Putting Criticism into Critique
Nancy Mayer
Today’s design students face a disturbing disconnect between the design criticism they study, and the design criticism they receive at their critiques. In most design programs, the overlap between criticism and critique is no more than five shared letters. In programs where both terms are used, design criticism is an area of inquiry where we study how we think about design. In design criticism we address what we consider to be “big issues,” such as design theories, the social and cultural contexts for design, or the application of other disciplines such as anthropology or Marxism to the study of design. Design critiques, on the other hand, are where a group of people look at a student’s work and proclaim his typography to be over-scaled. Criticism relates to inquiry, critique to judgment. I believe they should become more closely aligned. The disparity between these two arenas of discussion has become increasingly pronounced as many design programs have shifted focus over the last twenty years.
Critical Background
Graphic design education has changed dramatically since the introduction of digital technology. The curriculum has become more specifically technical and, at the same time, paradoxically, more theoretical. Before computers, when text was the realm of trained professional typesetters, “publication design” was full of gray boxes of Latin text and “communication” assignments were usually image-based posters. Posters required little text and communication effectiveness was relatively easy to ascertain.
Then the world got more complicated.
Suddenly, the student (and the professional as well) was responsible for learning myriad software intricacies, and became simultaneously responsible for all the details of typesetting, editing, and typographic refinement. But hand in hand with the new technical responsibilities came typographic freedoms never before imagined. I don’t wish to imply that there had been no expressive typography before desktop computers—only that the ease with which a student could now affect the reading of a text through typographic means was unprecedented. Design assignments often changed to reflect these new possibilities.
Expressive typography, once mainly the province of headlines, was now brought to text. At many schools students began writing, rather than appropriating existing texts, designing what are awkwardly referred to as “self-authored” texts. Because of the ease of manufacturing typography, new kinds of student projects developed: more complex publications, interpreting a wide range of texts both informationally and editorially.
Concurrently, some design departments began adding design history, theory, and criticism classes to their curricula. The National Association of Schools of Art and Design’s recent program guidelines help explain the design history classes, but do not explain the increase in design theory and design criticism classes now being offered to undergraduates. It would appear that schools are trying to produce designers who see a bigger picture, who are concerned with more than purely formal issues, understand issues of interpretation, weigh the implication of design decisions, and understand the social context of a design solution.
In offering these classes to undergraduates, there is an underlying assumption that the study of theory and of criticism should inform the process of creating graphic design—that this study should affect the quality and content of the student’s work.
Admirable intentions all around.
The only problem is that most of the undergraduate departments still treat the critique process as if we were looking at posters. At the end of the semester, across the country, hot-shot designers are wheeled into final crits where they view assignments for the first time. They respond the only way they possibly can—viscerally and visually. When the project critiqued was a poster or a magazine cover, this structure seemed completely serviceable. Today, with projects of increased complexity, sometimes with intricate, layered content, this structure seems inappropriate and inadequate.
A Critique of “Critique”
The purely “visual” critique tends to undermine the lessons taught in critical theory classes. The lesson put forth in a traditional, final critique is that meaning and context may apply to other designers (famous or dead designers discussed in history or theory class), but not to the student’s studio work. The effective transference of theory hinges on the ability and desire of studio faculty to insist that these lessons be applied. If these lessons are not applied, the lessons are lost.
A student’s hard work and attempts at dealing with content, interpretation, information, and context are not rewarded. The studio teacher may understand the project’s developmental process, but the additional critics are only prepared to comment on how an assignment looks. The critic, due to limited time and preparation, can only discuss superficial aspects of a design, which exist out of context. Unfortunately, the visiting critic is given an overly important status by students. The critic inherently symbolizes the outside world. So the unspoken message of the critique is that while one’s own teacher might be interested in meaning, the rest of the world (the real world that counts) clearly is not.
While there can be no visual communication without form, we are asking students to see the practice of design as more than just form. We are asking them to enlarge the profession and see new possibilities. Yet, when we talk about what they make, form is often the primary arena for discussion. Design theory and design criticism become abstract. The readings and all the discussions in the theory class appear to apply only to other people, often dead or French. “Experimental” work created for theory teachers is seen as different from “professional work.” We want students to believe that design theory and design criticism apply to all design, even theirs, or, perhaps, especially theirs.
A Substantive Critique
I have been a guest critic in the graphic design department at the University of the Arts (UArts) since 1994. The degree projects there have developed an unusual format for critique that I believe could be a useful prototype for other institutions.
These capstone projects at UArts are interpretations of student-chosen texts, sometimes strongly edited or authored by the student. The final format may be a book, a digital experience, an installation—whatever is appropriate to the specific material. Beginning in the fall of the senior year, a capstone studio class is co-taught by liberal arts faculty members and resident design faculty. The students begin the year by writing and designing personal, autobiographical stories. The students work hand in hand with a design teacher and a writing instructor. It is believed that, because designers have so much influence over the reading of text and information today, it is necessary for any educated designer to understand and respect the written word. By undergoing the editing process themselves, and feeling personally invested in the interpretation of a text, they might become aware of how their formal decisions affect the meaning of the story. The liberal arts faculty continues their collaboration with the students into their degree projects, where they are joined by an outside critic who is a practicing designer. The students have three meetings throughout the senior year with this critic: at the initial proposal stage, at an intermediate progress stage, and at the conclusion of the project. The liberal arts faculty consults throughout the entire two-semester course.
I think what happens here is profound. There is constant reinforcement that content matters. Three different people have actually read a student’s text, and all can respond to design decisions as these decisions affect the reading and interpretation of the text. Formal decisions are discussed in terms of their intention and their impact on meaning. These critics can judge the implications of a design decision by its effect on the text—how it reinforces, subverts, or misdirects the meaning. The only sacred cows, not open to negotiation, are the legibility and continuity of the text.
The effect of this structure on the final critiques is also profound. The final crits are open to a wider crowd. There are certainly a number of people looking at senior degree projects and praising the formal aesthetics, which are a UArts legacy. But into this melee are injected a group of people who have read the texts, who know whether a diagram is informationally sound, and who might question the implications of a format choice, or the appropriateness of a stylistic move. And these people are treated like VIPs at the critique. The visiting critic in this model reinforces the idea that design choices have implications and that the outside world actually has a stake in the quality of those choices.
A Practical Solution
In a world full of hand-wringing over unsolvable problems, this one is relatively simple. I would recommend that those invited as visiting critics request additional information before accepting the call. If an assignment is simple, such as poster designs, full-page advertisements, or magazine covers, a critic can responsibly show up and respond. However, if the projects are more complex, a potential critic should ask for the information necessary to provide the foundation for a valuable and insightful critique. A critic might request texts, sketches of charts and diagrams, and project proposals. Some homework will be necessary. The payback, however, can be enormous. If we put meaningful criticism back into critique, we tell our students that strategic thinking and conceptual analysis are essential parts of the design process. We tell them that we value their struggle with content and their attempts to broaden the profession. We tell them that we value intelligence and insight brought to bear on form.
And as educators, we also value our own efforts to introduce undergraduates to concepts of design criticism and design theory—to, hopefully, establish a bridge from theory to practice.