How to be schooled.

From an essay by Lorraine Wild, ‘That Was Then, and This Is Now: But What Is Next?’ from: Looking Closer Four: Critical Writings on Graphic Design

Recent events on and off campus (i.e. where I get to think about it -and – where I get to do it), and in professional and personal experiences have got me thinking where the missing link is between ‘getting it’ and the alternative, ‘not getting it’. Depending on context, ‘not getting it’ can mean: loosing the job, loosing the client, getting and ‘F’, missing the point, producing inadequate design, producing ineffective design, feeling ignorant, or even worse, being ignorant and not knowing it.

I spend some time in the classroom – and much more in personal dialogue -about visual literacy. I talk about visual literacy in class, and often with my friends and colleges in their respective and widely varying fields. It goes far to address the question “What does a good graphic designer need to know?” However, there is more to it than that.

When I read the above text, I realized perhaps above all, if a person wants to be the author of thoughtful, professional, and effective graphic design then they must draw on their ability to exercise some real foresight, critical thinking, and common sense if they want to be graphic designers. (This notion is in part why I sought teaching avenues at a liberal arts school.)

And perhaps, like Lorraine Wild prophetically states, good designers need to first be human beings with a lot of – literally – common sense. Designers need to be students of all corners of their culture’s playing field. Designers need to have a sense of business. Designers need to have a sense of politics. Designers need to have a sense of stereotypes. Designers need to have a sense of religion, philosophy, current events and history. Designers need to have a sense of urban lifestyles, agrarian lifestyles, and minority lifestyles. Designers need have a sense of conservative viewpoints. Designers need to understand liberal viewpoints. Designers need to be aware of what is like growing up in a trailer park, and what is like living in gated communities with irrigation that waters professional landscaping via digital timers.

Designers need a lot of common sense. In short, effective graphic designers need to be able to be sensible and conscious of different viewpoints, and different styles of language (verbal and non-verbal) within their culture and the types of mindsets that speak them. Furthermore, graphic designers then need to draw from their body of knowledge and experience, and employ it to cleverly, shrewdly, and creatively solve the problems graphic designers are challenged to confront.

And that common sense is free to all who have the passion – or at least, the wherewithal – to seek it, but priceless when obtained.