Week 5 Reading

I Come to Bury Graphic Design
By Kenneth Fitzgerald

This was a difficult read for me, it too myself many tries to get to the last page. Here is my effort to try to describe and analyze this reading.

To graphic designers, the discipline in general revolves with improving our live by problem solving. Designers are more and more interested in vernacular content. The problem with graphic design is that it is full of ego to change the world, that essentially it is a job that cannot exist without an application. Fitzgerald quoted others: opinions on designer's interest in the vernacular is uncritical and that it is a quest for academic legitimacy. However, some have argued that design is a “…fundamental humanist communications discipline…” In my opinion, design holds a responsibility that cannot be replaced nor removed by any other discipline. Design can, however, be interwoven into many other disciplines such as architecture, marketing, psychology and perception, etc. I think that it is valid for Graphic Design to become more involved with, and more evolved into academic studies, therefore its goal is not to search for legitimacy or approval but to merge with other academic disciplines to conquer new problems.

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Why Designers Can't Think
By Michael Bierut

Young high school students are accepted to design schools without prior knowledge of graphic design. Waiting for these students to enter, are the "process" type of schools and the "slickness" type of schools. Process schools offer Swiss-style education imported from Basel, where "slickness" focuses on the product and the polished portfolios. However, both are missing something as part of graphic design education - the interdisciplinary studies that help students to broaden their knowledge and dig deep into the content of the subject they are designing rather than scratching the surface with knowledge restricted within the visual world.