your essay is, no matter how fabulous your whatever is, if you can�t output it, distribute it, and make it known, it basically doesn�t exist. Orient yourself to output. Schedule output. Output, output, output. Show Me The Output.

10. The rest of the world counts.
If you hope to accomplish anything, you will inevitably need all of the people you hated in high school. I once attended a very prestigious design school where the idea was �If you are here, you are so important, the rest of the world doesn�t count.� Not a single person from that school that I know of has ever been really successful outside of school. In fact, most are the kind of mid-level management drones and hacks they so despised as students. A suit does not make you a genius. No matter how good your design is, somebody has to construct or manufacture it. Somebody has to insure it. Somebody has to buy it. Respect those people. You need them. Big time.

The Ageing Process

I was tidying up today (a rare lapse) and came across an old travel pass from a trip to Amsterdam in August 1991. I'm something of a hoarder but one thing I don't keep is photographs, so apart from the photo of me on this site I don't have anything that documents me growing up. Or, indeed, photos of friends and family.

That seems to be quite rare in this day and age.



I used to take loads of photos, but it was actually on this trip that I made a decision not to do it anymore, partly because I was desperate not to appear like a tourist, but also because I realised if I spent all my time looking for photo opportunities, then taking the damn things, I'd never be enjoying the experience of being there for myself.

Roland Barthes talks about photos distorting the memory rather than aiding it - a concept I was unaware of at the time but which sums up how I explained my decision to people. When you look at a photo you close off so many memories because only those captured in the photo seem to matter.

But looking at this photograph of me, taken on a sunny day in an Amsterdam suburb, near the old Olympic Stadium, all sorts of memories flood back. Not just of the holiday - my first ever solo trip abroad to stay with friends - but of all that was going on in my life at the time. It's quite a powerful experience, and all stemming from that one photo. Distorted memories? Maybe.
I seem to flit from remembering my first real girlfriend, who was off studying in France for six months, my friends back in Yorkshire, my first job and how little I liked it, my hopes for the future and - bizarrely - a conversation I had with a Dutch guy about Macromind Director and the future of multimedia.

Not only that but the obvious one - I look so young. When you're 20 you think you know it all. I wonder if I'll look back in another 13 years time and laugh at myself as I am now?

Atlantis discovered?

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Satellite images 'show Atlantis': "A scientist says he may have found remains of the lost city of Atlantis.

Satellite photos of southern Spain reveal features on the ground appearing to match descriptions made by Greek scholar Plato of the fabled utopia.

Dr Rainer Kuehne thinks the 'island' of Atlantis simply referred to a region of the southern Spanish coast destroyed by a flood between 800 BC and 500 BC."

Ronald Reagan

I was surprised by all the fawning, amnesiac tributes to Ronald Reagan last night. Speak to someone of my generation and our abiding memory of the period is one of abject fear of imminent nuclear destruction. I can't begin to describe the palpable sense of nervousness that pervaded in Europe at that time, one that persists today with the presidency of GW Bush, aided by many of the same people who were around during the 1980s.

The Soviet Union didn't collapse, as someone suggested last night, because Reagan projected some blinding beacon of democracy, but because they went bankrupt first in response to a dangerous, unnecessary and economically ruinous arms race that used Europe as its hostage to fortune and nearly brought America to its knees, and the rest of us with it.

Everyone celebrates the ends, but who remembers the means?

What's in a name?

A few years ago, in my first job, I was facing yet another year where "economic conditions" meant that I and my colleagues were only going to be given a pay rise equalling the rate of inflation. The irony was, inflation was only around four or five per cent at the time, a sign that the economic conditions were actually rather good. Certainly the company I worked for was doing very, very well and some of that was down to the success of the department I worked in and, I'd like to think, the new directions it was taking design-wise under my direction.

The problem I had was that my low salary was stopping me getting jobs elsewhere. The annual Design Week salary review told me that I was some �10-15,000 behind my peers in the south of England which, even accounting for the higher cost of living, was quite a gap. I knew that my applications for some posts were not taken seriously as someone earning what I was earning couldn't be that good, or that experienced.

It's sad, but true. We are valued by how much we earn, not what we do.

My other problem was that my job title was distinctly "unsexy". I was a "marketing assistant", and although my role included a lot of marketing work I was in fact variously a designer, advertising executive, copy writer and brand manager. Today we'd call it a "portfolio role". Then, we called it "jack of all trades". (I don't know about the rest of the world but in the UK jobs usually come with job descriptions, which outline the functions, responsibilities and duties of the post holder. I never read them when I get them, turning instead to the last sentence which usually reads: "plus any other duties as determined by your line manager and employer". If that's there, what goes before is usually just for show. For designers, in my experience, "other duties" usually includes lifting cardboard boxes stuffed full of leaflets and catalogues off the back of trucks, handling customer complaints, caddying at the chairman's golf day, and being blamed for other people's errors.)

So I hit upon the idea of, for different job applications, using different job titles to get me past the first selection stage. None of them were lies, you understand - indeed they told more of the truth than "the truth". The only person who ever got upset at this was some guy in IT who didn't like the fact that I used the term "webmaster" on our site (which I designed but he uploaded - he felt he was the "webmaster" and looking back it was a stupid title so good luck to him).
But part of me didn't like the idea of doing this, partly because I knew if references were ever called for, it could be embarrassing.

Annoyed at the prospect of a small cost-of-living pay rise, I decided to ask instead for something that could ultimately be worth a great deal more: a better job title!

It didn't work.

Today I have so many job titles I never know where to begin. I am, payscale-wise and contractually, a "Senior Lecturer". When I attend official functions I am an "academic developer". When I teach I am officially a "part time hourly paid lecturer". When I freelance I am a "writer", "journalist", "designer" or "consultant". If somebody ever makes the mistake of asking me what I do, I often try to explain. I keep telling myself to just pick one and stick to it. But none are sexy. "Teacher" gets them hooked until I tell them what I teach, at which point they sort of go "oh..." and feign polite interest. I'd never say "journalist", partly because only about 2% of my income derives from it but also because nobody in the UK respects journalists (third bottom in surveys after politicians and estate agents!). "Writer" sounds like someone who is lying or just unemployed, and "consultant" is a euphamism for "recently made redundant".

Last week, on a date, I used the "oh you don't want to be bored with that, let's talk about you instead" trick I think I read in a magazine. It worked. But somehow, I don't think it'll cut the mustard when it comes to applying for that next job...

The Myth of the Noble Slob

Yesterday I picked up a copy of Design For The Real World by the late Victor Papanek. It's just been republished in the UK and it only took me a couple of minutes in the book shop to realise I needed a copy. Papanek, writing in 1971 (this second edition from the early 1980s includes new material and a response to early critics) says many of the things I and others have been saying here and elsewhere.

I don't know whether the fact that my arguments are old or not fills me with cheer or depression. But read this from chapter 3, The Myth of the Noble Slob:

The cancerous growth of the creative individual expressing himself egocentrically at the expense of spectator and/or consumer has spread from the arts, overrun most of the crafts, and finally reached into design. No longer does the artist, craftsman, or in some cases the designer operate with the good of the consumer in mind; rather, many creative staements have become highly individualistic, autotherapeutic little comments by the artist to himself

Wonderful.

In a later chapter on design education he writes that:

Education for designers ... is based on learning skills, nourishing talents, understanding the concepts and theories that inform the field, and, finally, acquiring a philosophy. It is unfortunate that our design schools proceed from wrong assumptions. The skills we teach are too often related to processes and working methods of an age that has ended. The philosophy is an equal mixture of self-indulgent and self-expressive bohemian individualism and a materialsim both profit oriented and brutal. The method of teaching and transmitting this biased information is more than half a century out of date.

He then goes on to describe how design curricula tend to be modelled on Moholy-Nagy's concept of experimental learning derived from a 1919 Bauhaus treatise.

Experiment turned into tradition marches stultefyingly into the last decased of the century. Can we wonder that students are bored? Surely a student entering a design school or university in September of 1984 must be educated to operate effectively in a professional world starting in 1989, and forseeably he will reach the height of his professional competence sometime around the year 2009.

That last comment, relating to our expectations of design education, is important. Too often I hear people lamenting the lack of professionalism of undergraduates' work saying it's not up to "industry standard". Of course it's not - they're undergraduates for pity's sake! It's not justifiable for someone with years of industrial experience to come in and expect 21-year olds to have reached the same level of competence as them. Sadly, many external examiners in design schools display this expectation, as do employers, that graduates should be "finished". Many employers take on no responsibility for continuing the education of the graduates they employ.

I think I'm going to enjoy reading Papanek's book - I certainly recommend it if you haven't come across it before. Despite being over thirty years old, it is still full of fresh insights and challenges.