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Posters, San Francisco 2005

Visual communication surrounds us: signs at the airport, posters downtown, books on the bedside table, websites giving valuable information to people everywhere, nutritional labels on cereal boxes, tax forms for the masses, CD covers for new and old bands. The restaurant menu, the packaging for olive oil in the supermarket, the motel sign announcing a clean, well-lighted place to spend the night when you are traveling through a dark unfamiliar landscape. Graphic design impacts our world and the way we view the world.

The worst of it just adds more visual noise and clutter (the amazingly ugly and large billboard), or the ridiculously designed advertisements asking us to get another credit card or rush off to buy a giant TV. The worst of it has always been there and continues to erode the profession. The best of it makes us stop and think. Or simply touches us deeply. The best of it we keep: books we can not part with when we are moving to a new location, or websites that we have bookmarked and return to often to get important information. By learning and practicing the principles of visual communication, designers can add to the beauty, richness, and functionality of the world in which we live. This is why I practice and teach graphic design. We live by it, in this age and culture. It is the most prevalent and dominant and far-reaching art/craft I know of today. As designers, we can make an impact; we can reach someone with a strong visual message, something that can truly impact someone's life.

Teaching graphic design is a far different endeavor than teaching organic chemistry: art and design are governed by principles, not rules; this open-ended aspect is what attracts me to the profession of graphic design education. At the heart of effective graphic design is a willingness to explore and dig for appropriate visual solutions, which are various and can be strikingly different for each student. I strongly encourage this process of exploration and discovery within my students. One student may be drawn more toward illustration; another more concerned with photography; another more engaged with interactive media. Each student must attempt to find his or her individual voice while drawing on the inspiration and understanding of all the “-isms” that have come before them.

Having worked in the commercial and nonprofit worlds of graphic design for over 15 years, I directly relate what I am teaching in the classroom to real-world examples of projects that I have been involved with or am currently working on. This experience, I find, is invaluable in discussions and critiques within the classroom. Graphic design does not happen without clients, messages, budgets, a real-world context.

I believe, as a teacher, you have to endeavor to make students feel valued and important; they should be comfortable asking as many “stupid questions” as they can think of.

Then there's the idea of gestalt, which directly applies when teaching through group critiques. As students critique projects, each student contributes opinions and ideas to the creation of a whole which is greater than their individual perspectives. This group dynamic charges me as a teacher. To facilitate this process is to create something that previously did not exist— and although it can be bumpy at times — I love it.

And if, during the whole process, I manage to inspire several students to do the best work they have done to date, and if they end up looking at the visual world around them in a different way — seeing the richness and variety and all the latent possibilities around them — then I believe I have succeeded.

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For a wonderful example of how graphic design can address immediate and important needs, read Michael Bierut's musings about the ClearRx prescription system designed by a student, Deborah Adler, for Target. Inspiring.


Alisha Provstgaard in Graphic Design II at SUU, 2005