FOR TWENTY-SIX YEARS SHARON POGGENPOHL EDITED THE PREEMINENT DESIGN JOURNAL VISUAL LANGUAGE (1987–2013). DURING THIS SAME PERIOD SHE COORDINATED THE PhD IN DESIGN PROGRAM AT THE CHICAGO INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, AND LATER SHE INITIATED AN INTERACTION DESIGN PROGRAM AT HONG KONG POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY. In 1983—a year before Steve Jobs unveiled the original Macintosh—she urged designers to ally with computers. As she explains in the essay below: “The cycle changes—conceive an idea, the computer generates form alternatives. We evaluate and select. The seams are more apparent. Time is abbreviated. The realm of possibility expands.” Poggenpohl understood that technology would fundamentally alter communication. To stay relevant in this shifting landscape, designers would need to be computer literate and research knowledgeable. Using this double-edged sword, they could bridge art and science, an effective stance for the future of the discipline. Over the course of her career Poggenpohl’s voice rose against the anti-intellectual clamor that often surfaces in the graphic design profession, as she succeeded in putting her words into action with her leadership of Visual Language and her tireless advancement of graduate design study.

CREATIVITY AND TECHNOLOGY

SHARON POGGENPOHL | 1983

The gap between design and the new visual computer technology is expanding. Three forces are at work that make it difficult to bridge the gap: attitudes within computer science itself, graphic designers’ ambiguous role and professional goals, and lethargy within the university programs that prepare the next generation of designers.

PROBLEM ONE: ATTITUDES WITHIN COMPUTER SCIENCE

A considerable amount of mysticism surrounds the computer and its use. Certainly its special language is no small barrier; easy entry into computer literacy is impossible. Within computer science departments at the university, the attitude is generally, “Learn my language and then we’ll talk.”

It’s easy for computer scientists to sidestep the designer. They have technical prowess—they own the ballpark. The designers can’t even play the game. The result is that powerful design tools are being put in the hands of the visual novice. What happens to visual values when the visually illiterate use the tools and designers who are illiterate in terms of the computer abdicate their responsibility?

PROBLEM TWO: GRAPHIC DESIGNERS’ AMBIGUOUS ROLE

Designers remain ambiguous about a definition of graphic design. If you can’t decide where you are, how can you decide what resources you have and how to begin moving in a new direction? Graphic designers might define their activity in any of the following ways: translator of verbal ideas into visual form, technical expert who prepares art for reproduction, psychologist who sells ideas via commercial art, aesthetic expert who orders space in an appropriate way, or solver of communication problems. Most definitions share a concern with visual attractiveness and “print”; they take a narrow, parochial view of the scope of graphic design.

PROBLEM THREE: DESIGN EDUCATION

Design programs within the university clearly recognize the need to prepare students for creative computer use. But the obstacles to accomplishing this goal are substantial. Lack of funds to acquire basic equipment is one such obstacle. Sending students over to use equipment in Computer Science is difficult, although this is the general solution. However, the student has to operate on alien turf and solicit advice and help from individuals who do not understand design, so the results are fuzzy.

Yet another obstacle is that there are few design educators who have computer experience and can translate it into new possibilities for students. A few individuals do have one foot in design and the other in computer science. They are rare, yet they are the vehicles for bridging the gap.

Educators are caught in the trap of feeding an existing profession with bottom-run entrants cut in the model of specialist rather than generalist. However, their interest and commitment is to educating “change agents” who will move the profession beyond its current understanding and limitations.

This tension between the profession and education can be productive. But, in these conservative times when risk taking is unattractive and the economy unpredictable, the balance tends to shift in favor of fulfilling the profession’s perceived needs rather than toward preparing students for the future.

MEETING THE CHALLENGE

Design can accept the challenge and close the gap between design practice and the new technology. But to do so, the designer must reorient; move from specialist to generalist; design a process rather than a special, isolated object. We have a head start because we understand visual systems and the issues surrounding visual language.

SHARON POGGENPOHL
“Plain Talk: About Learning and a Life…in Design” 2003

THE NEED FOR NEW STRATEGIES

We need to do a better job educating graphic designers. Exposure to problem-solving strategies developed largely by architects and industrial designers need to complement the graphic designer’s intuitive skills. As designers grapple with complex problems, they need more powerful strategies.

• Research skills become more important as we learn to design from an information base rather than blindly following the tradition of solution. An information base helps to define problems in more complete and unique ways that can assist us in examining human needs, technological possibilities, or ways to extend visual language.
• We need to analyze design problems in terms of communication theory and perceptual psychology.
• We need to become computer literate. We can select our literacy level, from user of existing programs to creative designer of new visual programs.
• Team experience becomes an important element in design education because we will not be working alone on complex projects.
• Finally, in the low-threat environment of the university, we need to encourage risk taking and tackle nontrivial design projects that help the student examine large communication issues rather than craft pedestrian objects that imitate a tradition.

Graphic design is entering a transitional period, and transitions are both difficult and provocative. In fact, the environment within which communication design now exists is already changing. Information, once laboriously codified in book form, now exists in a fluid computer context. (It is as though a net or dimensional grid of densely interrelated ideas replace the linear string of the book.) Our ability to pull appropriate information together, to synthesize it, enhances the information base for our communication problems. Information is less precious than before, and it is more accessible if we are computer literate.

The computer alters the designer’s form environment. If there is a mystique associated with design, it is that we make “form”; we create a visual entity from scratch. We imagine it and we physically make it happen. Form making requires a visual sensitivity nurtured over time. It is the integration of intellect and hand skills; we think as we make. The cycle of action, feedback, evaluation, and adjustment is seamless. The time for one visual entity to take form can be considerable. We learn to edit ideas before they take form; we eliminate certain avenues as too laborious and complex for development. The computer dramatically alters this set of expectations. It can quickly play out hundreds of alternatives—show radically divergent form ideas, or subtle form change.

THE COMPUTER AS ALLY

The cycle changes—conceive an idea, the computer generates form alternatives. We evaluate and select. The seams are more apparent. Time is abbreviated. The realm of possibility expands. Imagine we have any typeface at our disposal on an interactive computer system. We can use simple directions to effect change by means of asking for certain operations to be performed on the type; we can fragment, distort, incline, change weight, etc. Consider all the permutations of a logotype we can easily run through. We are limited only by our imagination. We conceive of a visual game—the computer helps us play it out in great detail. Will we find new, more elegant form? It is too soon to tell.

The qualities of good design can be systematically extended. Design increasingly is considered in relation to systems of things—books, signage, symbols, etc. Again, the computer is our ally. To the extent that we can define the visual program we are free to move on to other projects; we do not need to laboriously implement a system. This freedom will tax our sense of creative accomplishment. The proportion of creative time to execution time changes.

SHARON POGGENPOHL
“Design Research, Building a Culture from Scratch” 2010

THE CHOICE IS OURS

We can ignore these changes in the design environment, but we do so at considerable risk. Change is underway and is moving swiftly, with or without us. The choice is ours. The computer does not rob us of creative initiative; it sets us free.