Design Education in the Connecticut Art Room
William Wright, the Elder
Farmington Art and Design Teacher


We enjoy a time when design and designers have repute with the public that is unprecedented. Apple has a Titanium Powerbook which is sleek, fast, and beautiful and on all the techie?s gift list. Audi has a TT roadster that has put the curves of the female form into a machine that is quick, gorgeous, and drives like it?s on a rail. It is hard to believe that anyone has yet to see the Frank Gehry designed Guggenheim museum in Balbao, Spain, with its titanium shell that flows like water.
It started when artists and designers collaborated with Swatch® to create wild watches, and Michael Graves designed a teapot that was truly for the birds. Madonna strutted around in a John-Paul Gaultier dress that reminded everyone of a corset. The successes of a few designers rocketed them into rock star status and this caught the corporate eye. Corporations established a new emphasis based on good design and aesthetics. Beauty as an aesthetic was back. The function and performance of the corporations? products have increased, as did the quality. The new sexy designs caught our collective imagination. Our students, once savvy only to clothing styles, started becoming aware of furniture designers, architects and their works, and vehicular designs. All modes of personal transportation, including automobiles, bicycles, scooters, mopeds, roller blades, and skates, began to evolve and caught their attention. New stores, such as Target, (we pronounce it ?Tar-jay?) focused on high design as a trademark of their product line, and carved out a niche market that went mainstream. Well-designed products have become the art for the masses. The consumers? infatuation and producers? focus on designs and designers have presented us a teachable moment.

Contributions to Design Education Grow as Well.

Contributions to design education have been growing across the country as the corporate world has retooled its thinking. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, with leadership from Martin Rayala, has recently published ?Model Academic Standards for Art and Design Education.? If you have not seen this document, you may download it in an Acrobat .pdf format from www.dpi.state.wi.us/pubsales. As with Wisconsin?s set of standards, we in Connecticut should be creating Visual Arts standards that go hand in hand with Design standards, with help from Dr. Scott Shuler.
Martin Rayala is Wisconsin?s version of Scott Shuler and he has the title of Art, Media and Design Consultant. He also penned the Visions? article for May of 2001 entitled, ?Ten Design Education Ideas for Art Educators.? If you attend the national conferences, you will recognize Martin as a leader in Design Education; he has coordinated design workshops for many conferences. Look for him in Miami.
Martin Rayala has identified four areas of Design Education:

Object Design – industrial or product design of things we use everyday.
Information Design – communications, graphic, and information architecture.
Environment Design, - designs of where we live, work, and play.
Experience Design – interactive or events’ designs.

These design strands can be further explored at www.designeducation.org.

A bit closer to home, at Rhode Island School of Design, Dr. Paul Sproll has been working to bring Design Education into the Rhode Island Public Schools? mainstream. Paul is a student of the English school system where he could see first hand the benefits of Design Education for students. Design is a concentration for all British students in the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. More information can be gleaned from the www.designtechnology.org.uk site. Paul wrote a follow-up article on Design Education for the Fall, 2001 Visions called ?A Case for Design Study in Art Education.? Dr. Sproll has identified four areas of Design Education: Product Design, Communication Design, Spaces Design, and Systems Design. This is very similar terminology to Martin Rayala?s plan, yet Sproll places a distinctive emphasis on ?product design? as a consumable item.

The Cooper-Hewitt Museum started with the Design Triennial show that created a new lexicon for design. The Cooper-Hewitt is part of the Smithsonian Museum and the nation?s Design Museum, located in NYC on Fifth Ave. and 92nd Street (www.si.edu/ndm). The Design Triennial separated design into the following areas:

Fluid Design –structures and surfaces merge in the design.
Physical Design – a physical experience is sought in the design.
Minimal Design – designs employ spare and simple forms.
Reclaimed Design – designs reuse and recycle materials.
Local Design – designs where local forms and materials are used exclusively.
Branded Designs – a corporate identity system is part of the design, e.g, Nike.
Narrative Design – themed environments are the design essence, e.g, theatre sets.
Unbelievable Design – spectacular designs push our imagination and understanding.

The above categories are an interesting way to qualify all of the design areas, but how does the designer label him/herself: Branded Designer, Fluid Designer, Unbelievable Designer?

On the home front here in Connecticut, Design Educators have been pressing for a resolution from the CAEA board to adopt and recognize Design Education as an art class to be taught by art teachers. The idea met with very good questions of credentials and certification standards, pre-service training and the need for professional development. The resolution was pulled for some revamping with specific attention to addressing language issues. I plan to resubmit the resolution for consideration for the May CAEA meeting. Success has come to Design Education when CAEA has placed Design Education links on its website (caea.net) which is helpful to all art teachers who are infusing design education into their program.

We have made inroads in the design field, and hope this article will inspire more art teachers to incorporate design in their program offerings. Some of us have already committed to design education and developed curriculum within our schools. Visions has committed three consecutive issues to Design Education articles. A presentation was made at our Fall Conference on Design Education. I have started a Design program at Farmington High School. The program can be viewed on the web at fhs.fpsct.org/DesignEd/home.html. I have chosen to focus on Product and Environment Design, and have developed Information Design and Systems Design strands to support the other two designs. My students choose one of ten design strands including Alternative Vehicular Design, Architectural Design, Electronic Design, Fashion Design, Furniture Design, Industrial Design, Interior Design, Landscape Design, Mechanical Design, and Toy Design. They develop a portfolio of sketches, computer-modeled designs, and prototypes throughout the year. If you are interested in this program, please click on the horse button and you will get my e-mail page.

Differing Starting Points Yet the Same Path
The design process is a standard understood by all who are teaching Design. All teachers who teach design implement the following seven steps of the process:

1. Identifying and Defining a Problem
2. Gathering and Analyzing Information
3. Determining Criteria for Successful Solutions
4. Generating Alternative Solutions and Building Prototypes
5. Evaluating and Selecting Appropriate Solutions
6. Implementing Choices
7. Evaluating Outcomes

While the process of designing has standardized, the key issues are only somewhat standardized. The five key issues that are the core of the Design conversation, however, are widely accepted:

Five Key Issues of Design

Function - Design in use, how it works, who is affected.
Innovation & Creativity - New materials, ideas, and technologies.
Communication - Impact of design on seeing, thinking, acting, and feeling.
History & Criticism - Studies of designers, styles, movements, theories, and aesthetics.
Context - Design within economic, environmental, social, cultural, and political systems.

The issues frame the intent of the designers to more fully address needs of designs for today?s consumers. They are not unlike the artistic issues we use in class. The obvious difference is function.

A Local Design Education Model
"I think my best skill as an architect is the achievement of hand-to-eye coordination; I am able to transfer a sketch into a model into the building." -Frank Gehry

Assembling the different trends and theories regarding Design Education was confusing for me. I thought to myself, ?How can I clearly define my goals and student needs from the process and issues of Design Education?? It was clear from the start that I wanted my students to design objects as well as build objects in the program. I started sketching out my ideas and the model below is the current resolution of this thinking. As you see, my whole idea of design is based on history: history of the world, history of the self, history of the culture. When I consider the way I design something, it was clear that families of objects have specific histories as well. Chairs have a history. My graphic of the column welling up from history brings us to the center of the column. Here we see the infinity sign with a continual flow of conceptual and contextual aesthetics. Conceptual Aesthetics are the artistic aesthetics based on ideas and the plastic dimension of creating, the composition, color theory, etc. The Contextual Aesthetic is the application of the conceptual within certain parameters. This is based on relevant background factors and material considerations. Designers constantly flow back and forth over these two aesthetics.
The bronze central spheres for each aesthetic are the essential interactions of the aesthetics. In the conceptual aesthetic, the PPR represents the Arts Propel Production, Perception, and Reflection. These three elements of artistic creation are dynamic, and one can move from one to either of the other two elements. I see this process very much as artists work. The fluid, seamless flow creates a quick- switching, highly productive process. The CMF sphere of the Contextual Aesthetic represents the Creativity, Materials, and Function of the object being designed. Creativity is on this side because the creative process depends upon the function and materials used in the creation of the item. Creativity is also
a discipline. It is also something that can be taught and learned. Creative blocks (being too busy, getting too involved with a problem, having conflicting goals and objectives, or not allowing enough time to relax) have to be addressed in class. Then the techniques of creativity can be taught. That is a whole other learning curve. I suggest starting at the creative web website at: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~caveman/Creative/index.html

On the pillar in the model, and in life in general, underlying the flow between the conceptual and contextual aesthetics, is the ingrained work ethic. I have always been a firm believer that good work brings more luck than knocking on wood. The student’s work attitude and practices must be taught and nurtured to develop high performing students.

This model of design education has led me to developing a program in Farmington and creating successful student learning in an authentic assessment climate. It is a Connecticut-based model that is built on thoughts of our time throughout the nation.

Where do we go from here?

On a local level, we should be including design education practices in our art classes. The heightened awareness for students and administrators will only improve our department and teaching. This can be done at all level of education. We should consider full design courses for our programs at the middle and senior levels. To be successful at this degree of change while working within this educational climate, I would suggest a collaborative approach teaming with the industrial technology teachers. This is the fastest way to get students producing designs they have created. Your technology department needs machinery to make something. Field trips including design-oriented shows, like the Cooper-Hewitt or a Hartford Stage?s costume shop, would be tremendously interesting for students. The connection of what to do with all of this art training could be made first hand. Finally, a simple name change can broaden your programming. A department known as the Art and Design Department can offer a more diverse course offering than either department alone.

“One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever comes to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney and continue on their way.”-Vincent Van Gogh. Our time may be here to get the rest of Connecticut’s Art Educators to recognize our smoke from the chimney and find the place for Design in the Visual Art program! On a state level, we should be pressing the state education department to accept the design strand as an art form. Now is the time to make changes and include Design in the state standards, as in Wisconsin’s model. Perhaps our professional organization can change its name to be more inclusive with Design!

Beyond the simple changes, come the more substantive changes, bringing professional development for existing teachers, and new pre-service training for future teachers addressing some of the technical construction techniques used in model building and prototyping. School-to-business programs offer teachers opportunities to learn from the industries that are doing the design business right now. I trained with Gerber Technology to learn fashion designing process and software through a Connecticut Business Industries Association grant (http://www.stw.ed.gov/products/712/712.htm). It was a wonderful experience that prepared me to teach fashion design as a strand in our design course.

It is my belief that we the art teachers are the best equipped teach the design process. Now is the time to act.



References

Hauffe, Thomas. Design: An Illustrated Historical Overview. New York: Barron’s, 1996.

Albrecht, Donald, Steven S. Holt, and Ellen Lupton. Design Culture Now: National Design Triennial, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000.

Sparke, Penny. A Century of Design: Design Pioneers of the 20th Century. New York: Barron’s, 1998.

Szekely, George. 1990. ?New Approaches to Secondary School Art Education – A Program for the Artist of the Future.? In Secondary Art Education: An Anthology of Issues. Ed. Bruce E. Little. Reston: National Art Education Association, 2000.