Photo Notes
documenting experiences via flickr from my mobile phone.
White boarding
Why Design?
Most Designers have a story of a few educators who opened our eyes to the profession and challenged us to excellence. Effective design education does more than just introduce students to software and aesthetic, it equips designers with a visual foundation and challenges them to extend their conceptual grasp in the effort of creating a product that thinks. Design that embraces powerful image making and color while balancing thoughtful typography and composition amplifies concept and will succeed in communicating quickly and effectively.
A Pre-Creative Director
Design students start with little knowledge of the day-to-day business of design and the interactions they can expect when they begin a career in this profession. For this reason, while I am interested in teaching formal skills and conceptual techniques, I see one of my most important roles in the classroom to be that of Creative Director.
When critiquing work, I don’t believe in art directing students so their work reflects my taste, but I do believe in holding students to a standard that is consistent with that of the profession. That means, how the work is presented and executed is paramount. By challenging students to execute their work with the highest quality, they have a taste of what to expect in a field where excellence is the minimum.
Why I Teach
I am an investor. As a designer who does a significant amount of work in print and electronic media I have been part of and produced thousands of design projects. And all of them are temporal: they simply don’t last.
But people do.
Designers have great power in the way we shape our culture through the things, systems and communities we design. By investing in people through educating them to become effective, ethical designers, I invest the knowledge given me most wisely.
