Teaching
Graphic Design: Course Offerings and Class
Projects from the Leading Undergraduate
and Graduate Programs
Edited by
Steven Heller. New York: Allworth Press,
2003. 290 pp., illus. Softbound, $19.95.
ISBN 1-58115-305-8.
Reviewed by Aaris Sherin, Department
of Art, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar
Falls, IA 50614-0362, U.S.A. E-mail: aaris.sherin@uni.edu.
As a relative
newcomer to design education, I am constantly
looking for new ideas on how to communicate
graphic design principles and practice to
students, and on how I might improve upon
design curricula. This book is a welcome
addition to my collection of teaching resources;
already filled with post-it notes, it is
well on its way to becoming heavily thumbed.
The book's editor, Steven Heller, who art
directs the New York Times Book Review and
co-chairs the graduate design program at
the School of Visual Arts, has called upon
some of the country's most successful and
best-known design educators to share their
methods, ideas, and notes on the teaching
of design. Included are detailed course
plans for a variety of design-related subjects,
ranging from beginning undergraduate level
courses through graduate, and from traditional
to innovative, some of which make opportune
use of new media and changing tides within
the field. These syllabi are presented to
the reader in the form that the students
would see them, complete with overviews,
course requirements, suggested projects
and selected readings. Those new to teaching
will find of particular value the depth
of the book's information, but longtime
educators will surely also benefit from
the unusual breadth of the entries. In his
introduction, Heller defines a teacher as
one who leaves her students inspired and
always hungering for more. What is especially
encouraging here is the willingness of educators
to share their work with others. This is
a book that one can peruse over and over,
for as each of us grows as a teacher, then
the pertinence of the syllabi will no doubt
evolve as well. The book includes about
forty syllabi by more than sixty educators
(including some team teachers), among them
Ellen Lupton, Elizabeth Resnick, Katherine
McCoy, Inge Druckrey, Stefan Sagemeister,
and Johanna Drucker.
(Reprinted by permission
from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol.
19, No. 2, Winter 2003-2004.)