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Typography
Education
A
second area where Design Orientation enhances the educational
experience is typography. While computer technology has revolutionized
typesetting and expanded educational opportunities for instruction
in typography, it has tended too undermine typographic excellence.
Today, anyone who can operate a computer can select and use
type from an enormous inventory of styles. Consequently, it
is a typographic jungle with an incredible number of typestyles
and type modifications to draw upon. Large numbers of relatively
uneducated individuals are now using type for a wide array
of applications. Additionally, most typographic usage today
is connected with marketing or promotion. Headlines, novelty,
fashion or style are characteristic to marketing and promotional
typography. Standards for typographic excellence traditionally
have been associated with book design. With the present emphasis
in typography, students find few examples of typography that
can have a favorable influence on their work.
Emphasis in type education currently might be misplaced in
view of existing conditions. The educational focus is on using
type with little or no attention to educating students how
to distinguish a well designed typefaces from those that are
badly designed–or to even understand the differences
between the two. Students need to know what factors make a
typeface appropriate for a particular situation. Perhaps there
has to be renewed attention to human factors, function and
typographic excellence in the use of type. Largely because
of computers, this might be a good time to rethink instruction
in the use of type because current demands are quite different
from those of twenty years ago.
By and large, students now are seriously deficient in typographic
standards. Design Orientation could play an extremely important
and necessary role in education through exposing students
to worthy typographic models. It provides examples for emulation
from the past that should abet student understanding of type,
and too aid them in coping at a higher performance level with
current demands. There is a continuing role for design orientation
throughout the Junior and Senior design classes. The showing
of examples from the past should contribute to students acquiring
higher performance standards. At the same time, a careful
selection of subjects could have a strong influence on shaping
student career choices. Presently, in selecting a career,
students are at the mercy of what they see in the marketplace.
This is even more of a problem for programs in outlying areas
where often students are overly impressed with local standards.
Orientation:
Research Projects
An aspect of Design Orientation that has produced commendable
results for me in the past is student involvement in research
projects. Design History research projects were regularly
assigned as this forced students to take initiative to find
information for themselves, and in the process, much peripheral
information was absorbed. Students should be encouraged to
also enroll in art and architectural history classes. Graphic
design students having a back ground in art history seem to
better understand design history. Periods of art history that
I found particularly relevant for me were Renaissance painting
where there was emphasis on formal structure in composition,
and most paintings had a diagrammatic foundation. Of special
interest was the French period from 1860 through the early
years of the twentieth century. Perhaps the most significant
of all was the period from 1900 to 1930 focused in the various
movements such as De Stijl, Supremacists, DaDa, Futurists
and Bauhaus. These movements contributed so strongly to the
esthetics of modern graphic design. The history of architecture
complements design history, and particularly the history of
modern architects.
Design Orientation can be taught by the individual responsible
for Design History. The studio instructor could request a
specific subject and the design historian would prepare a
lecture or series of lectures. Perhaps a more preferable option
is for the studio instructor to prepare the visual materials
themselves. They best understand problem objectives and can
better select the appropriate examples. To implement Design
Orientation through relying on individual instructors, teachers
should be encouraged to use visual materials, and there should
be facilities with funds to organize and carry out this function.
Students exposed to Design Orientation in the studio should
realize greater benefit from Design History. Design History
and Orientation are not one and the same. One is taught in
the lecture hall and the other is taught in the studio, and
students require both.
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