Pursuing Creative Education: What to expect in a Visual Communication Design programme.

"The arts are neglected because they are based on perception, and perception is distend because it is not assumed to involve thought." - Rudolph Arnheim (Visual Thinking, 1997)

Design is a future learning, a problem-solving activity that aims to better the quality of life – it is centred on people, and the needs that arise, as societies become increasingly industrial and exceedingly complex. Creative problem solving does not have a blueprint, and that is a good thing. I argue that design education in general, and visual design education in particular, necessarily has a structured, but yet not, approach to inviting young adults into the fold of creative problem-solving. From elementary to higher education, India is still in the shadows of the post-independence bias towards scientific rationalism - that serious, noteworthy and praiseworthy thinking only resides in the corridors of the ‘pure sciences and engineering. Art and Craft was and is largely relegated, to what is dubbed ‘extra-curricular’, the poor stepchild of the grand educational enterprise.

But at some point in the 20th century, with the arrival of capitalist market-based economies and growing consumer societies, visual communication design as a profession took it’s first faltering steps, in the business of selling the fruits of mass production. The seminal pedagogic foundations for design education laid down by the German Bauhaus (founded 1919) and the Russian Vkhutemas (founded 1920) made possible the shift of the perception of Art and Craft as more than just being an output of self-indulgent ‘outsiders.’ Art and Craft in the service of mass production and consumption made it purposeful in a more accessible manner – the masses appreciating functional efficiency and formal beauty in the everyday.

Creative thinking in a design education programme is at odds with the general education experienced by children and youngsters in India - from elementary to high school or junior college. Traditional general education does not quite end up rewarding or nurturing the creative, as such education leans towards generating conformists. Conformity in the manifestations of the all too familiar “be quiet” or “sit still,” - is very hostile to creativity, and the creative process. Perhaps creative behaviour, marked by leaps of imagination, silly or even strange ideas, playful explorations and humour, is a misfit in the ordered, rationalized universe of traditional classroom education. I don’t want you to think that a design education programme is about welcoming rebellious non-conformists to have a free run at pretty much everything. I am arguing that a good design education programme is accepting and nurturing of young adults who has the potential to think laterally, as it were, to connect the dots that no one else can, to imagine future states in original and inventive ways.

Perhaps creative behaviour, marked by leaps of imagination, silly or even strange ideas, playful explorations and humour, is a misfit in the ordered, rationalized universe of traditional classroom education

Visual Communication Design calls for an informed ‘generalism’ rather than a super-specialist stance. Architect and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius's initial goal was to cement the chasm between Art and Craft and Industry via the unification of the finer arts, handcrafts and industrial technology. In envisioning this unification, Gropius urged the material world to resonate with the arts rather than all of the arts being considered as mere reflections of the world. A good Visual Communication Design programme will challenge both your intuitive, imaginative self and your rational, logical self – for creative problem-solving calls for this other kind of unification, the unification of our right (visualization, intuition, imagination) and the left (facts, reason, logic) cerebral functions.

Studies have shown that Creativity inherently calls for both independence as well as sensitivity, and in most cultures, including ours, independence is considered to be a masculine value, while sensitivity is considered feminine. As you can see, a good design education programme will challenge your perceptions, of the boxed, compartmentalized, and very often stereotyped notions of everything around us. Finally, a worthy visual design education will put you in the intersections of a) what is usable, and desirable? (Human/People-centred,) b) what is viable? (Business,) c) what is feasible? (Technology) and d) what is responsible? (Ethical and Environmental.) Creative thinking will urge you to constantly pursue innovation and inventiveness, the gift of the pursuit of what is original, which in turn will enable you to assume nothing, and question everything

About the author

Milindo Taid is the Head of the School of Design at Whistling Woods International. He is a former faculty in Communication Design at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad and former head of New Media, NID. He is also one of the founding faculty members of the Communication Design programme at the MIT Institute of Design, Pune. He has taught in various design, communication, and media education organisations across India and abroad, and several student projects that he has guided, have had national as well as international recognition. He is the recipient of the prestigious Erasmus Mundus European Union scholarship in conducting his doctoral research in the ethics of communication practices at the Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain.

Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s own and do not reflect/represent those of Shiksha