Few would disagree that Steven Heller is one of the leading voices in graphic design today. Beyond his prolific publishing of over 100 books on design, his position as co-chair at SVA’s Design as Author program is especially noteworthy. This program claims to be tailored to promote “content providers”, “independent creation of ideas” and “objects of worth.” Now, these terms appear to be pretty nice ideas and very promising for a MFA program, but we have to agree that these terms are in a way ambiguous and leave more questions than ansrews — To see what is program is really about, I downloaded all the senior thesis podcasts from the SVA website to see what kind of work was being produced. And from looking over these podcasts and the work produced I have some serious criticism about this program that I wish to share.
Looking at the guest speakers, lectures (both downloadable as podcasts) and faculty of this program I think it’s safe to say that these are all graphic design orientated. There’s a lecture series lead by Steven Heller himself called the Paul Rand lecture series for goodness sake, so I think it’s safe to say that this program is orientated to the graphic design tradition. In fact on the SVA MFA Design as Author website it states, “… The danger, of course, is that graphic designers will be edged out of the creation process, regulated to only the mechanical follow-through.” One would think this program’s goal is to help realign graphic design to the contemporary world and keep us relevant to the discourse and market. However, in the work produced, I believe the contrary is happening and as a result the intentions of this program become mute.
One of the critical faults of the work produced, in this program, is that it’s not really graphic design — it’s product design instead. Now this matters because product design doesn’t really need any realignment to remain relevant. It already has a large market share of that, right next to architecture. Most of the time in Bruce Nussbaum’s Businessweek, whenever design is mentioned it’s in the form of product design, not graphic design. It doesn't help when INside Innovation, a spin off magazine of Businessweek, was designed by spec work. Going the product design route is the easy way out, and we see this in so many of the senior thesis work —
From gardening bags,
to bicycle equipment,
to dishware,
to baby shirts,
to furniture
— a very large gamut of products are shown, but how is this different from any other product design program in the world? These grads have become not a new kind of graphic designer, but instead they are just product designers. I do not mean to knock product design, but it is irresponsible to say that a goal of this program to is make graphic design relevant, and then turn out grads that just avoid graphic design all together.
And for the work that did touch on graphic design, a secondary issue was present – the paradigm for graphic design in this program have not evolved, and as a result is impotent. Two of the key examples are AmerticA! and Thread. Both projects are faux-“hard sell” approaches in advertising — and faulty advertising at that, because a proper “reason why” argument is lacking in both works.
AmerticA!, by Amy Wang, while executed with a intelligent use of typography, fails from the beginning due to not offering any strong reasons why americans would want to change to metrics. The fact that I would “be taller”, “go faster”, “be bigger” is so completely lacking in a proper rationale for the kind of capital and energy needed to do this, that I’m left to wonder if Ms. Wang even took the time to read up on some David Ogilvy, Rosser Reeves, or BBDO.
Thread,by Luma Eldin, is again nicely designed and a cause I support as an Arab-american, is fault at the beginning because of the claim that it is “Media narratives that create conflict in the Middle East.” Perhaps. But the basic question of which media — the West or the Islamic world?— is not addressed and that I feel is a critical distinction to make before any design object is made. And beyond this clarification, how the things produced in this thesis actually work towards a new narrative is questionable. I have family members that refuse to believe in the existence of Israel today in 2007, a poster/magazine about “energy” is not going to make these people change how they feel. A push model of communication like this would only work with massive capital and time, leading to me to think that more effective means and methods of communication exist outside our paradigm of graphic design right now, that have not to be explored.
But I’m not all Negative Nancy gloom today, I do think some of the work in this senior thesis were of note and should be praised. Bia, by Sue Walsh, is the key runner in my view. While predominantly a product design thesis, it’s the manner in how the product is framed and introduced that caught my attention and acknowledgment. Stating that dumbbells that exist today communicate overly masculine overtones, women feel intimated to strength train, and instead select more “feminine” exercises like yoga or jogging. Bia solves this promblem with a series of alternative weight designs that help communicate more welcoming overtones to women. Makes sense to me. The value given/ value receive exchange leads to certain behavior due to how a object looks. Change how the way the object in question looks and you change behavior. By framing the object in this manner, the objects are not just objects themselves, but instead it helps change narratives with the real measurable effect of more women strength training. Now if every thesis out of this school did this, I think graphic design in general would be a much more powerful and promising profession to be in.
Comments