What use is Design Education?

Abstract

What use is design education? There appears to be a constant and neverending barrage of statistics that seemingly disprove the value of design education, dispute the relevance of studying design and disregard the impact that design educators and design graduates can have in the design profession and on society in general. The simple truth is that many working design professionals, most often the alumnae of design education themselves, are critical of a perceived over-supply of design graduates into the creative industries. They bemoan the fact that students appear to spend less-and-less time with tutors and are also critical that, in their view, most design students lack motivation and in some cases even real talent. The design profession has one chief concern, or so it would certainly seem, and that is to find graduates equipped and prepared to row the boats of industry, rather than rock the boats of change.Despite the general tide of cynicism directed towards design education, amongst today’s design educators and students there is a genuine understanding of our responsibilities – we know that making our voices heard is critical if we are to shape real change. In this time of environmental, economic and social crises - we make a simple choice, we can either equip those that choose to enter an industry that, as David B. Berman states in Do Good Design; ‘invents deceptions that encourage more consumption’, or we can equip those that will help ‘to repair the world’.How can design education reeducate the disengaged, de-motivated and disfranchised design professional? If we are to succeed in changing opinions within business - it is crucial that we engage and communicate with the design industry. So, how best to achieve this? By constantly entering students into industry-focused, industry-led commercial ‘student’ design competitions? No. By sending out students to engage in ill-conceived design placements and internships – in effect supplying a cheap labor force of can-do/will-do Mac Monkeys? No.The solution is in inviting the design industry back into design education. By flipping the standard work placement/internship model a full one hundred and eighty degrees and having design professionals leave the confines of the commercial world and step back into education to reinvestigate, rejuvenate and reinvigorate their practice with new thinking – engaging in both student-led and industry-initiated projects with a difference. Educators, students and designers united together in investigating the new values of today, tomorrow and thereafter. At Kingston University, London, the School of Communication Design is spearheading a new initiative – the Studio-in-the-Studio program.