Graphic Design Education as a Liberal Art

Graphic Design Education as a Liberal Art: Design and Knowledge in the University and the "Real World"
by Gunnar Swanson

"Design should be about meaning and how meaning can be created. Design should be about the relationship of form and communication."

Some points by Swanson in this reading were interesting. When he is speaking about pasteup artists and how current graphic designers are immersed in the land of Adobe, that they are going to be left behind when technology shifts. In a way, I understand what he is saying and that all graphic designers should have general design knowledge and not rely on their tools because their tools will constantly be changing, but I also feel that he contradicts himself later when he speaks of graphic designers as being adaptable.

As a graphic designer and a graphic design student, I feel that I have the base-skills that a graphic designer requires (and I am also learning more with my years at OCAD) but at the same time I feel like in this day and age, we have been taught to adapt to the changes in technology. I feel that the majority of us are now no long technologically challenged. When Adobe updates from CS3 to CS4, we all adapted to the changes, we understood what was new and where older options had been moved or combined into.

So yes, I agree that designers definitely need to have the general skills that all designers should have, but we shouldn't necessarily just rule out technology like it's this big bad thing that is going to ruin us and our opportunity for careers.

After all, designers are idea engineers. Technology cannot come up with ideas, only human brains can.