Teaching with Reading Glasses On
Steven Brower
I open each class I teach with the following quote from music critic David Fricke:
There are three essential commandments:
Respect the elders
Embrace the new
Encourage the impractical and the improbable without bias
I’ve been teaching since 1992. Actually, since 1984, but I stopped after the first year, as I realized I had more to learn than to teach at that point. Somewhere along the way, when asking the students who the “elders” were, they began to reply that I was. I think this coincided with my wearing reading glasses on a string around my neck, which began coincidentally somewhere around the millennium.
The challenge today is not simply to remain current, but to speak the same language. In the mid-nineties I made the conscious decision not to learn coding and web design, and to die with my print boots on. Fortunately this has worked out just fine for me, but today’s graphic design students do not share that luxury. While the thrust of my instruction is all about concept, I now include smartphone apps, and of course web, into the mix. That’s the easy part. The more difficult one is speaking the same tongue. This is not simply the case of them understanding my twentieth century culturally-laden jokes, but of sharing with them the artistic and literary milestones I believe are important. Recently an undergrad came to class wearing a tee shirt with “Rosebud” emblazoned on the front. I pointed knowingly and said to her, “Welles?” She stared back blankly. Quizzically I asked, “Citizen Kane?” She replied, “No, the Rosebuds are my sorority group.” No one in the class had ever heard of Citizen Kane or the word in that context.
I keep in my office approximately 100 design, illustration, and art books, with an open invitation to the students to borrow. The only time they take me up on this is when there is a related assignment. Recently I asked them who Stefan Sagmeister is, and not one knew. Fortunately this will be corrected when they take my History of Graphic Design class, but it is a good indicator of how secluded their world has become. I am also aware that they learn more these days from various blogs and portfolio sites than from turning pages.
As I cross the great divide I also get them to cross over as well. Like most classrooms these days for graphic design, I teach in a lab. There are two main configurations of these classrooms, one where the computers face front in rows and one finds oneself teaching a bunch of tops of heads. The second is where the computers line the perimeter walls. Our classrooms are the latter, so other than critiques and when we meet at the table in the middle, one teaches a bunch of backs. This is further complicated by the amount of earplugs (or “buds” in today’s lingo) in use, and I’ve startled more than one student in an attempt to get their attention walking up behind them.
I spend a considerable amount of time over the school year trying to get these students off the computer. Handwriting fonts (an oxymoron if there ever was one) are banished in favor of their own scrawl, or cursive (a dying art unto itself). Why would you want someone else’s DNA in your work?
For the first assignment in the spring class, Graphic Design III, handcrafted work is no longer a challenge—it is a directive. The assignment is to design a poster for a play by Shakespeare; the play and venue is of their choosing. We then have a critique. This is followed up by the next assignment, to also create a poster for a play by Shakespeare on the computer, either the same, or, if they so decide, a different one. That critique is a side-by-side comparison of the two efforts.
The payoff for them is a hands-on, tactile experience they sadly don’t usually associate with design, the one for me is watching them interact. Whereas the typical classroom sounds are a series of clicks, they now sit around the center table, laughing, talking, X-Acto knives and paper or brushes in hand. That intense blank stare into a glowing screen is replaced with camaraderie.
The take-away varies from student to student. Some learn a new skill set they never knew they had, and create their best work so far. Others view this as an anomaly and plan never to touch a pen to paper again. The vast majority vote for technology over the hand. John Henry loses again. At the very least, when asked the recurrent question, “Graphic Design, that’s working on computers, no?” they can answer “Not necessarily.”
Another imperative is to try my best to replicate the real world within the classroom with client-based experiences. This is no easy task. I run the Design Collective, a fieldwork internship, as an active design studio providing design services to the university and to nonprofit community at large. The students provide, in the studio’s service learning atmosphere, professional level design otherwise unavailable to its clients. From the academic perspective, students enrolled in the course were exposed to the practical constraints and opportunities of producing design projects for real clients. They get to pitch their own work, and provide myriad revisions if need be.
This is also a generation that works well in teams, the product of the K-12 philosophy that gained popularity in the 1980s. I give two such assignments: a board game and magazine design. In both cases the students present their concepts and the class votes on the most popular to execute. The one whose is selected becomes the Art Director for the group. Recently, I have included illustration students to work with the AD, for a richer experience. The AD comes away with a feeling of what it’s like to be in charge, the team what it is like to follow instruction. As is almost always the case, there are slackers within at least one team. The successful team members soon realize that they must pick up the slack to meet the deadline.
Interestingly, the most successful (and enjoyable for me) senior undergrad class I have taught recently is packaging design. The students faired very well, and seemed to enjoy breaking out of two dimensions and working with varied materials.
Of course, little of this applies to teaching at the grad level, where students are highly motivated, generally more mature, and poised for personal growth. There, teaching is more a matter of guidance than instruction.
My teaching philosophy is simple: encourage, support, and lead by example. I would add to that Alexey Brodovitch’s edict: “Astonish me!” It is my desire to give back all that I have been given while at the same time learning from my students.