Eye Magazine

Graphic design has diverged from its familiar ken, generating much apprehension about its future as a cohesive profession. This year’s Schools of Thoughts (SOT) design educators’ conference in Pasadena provided attendees plenty of opportunity for expressing private misgivings, even while celebrating the expansion of their field into new territories, but its eighteen presentations and five round-table discussions did map out a few directions into

this terra incognita.

Peter Turchi’s keynote speech addressed the difficulty in answering the conference’s rhetorical question, ‘Where is the discipline heading and in what context will graphic designers be working?’, and gave some comfort, arguing that not only is it ‘okay to be lost, but there is a virtue in not knowing where one is going’. He serendipitously supported one of the more provocative speakers, Allan Chochinov of the Pratt Institute, who shrewdly noted that ‘changes in the tools of making and disseminating ideas have evolved together in a “perfect storm” that is causing a profound shift in the cycle of production and consumption of designed artefacts, artefacts that were previously created to work in systems, culture and experiences, now expressed through gestures, gestalt and zeitgeist’... [EXTRACT]