A Posting From Steve McCarthy, MFA '85

(NOTE: Steve sent me this thoughtful reply to my last posting and asked me to add it to the blog as a comment. It is too long for the comment section but I thought it was worth everyone's considerssation so I've psorted it for him on the blog.)

Bill, It's good to hear that the Design Program still enjoys strong support from the Department of Art and Art History. But you also prove my point a bit when you say that "graphics, industrial design, typography or visual arts" aren't part of the mix.

They used to be better represented, at least when there were two tenure-line faculty contributing their different areas of expertise to the Design program from the Art side. (Specifically, I refer to the era of the 1970s, 80s and early 90s.)

(I think Steve is referring to Jan Molencamp (sp?) and Greg Lynch, both professors here in the 70's and 80's.  Jan had studied with Joseph Albers at Yale and was an expert in color theory and graphic design, Greg was also a well-recognized graphic designer. Both had strong professional practices and were well regarded by their students.  Neither were offered tenured positions and eventually left the University.)

I probably sound like a medievalist with my constant reference to tenured faculty positions, but generally it's a determination of institutional investment in a program. The tenured faculty enjoy greater job security, salary and benefits and tend to contribute more to the overall strategy of a program through long range curricular planning. The institution usually demands more too: an established research agenda, national visibility, participation in collegial governance, etc.

(I've held tenure at two universities and have performed about 15 external reviews for design faculty going for tenure and promotion at other schools, so I have a good sense of the culture and expectations nationally.)

But enough of that. Let's look at the numbers that support my initial claims, that "I see the involvement of the Art Department as fading into the past" and that the "[Art] Design Program appears static." Here are some telling ratios:

number of all Art/Art History faculty (with discipline listed on dept. web site; apologies for putting people into 'silos'): 19

Art History: 9

Film Studies: 5

Fine Art: 5

Design: 2

On the Product Design program web page, fifteen faculty are listed; two are from the Art Dept.

On the d.school web site, it lists its stakeholders as being "A core team of Stanford faculty from Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Management Science and Engineering, and the Graduate School of Business..." -- Art is not mentioned.

So you see how one might form the impression that the Art side of design is at best a supporting cast member. Ironically, programs in visual communications, graphic design, interactive media, etc. have proliferated at peer institutions over the past decade. Not all of them are in art departments either (at the university of Minnesota, we have 7 full-time faculty in graphic design alone!).

As the PD program curriculum moves away from emphasis on designing discrete objects into the realm of 'design thinking' (and I hope, making), emphasizing experiences, environments and systems, the necessity of understanding visual communication becomes imperative. The rhetorical vocabularies of persuasion, information, creativity and expression will help frame the design innovation 'sweet spot' at the heart of your diagram.

Art is uniquely positioned to contribute to this endeavor. A future message to this blog will suggest how.

Lastly, if my criticisms of the Art relationship to the Design Program seem pointed, I assure you --- it's from a position of deep caring. My experience at Stanford studying design was nothing short of transformative, and I hope the program thrives far into the future.

Let's not email - Let's Blog

Folks,

First of all I want to say thank you for all the emails!! It demonstrates a lot of interest in the letter Banny, David and I sent out. This conversation is exactly what we were hoping to stimulate. The 18 or so emails that ensued after my "Open Letter" indicate to me that you all care a great deal about what we are doing at Stanford and that is great news.

Next, I want to assure you that Matt Kahn has not retired and this is still very much a program that involves the Art Department. In fact, Matt is teaching ArtStudio 160 and Advanced Creative Studies this quarter, and is attending Tuesday night's Thesis Class when he can (he is not able to drive). Due to some health issues Matt took a leave Fall quarter (perhaps prompting rumors of retirement) but he has no plans to retire any time soon. He will stage the annual Design Show Spring quarter and plans to teach his Professional Practice class as well. In addition, he has a museum mounting a major show of his paintings and professional designs - but I'll let him tell you all about that when he is ready. I can't tell you why he is not on the brand new Art website but Matt is feature prominently on the Design site: his bio is at http://design.stanford.edu/pd/faculty.html and his Spring Design Show portfolio, with a quote from Matt, can be found at http://www-design.stanford.edu/PD/designshow.html. John Edmark continues to anchor the second position on the Art side and, in addition to teaching ArtStudio60 and 160, has added classes in animation, color theory, and designing with paper to the curriculum. And as Minjeong Kim points out, Art and Industrial Design are represented in the Venn diagram that "titles" this blog - appropriately on the Human-side of the diagram.

I want to correct one other misunderstanding. Steve McCarthy's excerpt from the letter he sent Prof Samuelson, the new chair of the Art Department, might have left some readers thinking that Art Department is, at best, a weak supporter of the Program and nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, we have never had better support from the Art side than under Kristine's leadership. Being a Professor at the University of Minnesota (congratulations Steve), I'm sure Steve knows the difficulty in opening new faculty positions, especially in the Arts. Luckily, Stanford is has almost completed raising a billion dollars for the Humanities and the Art department is relatively well-funded. In fact, students entering the Program from the Art side currently receive, for the most part, full scholarships for their MFA, something the Engineering School is unable to do for the MS program (another fund-raising opportunity?? I think so!). Professor Samuelson has assured us that securing a second billet for a tenure track faculty in Design is a priority and that, when Matt goes Emeritus, a search would begin immediately for a world class Design educator. In addition, we have been inviting other Art faculty to attend critiques: Paul DeMarinis and Gail Wight have both been at final presentations and their contribution has recognized by the students.

It is safe to say Art is still "in".

That said, I'd like to second the comments of Hsiao-Yun Chu. Professor Chu (congratulations, Hsiao-Yun!) suggests that the role of the Designer has changed substantially since the program was created 50 years ago and there is a thoughtful conversation to be had around those differences. We've always been a program that creates "T-Shaped" people and as such we teach many things - but we don't teach everything. For instance, we are not and have never been a graphics, industrial design, typography or visual arts program - nor do we make any apology for not being so. Those subjects are much better taught at other schools and, when I get students who want to study those worthy professions in depth I advise them to leave Stanford and go somewhere else.

However, we do want to be the best at educating Designers for the 21st century's big challenges. We're very interested in everyone's comments on how to do that and I'd like to gently shift the conversation in that direction. You might start by examining how yours jobs have changed. Imagine that you were going to hire someone - what do you think a young graduate of the Program needs to know to make them the best candidate? Post your idea to blog so that everyone can read them - without filling up their in-box.

Business factors - For Grads and Undergrads

Our program has always used the Venn diagram (above) that has business factors, technology, and human factors as its three circles. This has always been one of the strengths of our program's philosophy - we are inherently multidisciplinary and recognize business success as an important determinant of design success. For some students, particularly the grad students who can take classes at the Graduate School of Business, getting a business education has been part of their Stanford time, but, frankly, the Design program has not done much to facilitate this experience. If you are an undergrad your business education has been even more haphazard. Stanford does not have an undergraduate business major and the GSB is off-limits, so you are stuck with a few economics classes and the MS&E Department's classes on entrepreneurship to provide you with some (any) business education. We think it is time to fix this.

For the undergrads we are adding a class called ME115c: Business Factors in Design that will be as close to a "mini design MBA" as we can make it. We are talking to several GSB faculty and alumni who have gone on to get MBA's (and even PhD's!) in business about the syllabus and curriculum for this class. This is one of the opportunities for you, our alumni community, to add your two-cents to this discussion -- let us know what you think every designer needs to know about what we are calling business-factors.

Right now we imagine that this is not one of our traditional studio class. However, it will still be based on our "project-based learning" model and the students will still "design" things. It is just that the "things" will be more like costed bills-of-materials, a consulting proposal, a business plan, a brand strategy, and such. if I were to put a straw man up for discussion (and I am) I'd say a class like this needs to cover:

• What is a business strategy?
• How do you finance a product or a company? What is debt and equity?
• How do you structure ownership?
• Understanding sales, marketing, and supply chains
• What is a business model and how do you design/develop one?
• Understanding basic cost accounting? How do products and services make money?

We plan to develop a similar class for the graduate students, probably delivered through the d.school. We are also actively reviewing the appropriate GSB and MS&E classes and plan to create a list of "approved sequences" that would fulfill a "business factors" requirement that will be part of the new grad curriculum. More about that in a subsequent post.

The Loft Redesign

Those of you who attended Personal Statements Friday night received a free copy of Ambidextrous, our Design magazine, and a letter from Banny, David, and myself outlining some of the changes we are making for next year. One of the most ambitious is a complete tear-down and redesign of the Loft. We plan to rebuild it as a modern studio space in time for the opening of the new Design Building in the Fall of this year. Our idea is to make the space more flexible and easy to reconfigure, featuring updated technology and connectivity, and set up so that we can prototype new ways of working together. Other than those general guidelines we are open to new design ideas.

The Loft is an important element of the Design experience at Stanford and we are very aware that we a messing with one of the crown jewels of the grad program. The Loft was certainly "home base" for my Master's year- I probably spent more nights in the Loft than I did in my apartment. I imagine many of you did as well and you have a lot of feelings about the place. We’d love your ideas on this subject, particularly if you work in a great design space (or know of one) that we can come see. We will be prototyping some of our ideas (of course) as the year progresses and we are open to a radical re-thinking of the space. We look forward to a lively discussion about your ideas.

Undergraduate program- Design major

The Undergraduate Program is based in the Mechanical Engineering school and we have no plans to change the basic math/science/ and engineering basics of the major. We still assume that the student wants to be an engineer - the only question is "what kind?"

Freshman year is, therefore, still dominated by the math (20 units) and physics (12 units) requirements, as well as the University's Intro to Humanities (IHUM) and Program in writing and rhetoric (PWR) requirements. This year, for the first time, Banny taught a Freshman Seminar called "Thinking Like a Designer", the first time to our knowledge that the design curriculum was introduced in Freshman year. This is an experiment to see if we can attract motivated students earlier than Sophomore year. We'll see what the conversion rate is next year.

In the Sophomore Year we want to get students ready to declare the major and that generally means they try-out design by taking Art 60: Basic Design and ME101: Visual Thinking. If that goes well then we generally recommend they finish up any math and science requirements and get the psychology requirements (2 classes) out of the way. They sometimes can complete and engineering breath course as well.

The Junior and Senior Year program is being expanded so that there is a required Design class every quarter. That's adding two new Design classes next year, in a sequence that looks like the chart at the beginning of this blog entry

There are two "bookends" in this program. At the beginning we have the Intro class, ME115a, that surveys every element of the Design curriculum and gives the student a taste of the subject. It is a chance for the student (and us) to see if they have any aptitude for the subject. The other end is ME216b: Implementation, where the student demonstrates their learning by executing a capstone project. In between we cover each of the key areas of design thinking in more depth, using project-based learning as our method.

One new class of note is ME115c - Business Factors for Designer - more about that later.