A collection of useful essays.
Heller, Steven, The Education of a Graphic Designer. Second Edition. New York: Allworth Press, 2005.
Katherine McCoy, Education in an Adolescent Profession, essay from the book:
Design is increasingly in demand in fields of computer science, interactive media, and other disciplines. But we “must retain and enhance graphic design’s core value as a cultural activity. Designers can offer a compensating balance to the coolness and abstractions of technology.” (13)
Julie Thompson Klein has written several books about interdisciplinarity. We should look into them.
Strober, Myra, Interdisciplinary Conversations: Challenging Habits of Thought. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.
“The difficult task of faculty and administrators is to retain the benefits of disciplinary specialization while at the same time fostering interdisciplinary collaboration.” (2)
Recognizing funding as a big obstacle, she focuses on other issues: “disciplinary habits of mind, disciplinary cultures and interpersonal dynamics. It is also about what faculty and administrators can do to overcome these barriers to create productive interdisciplinary conversations.” (2)
“…it turns out that talking across disciplines is as difficult as talking to someone from another culture.” (4)
“To be interdisciplinary one must first be proficient in a discipline” (12)
For a brief history of disciplines, see page 13. Some of the earliest universities were in Italy, France and England, 11th and 12th Century. To be a discipline, a body of knowledge must have identity (departments across universities) and exchange (a market for new doctorates.) (15). What makes graphic design a discipline? Let’s look into that.
Interdisciplinarity is “a form of inquiry that integrates knowledge and modes of thinking from two or more disciplines…to produce a cognitive or practical advancement (eg. explain a phenomenon, create a product, answer a question, etc). By Veronica Boix Mansilla (15)
A somewhat looney treatise on interdisciplinarity. What’s interesting is how he breaks it down into four elements: knowledge, research, education and theory. How can we break it down for our purposes?
http://www.is.wayne.edu/mnissani/PAGEPUB/SMOOTHIE.htm
Here’s a book we should read. Author Joe Moran traces the term and the history of academia in relation to it. It uses English as a model, tracing it from traditional disciplinary segmentation into interdisciplinary approaches of today. How can we transpose that onto graphic design?
Pieces of it are available on Google Books here. Here’s Joe Moran’s blog.
Created by Zvez
9/15/11
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PHASE ONE: RESEARCH
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PHASE TWO: CONTENT
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PHASE THREE: DESIGN and LAYOUT
SUMMER 2012
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PHASE FOUR: PRACTICUM
FALL 2012
We can use the fall semester to put to practice some of the ideas we will have developed by then. This will give me a chance to test in my classes some of the principles of the book.
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DECEMBER 2012: Deliver final layouts to PAP
Book could be out MAY 2013
These pieces combine ceramics and lettering in a new and unexpected way. They invert the traditional way of making vessels and adorning them, sometimes, with letters. Here, the letterforms become the “vessels” themselves!
Her site has a neat interview that I will add here later.
| An excerpt from an article about her in Ceramics Daily magazine: http://ceramicartsdaily.org/ceramic-art-and-artists/ceramic-artists/text-and-context-stephanie-dearmond/?floater=99  Best Beast, 27 in. (68 cm) in length, white earthenware, glaze, 2009.Putting the Pieces Together After I have created a paper pattern of my design, I flip it over and trace the back of the image with a needle tool onto a prepared and smoothed 1/4-inch-thick wet slab of clay. I flip my pattern so the front of my piece will be flat, lying face down against a ware board. I then cut three-inch-wide strips of clay for the sides of the piece from even wetter slabs of clay, which makes them easier to bend to fit the curves of my pattern. If I am doing a geometric piece, I use leather-hard slabs instead. When the clay slabs have stiffened, I score and slip the side-wall pieces and the face of the piece together. I usually cut the edges of the slabs at a 45° angle so the joint is cleaner, and strengthen the attachments with tiny coils.  A sculpture of the letter E in progress (shown face down), with leather-hard side-wall slabs shown placed on the front slab. Side view of a completed and scraped greenware piece.Next I have a leather-hard slab ready for the top (back) of the piece. I spray the half-constructed piece down so the top edges of the side-wall slabs are wet and press a sheet of paper onto the piece so it makes an imprint on the paper. After tracing the imprint onto a leather-hard piece of clay with a needle tool, I use an X-Acto blade to cut out the shape. Then I slip and score everything, and flip the back of the piece onto the sides. I press the slabs together with my fingers and a rib, fill any cracks with bits of wet clay, and use a rasp and some silicon carbide sanding screens to scrape away the excess clay until the areas of attachment look clean. I avoid using the sanding screen too much because bits of black silicon carbide can get embedded into the white clay body. I start with the rasp, then the sanding screen, then use a sponge, then a rib to smooth everything. Once smooth, I flip it over between two boards, making a board/fabric/clay/fabric/foam/board sandwich. I flip the piece over onto a piece of foam in case it is not flat on the back, to prevent it from stretching or cracking. I make some pin holes with the needle tool in an inconspicuous place to allow air to escape and then dry the work slowly. |
It’s striking how furniture design and lettering come together in this neon tubing letter/furniture project.
Steven Heller writes about him here:
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/graphic-content-andrew-byrom-2/
