Nicole Roberts MFA Thesis Visual Component Artwork - Savannah ...

EXPECTATION 5 | multi-disciplinary approach
Art & Design History
10% 20%
Supporting Design Disciplines
Graphic Design Core
35% 35%
General Education
16 Steven J. Teper, “The Creative Campus:
Who’s No. 1,” The Chronicle of
Higher Education, October 1, 2004.
http://chronicle.com/article/The-
Creative-Campus-Who-s/4870
(accessed January 31, 2010).
17 Daniel van der Velden, “Research
& Destroy: A Plea for Design as
Research,” Graphic Design Theory,
2006. http://graphicdesigntheory.
net/Velden.html (accessed February
12, 2010).
The average newly graduated graphic designer
does not laud all that falls within their educational or
occupational grasp. The twenty-first century has presented
a more technological and more global industry than ever
before. Pioneering designers are broadening their horizons
into new dimensions, combating the ephemeral stigma
of print, and integrating a multi-disciplinary approach
to design, digital technology, product development,
and the built environment. Students entering into
the professional workplace see their career paths as
graphic designers in a more fluid manner than collegiate
design department names suggest. 16 Practitioners who
capitalize on this philosophy distinguish themselves
from more traditional design titles with specificity, such
as environmental graphic designer, interactive space
designer, network brand manager, or experience designer.
Daniel van der Velden, Partner in the design research
think tank Metahaven witnessed that “the ambition of
the designer always leads beyond his discipline and his
official mandate, without this above-and-beyond having a
diploma or even a name of its own. Still, it is remarkable
that design… enjoys far less respect than the combination
of design and one or more other specialisms.” 17
Van de Velden’s notion of ‘beyond the discipline itself’
reinforces the need for multi-disciplinary knowledge.
The term ‘graphic design’ exists today as a profession of
pluralism, yet so often design education becomes insular
in its process and methodologies. Many educational
programs strive to further define individual disciplines,
yet inadvertently create a void. After foundation studies
design students are partitioned off, many find themselves
enduring a multitude of projects, critiques, research, and
theory, rarely crossing the paths of sister fields of design
study. Naively, design students allow themselves to remain
secluded, and mistakenly, collegiate administration fuels
this divide by enabling curricula that does not require
them to do otherwise.
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