Teaching Statement

The pedagogical path to educating a student of art and design—I believe—must be approached regardless of the specific disciplines subject matter, as an awakening of the intellect. Design, like other problem-solving processes, evolves from ideas into meaningful forms. What is specific to the discipline of graphic design or media design is its communicative criteria and the tools with which one crafts original forms. For the graphic design student the toolbox lies in the ever-changing landscape of computer hard- and software—a place where possessing a natural affinity to the technology is a prerequisite. This is but one of many educational components that the student of graphic design requires. These implements in the hands of an informed, discerning, and creative thinker have the potential to create constructive and deconstructive forces with words, images, motion, time, space, and sound in the context of interactive and integrated design. To be effective communicators and designers, students will also need to have aesthetic insight, strong interests, and drive—coupled with critical and curious minds—to draw from their own experience and pursue knowledge and truth. Many undergraduates will lack experience and knowledge. To overcome this, my overall pedagogy is to encourage and support students by developing a syllabi with a triangulated approach to visual problem-solving: brainstorm/research/map > think; play/plan/risk > experiment; and discover/produce/formalize > create something that does not already exist.

My inspiration flows from James Dewey’s philosophy that critical thinking—and all significant thinking—originates in the learner’s engagement with problems and to John Maeda's pioneering approach to the computer as pure conceptual mass, as the design machine. The conceptual movements and people of the 1960s—Fluxus, concrete poetry, and Dick Higgins; John Chris Jones's writings on ”design methods;" curator Jack Burnham’s Software exhibit; Robert Whitman’s performances; Marshall McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy—influence my thinking, my work, and my teaching. Teaching media and technology and its new forms through historical and contemporary issues, philosophy, liberal arts, and science encourages critical analysis of the ways in which technology and media have influenced social, political, and economic cultures. As technological advances accelerate and complexity increases, an environment that fosters invention and innovation is essential—especially for designers of information and experience—if their “seat at the table” is to remain.

What should the building blocks be for graphic design education in the age of digital and new media, or perhaps more important, in the age of information? The first block is an understanding of how general communications techniques like rhetoric, oral skills, debate, and persuasion are ingredients for an effective and integrated learning experience in visual and experiental systems; the second is the examination of visual and experiental systems in the larger context as a resource for creating better, more vigorously persuasive, more provocative and informed design; and the third is the development of efficient and dynamic structures for the orchestration of design systems.

As a practitioner of design methods since 1972, I have been a perpetual student. My goal in pursuing an MFA in New Media was not just to “step out of the box” but to push myself out of the box and break a few sides. With the 20+ years of design, art, and teaching experience I have acquired, I hope to foster an innovative environment for the study of media, culture, and technology. I want to engage students to become active participants in and contributors to contemporary culture and to be able and willing to reflect, critique, debate, and rethink the society and world in which they live. If my teaching can make them passionate about what they do and make, and make them willing to pass it on, I have done my job.

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