18 minute read
CHANGE AGENTS
SVA’s design leaders reflect on the impact of time, technology and taste on their industry and offer predictions of what lies ahead. BY ANNE QUITO
Illustrations by PAUL SAHRE
he graphic design T industry has gone through seismic shifts since the School of Visual Arts intro- duced its first design degree in the 1970s, let alone since 1955, when the College introduced its first course in the field, taught by renowned designer George Tscherny. The graphic design profession, once largely reliant on the advertising and publishing industries, has become a discipline seemingly without limits or simple definition. Designers’ work is now omnipresent, shaping digital interfaces, physical
environments, business tools and the culture at large. In this sense, it is more consequential than ever, with growing awareness among its practitioners and the general public that decisions made at the drafting table can have immense, and unintended, consequences—in certain cases either contributing to the planet’s salvation or consigning it, and us, to further doom.
To get a sense of how design and design pedgagogy has changed, we spoke with the following current and former SVA faculty and chairs:
Gail Anderson
(BFA 1984 Media Arts), faculty (1991 – ), chair of BFA Advertising and BFA Design (2019 – ), creative director of the Visual Arts Press, SVA’s in-house design studio.
Liz Danzico,
co-founder and chair of MFA Interaction Design (2009 – ) and vice president of design, engagement experiences, at Microsoft.
Molly Heintz
(MFA 2011 Design Criticism), chair of MA Design Research, Writing and Criticism (2016 – ) and editor in chief of Oculus, AIA New York’s quarterly magazine. Steven Heller,
faculty (1974 – ); co-founder and co-chair of MFA Design (1998 – ); co-founder of MPS Branding (2010), MFA Design Criticism (2008), MFA Interaction Design (2009) and MFA Products of Design (2012); design writer and historian (see page 16).
Barbara Nessim,
faculty (1967 – 1992), artist, illustrator and graphic designer.
Miya Osaki,
faculty (2016 – ), chair of MFA Design for Social Innovation (2019 – ) and experience design leader. Lita Talarico,
co-founder and co-chair of MFA Design (1998 – ), writer and architectural and design consultant.
Alice Twemlow,
faculty (2006 – 2017), cofounder and chair of MFA Design Criticism, later MA Design Research, Writing and Criticism (2008 – 2017), and research professor, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.
Richard Wilde,
faculty (1969 – 2019), chair of Media Arts (1970 – 1991), inaugural chair of BFA Advertising and BFA Design (1991 – 2019).
HOW WOULD
you describe the state of design when you joined the SVA faculty? What trends, personalities and projects dominated the conversation?
barbara nessim I started teaching in 1967, hired by Bob Giraldi,1 who was the head of the advertising, design and illustration department—which were then all under one umbrella.
In the 1960s and ’70s, and even into the ’80s, the major places for advertising design, graphic design and illustration were magazines, printed matter and television. Magazines were on newsstands on almost every corner in New York and other large cities; bookstores were plentiful and movie theaters were everywhere. People had time.
richard wilde It was “B.C.,” or “Before Computers”—an era whose roots were still influenced by Gutenberg’s movable type. Hand skills were of the essence; production methodology was cumbersome by today’s standards.
For the most part, students had a background in painting, drawing and sculpture, and their motivating factor was to have a career that would monetarily support their needs and obligations. In short, their decision to go into advertising or design was based on financial expectations. When I became chair, it was my charge to show how the creative process of coming up with ideas and making original work could both fulfill the artistic urge and eventually align with financial rewards.
steven heller I joined the faculty around 1974. I taught a newspaper class for less than a semester because in the middle I was hired at The New York Times Op-Ed page.2
My first serious and long-term teaching gig was 10 years later, for Marshall Arisman’s new MFA Illustration as Visual Journalism program.3 There was then a brand-new movement of expressionist graphic commentators dominating the editorial illustration field. Students were interested in making visual statements, presenting stories and narratives through their work. Gradually, they were moving into graphic novels and other comic-strip forms. They were obsessed with metaphor, allegory, symbolism and finding their own personal voice.
Fourteen years later I co-founded the MFA Design/Designer as Author program with Lita Talarico (which we later renamed Designer as Author + Entrepreneur and, finally, Designer as Entrepreneur). Again, the imperative to find a personal voice while also creating socially relevant work was slowly shifting the design experience.
lita talarico I founded MFA Design at SVA in 1997 with Steven Heller, and we welcomed our first incoming class in 1998. I did some research at the time and found only about 20 other graduate design programs out there, and none of them were like ours.
We created this department to serve as a professional, 24-hour design studio where our students could think, conceive and produce. The program was initially called Designer as Author, because we wanted students to create content. We adopted a multidisciplinary and entrepreneurial approach that embraced and wove together industrial, graphic and environmental design. It was also necessary for students to learn how to protect their intellectual property. Conventional methods offered design students the chance to learn how to, for example, create a book about a toy, and a poster advertising the book about the toy. Our program said, “You can create the book, the poster, the toy, a movie about the toy and an exhibition featuring the toy.”
gail anderson I am SVA Class of 1984, which is now at least a million years ago. The design industry was publishing in my young mind. Magazines and books, period—that’s all that mattered to me.4 Everything else was “that other stuff.” Advertising was Larry Tate and Darrin Stephens from [the 1960s sitcom] Bewitched. I was all about the printed page (that folded in half). When I started teaching, I was in love with all things typography, in addition to my publication obsession, and so were my students. In time, the Mac changed everything about how we designed and executed our big ideas. I want to say it happened overnight, and in some ways it did for my students, with the advent of the magazines David Carson was creating: Beach Culture and then Raygun. 5 Those were pretty grungy, illegible days for SVA design students, and they were in love with the work. It was fun to watch them explore.
liz danzico I formally joined SVA almost one year to the day after the first iPhone hit the market.6 It was a very different time in interaction design; a very different time in design.
Some people think of it as the start of the mobile Internet era, even though mobile phones existed long, long before it. But the iPhone did something special to the consumer market and its
STUDENTS were
obsessed with metaphor,
understanding of the power of design. Rather than people going to banks, doctors’ offices or stores, these places could now fit into one’s pocket via a glass and metal device. This changed everything from our daily habits and routines to global economics and human behavior. We ushered in our inaugural class of MFA Interaction Design on the heels of this era.
alice twemlow Although I’d taught in MFA Design, my primary involvement with SVA was to set up the MFA in Design Criticism with Steven Heller in 2008. A few years later I reworked the program into a one-year MA, with an emphasis on research. This was in some part to do with the way that the field of design writing and criticism was so fundamentally changed in the wake of the global economic crisis, a change that was for the worse in many respects. Magazines folded and, even as online platforms proliferated, writing became something that a lot of people did for free or for very low fees.
But it was also a moment of opportunity and reinvention. Luckily, my definition of criticism had always been very broad, so I had included classes on curation and podcasting, for example, from the get-go, and skills like these soon became essential components in a design writer/journalist/critic’s tool set.
At the same time, and possibly related to the state of the design industry, we had many designers joining the program who wanted to enrich their practices with the addition of new approaches to research, as well as historical knowledge and critical perspectives.
molly heintz When I joined SVA, sustainability was becoming a core value across all design fields—something expected versus a feature. The industry was experimenting with rapidly evolving technologies, like 3D printing and wearables.7 Podcasting was exploding as a way to tell stories about design to a broad audience, with shows like [MPS Branding Chair] Debbie Millman’s Design Matters8 and Roman Mars’s 99% Invisible. Among our students, there was a real interest in exploring how to write about less tangible forms of design, like algorithms and experience design.
miya osaki I started teaching at SVA in 2016, and came on as chair right before COVID. Every year has been different and I feel that we’ve been just responding, responding, responding.
But this pandemic has also given us space to think about things that we may have not had time or the ability to look at before, particularly issues of race and the dynamics within our social systems. The window for change opens and closes very quickly. I hope that we’ve learned some new languages and new approaches.
What would you say is the single most significant shift within the design discourse since you began teaching? What has not changed—or not changed enough?
nessim The most significant shift is the multitude of ways that design and illustration are delivered to an audience and the time that people have available to look at them, or the lack thereof. Our 24-hour day is getting shorter and shorter by greater time demands, a shrinking economy and globalization.
In the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, one could ponder over an illustration by the likes of Norman Rockwell, for example. People were buying magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, which featured illustrations; Life, which featured photography; and Look, which gave birth to photojournalism. One could study the details of a visual and gather information through the lens of realism.
Fast-forward to today: The length of time a person spends receiving visual information has shortened, as attention spans are divided by all the distractions
and media that is blasted out in the world. We have lost the luxury of time.
wilde The computer impacted design and advertising beyond our wildest dreams—everything was at the designer’s fingertips and the possibilities of creating numerous solutions to any given project in turn gave the designer greater options for success. Its impact was profoundly felt on every level of the industry, and it positioned the design community as an integral part of the larger world of communication. Design was no longer a service business, but could function as an end in itself. Interaction design and motion-graphic technology greatly enhanced the scope of what a designer could be.
heller I would argue that there is little design discourse today. The late 1980s and ’90s was the peak of volatile design debate and philosophical alignment. Today, there is more acceptance of diversity, not just individual diversity but aesthetic, pragmatic and philosophical ways of making and going. Designers seem less concerned with style than function. This is neither good nor bad, just a different package of concerns triggered by issues of sustainability, politics and freedom of expression. talarico In the beginning, we were waiting for the technology to catch up to the students’ imaginations. When the technology came, it just continued to expand design, particularly with regard to entrepreneurship. Maybe 10 or 12 years ago, we got to the point where you could create a MVP9 in-house and on a much shorter timeline—the whole process of iteration changed.
The danger with technology is there’s always this notion of, “Let’s take the designer out of design.” That’s what happened with desktop publishing; it promoted the idea that people with no background in typography or layout could create their own newsletters. And it’s always a false promise. To have good design, you always need a designer.
anderson The game changer for all of us was the Internet and its endless scrollable information. Students are worldlier, savvier and better informed. Their expectations are higher, and they have the opportunity to enter an industry that offers them a seat at the table as equals to the big shots—the Larry Tates. They are much more fully formed than I was in 1984, and certainly voice more opinions than I felt I was allowed to at their age (too much Catholic school for me). It’s not about entitlement—it’s about access and confidence.
danzico The most significant shift has been access.
Designers and makers have access to more tools, more choices, more people, more inspiration and more stories of success and failure. Consumers have more access to good and bad design, which makes them more discerning. Of course this is only true for people who have access to devices and/or WiFi. But it’s sweeping enough to have deeply impacted our industry.
twemlow In 2008, design and design writing and research considered its engagement with remediating the climate crisis as something optional, its complicity in engendering the Anthropocene10 as something that could be offset with environmentally friendly paper choices. Now of course things are very different. Everything we do, whether it’s being a designer, writer or educator, is centered on the issue of climate justice.
heintz After the 2016 election, conversations took on a new urgency among our faculty and older alumni, who understood what was at stake with the shift in political power. It took more time for the students to understand that design is political, but they started to see it every day in the newspaper, from design proposals for the border wall11 to a mandate for all new federal buildings to be in the classical style.12 The political climate, the #MeToo movement and the Women’s March, the stark inequities exposed by the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement have shifted the design discourse to focus on social justice, equity and inclusion. There is a long way to go yet. But one indicator of progress is that many designers would think about (and answer) the question “What is good design?” in a different way than they would have 10 or even five years ago.
osaki We have a stronger sense of how much healing the world really needs. We’re taking a hard look at consumerism and how that has really driven a lot of design. I even take issue with the word sustainability these days. Are we sustaining companies or are we trying to make sure that nature is respected and can regenerate?
While human-centered design might work well for products, it falls short and can even be harmful in a service and systems-design sense. It doesn’t really allow for deep relationships, nor does it allow for us to understand each other.
Footnotes
1 Giraldi, currently the chair of
MPS Directing, has taught at
SVA for over 50 years. 2 Heller was an art director at the Times for 33 years. 3 See page 56. 4 Anderson has designed for
Vintage Books, The Boston
Globe and Rolling Stone. 5 Beach Culture (1989–1990) and Raygun (1992 – 2000) were magazines that served as vehicles for designer
David Carson’s experimental typography. 6 Apple co-founder Steve
Jobs unveiled the iPhone in his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference in January 2007; the first models of the revolutionary device went on sale in June of that year. 7 Popular wearables— consumer electronics designed to be worn— include fitness trackers and smart watches. 8 Millman’s long-running podcast, featuring interviews with creative professionals in various fields, won a National Design
Award in 2011. 9 An MVP, or minimum viable product, is the stage of design when a project is considered to be ready for consumer use. 10 The Anthropocene is a name assigned to our current geological era, indicating that human activity is primarily responsible for the state of the Earth’s climate and ecosystems. 11 The administration of
President Donald Trump issued an open call for designs for its promised
U.S.–Mexico border wall in 2017; according to an
Associated Press tally, the respondents numbered around 200. 12 President Trump’s 2020
Executive Order on
Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture was revoked by President Joe
Biden shortly after he took office. 13 NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are digital assets meant to function as a form of ownership for online art and other media. 14 “Web3” refers to a new iteration of the Internet, decentralized and based on the blockchain technology that powers cryptocurrency and NFTs. 15 Coined by UX designer
Darcy DiNucci, “Web2” refers to the current
Internet, which is dominated by apps, social media and a select few powerful corporations. 16 A metaverse is a virtualreality space where users can interact in graphically rich environments.
of design.”
Our current methods of design need to be questioned and reimagined with greater care.
Where do you sense the industry is heading? What kinds of opportunities await SVA students and new design graduates?
nessim When I was 25, a person who was 50 asked me what I wanted out of life. I really thought about it for a few long and silent minutes and answered, “I want to be true to myself.” This person said, “Don’t be so corny.” I was taken aback! Now at 83, with a successful and happy life, I would give the same answer.
Another major change will be in cryptocurrency, blockchain technology and NFTs.13 These will be as important a game changer in all industries as computers were in the 1980s.
wilde It’s difficult to predict what the future holds.
What is encouraging is that there exist opportunities for new graduates, as they would be the first to embrace new technologies as they unfold. This merger of combining a high level of ideation, which is what SVA is known for, makes the possibilities seem vast.
heller There will be more opportunities to employ new technologies. Graphic design will continue to merge into product design, interaction design and who knows what else—assuming that the world does not blow itself to bits.
talarico We’re about to celebrate the department’s 25th anniversary, and we’re planning an alumni and faculty summit about this, talking about the next 20 years for the industry. It’s just going to expand more and be inclusive of media, platforms . . . opportunities that we have not even considered yet.
The industry will always be changing, so you have to have a strong foundation of skills and be resilient and adaptable. Good design depends on critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity—that never changes.
anderson Now our graduates will be able to work from small towns, beaches and the tops of mountains—they don’t have to be cooped up in offices five days a week if they choose not to. I’m excited about the new crop of design and advertising professionals. They’re less single-minded than I was and have all kinds of crazy new media right at their fingertips.
danzico The industry has an opportunity and a responsibility to listen, shape and act—that last verb is not optional, by the way. Designers have the particular benefit of being in the business of shaping the future. And where we stand, right now, is at a tremendous opportunity for design.
We happen to be on the precipice of two important moments: For lack of a better term, we’re turning a page on a new chapter being termed as “Web3”14 and with it comes a host of new opportunities for designers and the industry. It’s fitting for us, since our program began at the relative start of “Web2.”15 The blockchain, cryptocurrency, interactions in one or more metaverses16 and other interactions yet to be defined are all emergent ideas and/or systems to be shaped, refined and reckoned with. And the industry has a critical role to play in humanizing the intersections across areas of life. twemlow What’s new and particular right now of course is the urgency of the socio-political-environmental crises.
It may be the case that we’ll see graduates heading not so much to jobs in existing design firms in the U.S., but rather to setting up their own initiatives and platforms based around the issues they care most about, which may also lead them to spaces and geographical locations not traditionally associated with design. I’m quite excited about this development, where the full spectrum of skills, methods, approaches, theories and ideas that we introduce them to in their education can be put to the test, in situations where it really matters.
heintz The design industry is starting to understand that engaging with social justice is not only about the projects you work on, it’s about your own studio and diversifying the voices and life experiences around the table and empowering those voices to be leaders. The same goes for design publications. It’s not just about covering diverse designers, it’s also about giving that byline to a new storyteller. And the same goes for schools. Bring in new faculty and change up the syllabus, readings and guest speakers from the usual suspects to create an environment where a wider array of students can feel safe, feel heard and thrive.
osaki There’s a need for new design leadership—pathways that are more diverse and intersectional and abundant. There’s also a need for decentralization in the industry. While keeping things interconnected, acting locally may allow us some freedom to explore and dream. ◆
Contributions and interviews have been condensed and edited.
Anne Quito (MFA 2014 Design Criticism) is a journalist and design critic. She wrote Mag Men: Fifty Years of Making Magazines (2019) with Walter Bernard (1961 Graphic Design) and the late Milton Glaser, a longtime SVA faculty member and former acting chairman of the College’s board. Paul Sahre is a graphic designer and BFA Design faculty member at SVA.
