Old for New
Chuck Byrne
“Why limit yourself!” Those were the initial words I heard from my first design professor. That was Robert J. Doherty at the University of Louisville, and I had just told him that I wanted to be an interior designer. Later, after working with metal type and printing, my interest turned to graphic design.
Whatever area of design someone chooses, “Why limit yourself!” goes hand-in-hand with “problem solving” and “thinking like a designer,” and those concepts promote freedom. Since the Second World War the problem-solving process has transformed design from merely a supporting role in commerce to a vital part of business and our lives. Before and after the War important European design educators came to the United States to teach. They began exposing young designers to problem solving and encouraged them to develop the ability to not only deal with the familiar, but with the unfamiliar.
Today many designers can move from designing print material to interactive web sites, exhibitions, user interfaces, motion graphics, industrial and interior design, research and writing, to consulting and participating in the formulation of new enterprises. And, the world has discovered that designers are also capable of navigating the uncharted territories of “innovation.” This broadening of the field is in no small way due to the fact that most design schools incorporated, in one form or another, “problem solving” in their pedagogy.
I suspect not much was done to develop a formal, structured approach to the subject until after World War II. Today there are many formal methodologies available to provide students with a guide to the process of thinking. Some are simple. Others are quite complex. The guide I have recommended during decades of teaching is The Universal Traveler: A Soft-Systems Guide to Creativity, Problem-Solving, and the Process of Reaching Goals. It first appeared in the early 1970s and was written by Don Koberg and Jim Bagnall. It has been reworked in several editions since then, but the first edition and a recent facsimile of that first edition are the only reliable versions. In this classic, Koberg and Bagnall describe a seven-stage design process that is understandable and reliable: accept situation, analyze, define, ideate, select, implement, evaluate.
When I started at the University of Louisville in 1961, the design program initiated by Doherty had only been going for two years. He had attended the Rhode Island School of Design, graduated from the Yale Masters program in Graphic Design in 1954, and spent some time in the corporate world before coming to Louisville. At Yale he had been a student of Josef Albers and Herbert Matter. That Bauhaus teaching heritage led him to not see “problem solving” as theory separate from student design projects, but to use those projects as tools for learning many things—including the process of solving problems. This sort of Bauhaus diaspora and teaching took place at many institutions in the United States.
Along with the practice of teaching based on projects as “problems” came the atmosphere in which teaching took place. This was very different from traditional “academy” or art school rote education. The Bauhaus-derived teaching studio was a fairly rough place with instructors not known for their gentility or tolerance. The goal was not oppression, but the development of confident, intelligent, independently-thinking young designers. Like others of the time, Bob Doherty was a commanding presence in the studio. He was tall, with penetrating blue eyes and a nose that came to quite a point, as did, occasionally, his crop of thick sandy hair when he nervously ran his fingers through it as a sign of frustration with his students. During our first class, he explained that our goal was to learn the basic process of “visual thinking.” He then expounded in a loud forceful voice that this was a University and not a professional art school. “You are here to get a liberal education—not to learn a trade! If you want to learn hand skills go someplace else—in fact get out now—because you are here to learn how to think and to think for yourself!”
To someone like myself fresh out of Catholic high school where there was not much emphasis placed on thinking—and thinking for yourself was forbidden—this was a bolt of intellectual lightning. My attention snapped back as I heard him announce that our first assignment was to draw a perfectly straight line, eighteen inches long, without the aid of any tool. I was sure he had just said we were there not there to learn trade hand skills. I volunteered that there seemed to be some conflict between what he had said earlier and what he was now telling us to do. His reaction to my statement prompted a little drama that was often repeated in the next few years. His face turned bright red. He looked me straight in the eye and loudly blasted me for not recognizing the significance of the “line” assignment. It was a problem to be solved, which might, as a by-product, cause me to learn something about discipline both of mind and hand. I had just gotten a hint of the trouble that can come from making assumptions in design. He then began to smile and make some little joke relieving the tension in the room.
The extraordinary process of thinking analytically is in no way a replacement for natural ability; it is an effective way of using it. Throughout the next year we folded paper, turning it into almost magical structures. You can see similar pieces in historic photographs of Bauhaus student work. We did analytical drawings of a chair on top of a table for weeks on end; went crazy trying to make little pieces of balsa wood and thread do things they refused to do; drew letterforms with hand-made reed pens until our hands ached. We spent what seemed like an eternity in hot, smelly, claustrophobic darkrooms using twigs, leaves, glass, plastic, and our hands in vain attempts to make photograms that looked half as interesting as those of Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy. All with no help—just sharp prodding.
Complementing the atmosphere of self-reliance, Doherty would never answer a question directly. Each query was greeted with a standard, “What do you think—you’re the designer?” calculated to get our mental gears moving. Usually, this initiated a long, drawn-out, frustrating process whereby the student was encouraged, or more likely forced, to draw upon the student’s own intellectual resources to think out an answer to his or her own question.
While the constant questioning Socratic method of teaching has been in use for over two thousand years, Socrates himself would no doubt be astounded at its usefulness when applied to the task of introducing a student to thinking like a designer. Many years later Doherty told me he favored this approach, rather than simply passing judgment or giving direction, as it made the beginning design student experience and understand the difference between authority and reason. Later when I began to teach design, I came to realize how difficult teaching students to think like designers could be. Helping someone think through a problem without revealing a solution is an exasperating and exhausting experience. But the alternative—simply dishing-up an answer—is in the long run a disservice.
This tough attitude of Doherty’s continued on through our sophomore year. Then, as we became more self-reliant and capable of certain reasoning skills, he would help us with our projects and freely give opinions and advice. Of course we didn’t have to use this information. That was up to us to decide. Occasionally, he would even issue one of those ever-so-elusive compliments.
As juniors and seniors we could take the information for an assignment, evaluate it, research the subject, argue with our fellow students and Doherty, explore visual alternatives, prepare one for a critique, communicate verbally what we hoped to accomplish with our solution, accept and incorporate appropriate criticism, and go on to complete the project. We continued to learn more about the craft and subtleties of interpretation and expression that are possible in design. Many students grew to depend on photography, a few felt more comfortable using illustration, others became devoted to typography, and some argued there was no reason to depend on any one means of expression or interpretation in order to accomplish visual goals.
Of the people I went to school with, many went into graphic design. Some went on to practice architecture, industrial design, illustration, or photography. Some ended up being managers in business. But all had gone away with the basic concept of “problem solving” as a means to exploit their interests and abilities. Along with this came the ability to deal with change.
Several decades later, as the Macintosh began its invasion of the design studio, I invited a Doherty classmate and friend of mine who had an early involvement in the use of the computers in graphic design and the impact of the Internet to give an American Institute of Graphic Arts talk in San Francisco on these subjects. The first reflection from the audience of designers was a hysterical rant about the changes taking place in the design profession and the uncertainty of what to do. My friend’s answer was not unlike what Robert Doherty would have given: “It’s just another design problem.”