Critique and process: Signature pedagogies in the graphic design classroom

Introduction to graphic design

The fields of visual design have much in common with the many subsets of the visual fine arts, such as painting, drawing, or printmaking. Disciplines in design and fine arts task students with the creation of unique artifacts crafted using natural media such as paint, graphite, or pastels or, more recently, using computers and software applications. The products of fine arts and design can be evaluated using an array of qualitative criteria generally grouped together and referred to as visual aesthetics, meaning the visual qualities of a given artifact that make up its inherent appeal or lack thereof. Although design and the fine arts share many characteristics, they are different fields of study and diverge around the created object’s intent and purpose. While the lines between art and design sometimes blur, art is generally created to express a concept or respond to something already present within the artist, and its commercial value is usually ascribed to it after it has been created (Barrett, 2011). Design, on the other hand, incorporates both conceptual and practical modes of thinking; usually involves responding to something external to the designer, such as a particular audience or marketplace; and includes a contract or agreement between two or more parties that asks the designer to address and solve an articulated problem (Öztürk and Türkkan, 2006; Rutland, 2009).

Graphic design can refer to a job, an academic discipline, or a specific type of visual artifact. It is an academic field of study that’s also rooted in the professions and is just one of many design disciplines including (but not limited to) architecture, fashion design, interior design, and product design. Graphic design, however, is set apart by its purpose: the creative use of visual content to solve specific visual communication problems. It is inherently practice based, meaning that acquiring knowledge and expertise in the field is largely the product of repetition and learning by doing. It involves beliefs about expertise and how one achieves that status, and is inherently collaborative, at a minimum between designer and client, but often involving many more people.

The study of graphic design includes many straightforward and well-defined learning tasks, such as understanding the field’s history and major practitioners, gaining knowledge of required tools and technologies, and exploring topical components of the field like typography or how to implement grid-based layouts. Some aspects of learning about graphic design, however, are more complex and less defined, and can demand greater student autonomy and agency. While some learning in this area can and should be facilitated by instructors, students themselves must ultimately become responsible for their growth as designers by, for instance, developing compelling initial ideas, determining personal approaches to pushing conceptual designs into high-fidelity prototypes, seeking opportunities to hone craftsmanship or foster skill mastery, buying into the value of repetition and iteration to progress a design from initial concept to final deliverable, or learning to take and benefit from criticism, even when sharp or unexpected. At all levels of graphic design, learning should be scaffolded to encourage students to embrace failure as part of the process of design and to increase their tolerance for risk (Logan, 2006). Students who are overly conservative, complacent, or fearful in their design work will be challenged as professionals to find success in an industry that demands creativity and innovation.

Signature pedagogies and the profession of graphic design

Graphic design programs, including majors, minors, and certificate programs, are sometimes referred to by other titles: the two most common are visual communication and communication design. Regardless of the name of the programs or their specific objectives, most share signature pedagogies or approaches to teaching and learning that require students to do the work of the field (Chick et al., 2009; Shulman, 2005).

One of the goals of graphic design courses is to teach students to adopt the practices that they will follow in future careers. Logan (2006) notes that the study of graphic design involves overlapping circles of education and practice. The graphic design classroom, then, is an environment structured to emulate the practices of professionals, a place where students can learn the habits they will need as they move from the studio to employment. In a discussion of the process-oriented features of the design studio, Öztürk and Türkkan note, “Taking into consideration the many factors of their training, the crucial aim of the design studio is to equip the student as a professional. Hence studio work frequently relies on a reconstruction or simulation of the circumstances of practice” (2006: 97). Here, again, is a reference to the manner in which much design-focused learning is oriented to allow students to experience, even mimic, the practices of the professional.

So what are some of the pedagogical features of graphic design education? One of the best ways for aspiring practitioners to gain graphic design skills is through simple heuristics, such as trial and error, something professional graphic designers do regularly. Modes of experiential learning, including internships and apprenticeships, can help novices learn through practice in an environment populated by experienced designers who have the ability to guide students as designers in training. Studio-based pedagogies, such as project-based learning (Trigwell, 2002), are also excellent ways for students to learn by doing as they seek to approximate the authentic methods of problem solving—and problem defining—that mimic the professional graphic designer’s approach to her own design work.

However, these practices are clearly not unique to graphic design or even other related design and fine arts disciplines. There are, though, pedagogies that are primarily found in design and the fields of the fine, performing, and creative arts. Two of these can be considered signature pedagogies of the graphic design classroom and are deeply rooted in the professional activities of a successful graphic designer’s practice. The first is the critique (Trigwell, 2002) used to analyze and assess a student’s designed content or artifact. The second is the design process, a structured and repeatable series of steps that practitioners follow from a design product’s beginning to end.

Critique in the graphic design classroom

Critique in graphic design is a structured, student-focused learning activity that serves as an assessment and a generator of critical feedback, clarifying the discipline’s objectives and values and facilitating students’ understanding of how professionals achieve their goals (Klebesadel and Kornetsky, 2009). In some fields, such as art history and visual culture, students learn critique to evaluate, understand, and ultimately assess the value of artifacts in the course subject matter, but the creator of the work being evaluated is not present. In graphic design, however, the creator is usually present and central to critique, as it is meant to help the designer improve her skills and practice (as well as the product) and learn the field, a qualitatively different purpose than focusing solely on the evaluation of an artifact.

Critique as a pedagogy is both a procedure and a tool. It is procedural as it encompasses inherently sequenced acts that move from stage to stage, usually part of a proscribed design process, which is discussed in greater detail below. The three primary stages of critique are (1) observation and interrogation, (2) reflection and evaluation, and (3) articulation (Motley, 2015). In the first stage, students observe and, if needed, interrogate a visual artifact by questioning its presenter. Sometimes students consider a peer’s work broadly, evaluating what they determine are the merits or weaknesses of the project. At other times, they use criteria specified by the instructor or the author of the work to focus the feedback to certain aspects or techniques. The next step involves some form of reflection and then evaluation. After contemplating what they have observed, students make judgments about the artifact’s qualitative merits, such as choices about color combinations, specific typefaces, or the layout of textual versus visual content. Finally, for a critique to have any assessment or facilitative value to the student whose work is being reviewed, these reflections and judgments must be articulated, often done verbally during the critique session, but sometimes captured in writing and later shared with the peer.

As a tool, a critique’s purposes are clear. Although a critique can help realize a variety of learning goals, at its core is an assessment mechanism that provides a student with valuable feedback. Presenting work publically in critique has the consistent, almost universal, effect of causing students to see what they have created from a new perspective or with a different mind-set, thus helping them to view their work with “fresh eyes.” Critique can be used as both a formative and a summative assessment. The formative critique, conducted in the middle stages of a project’s creation, is generally more beneficial for students, as the timing allows them to receive and respond to considered opinions about their work. At this intermediate point, the feedback can help students see their work more clearly or move past a sticking point. Also, because a typical session usually includes a review of more than one student, formative critiques allow students to compare their work to that of their peers while discussions of the merits of each take place. Furthermore, because of the collaborative and contributory nature of a critique, students may also realize how to address problems with their own designs while giving feedback to others. For example, in the middle of a logo design assignment, a student may realize novel ways to leverage the laws of Gestalt psychology into his own design just as he comments on a classmate’s effective incorporation of those principles for her logo. Because of the potential for such revelatory moments in both receiving and giving feedback, students ideally reflect on what they have learned about their own design work after the critique session is complete.

Summative critiques occur after the final version of a project has been submitted and result in formalized feedback such as grades. At this point, critiques serve both the instructor and the students. The instructor makes a final assessment and assigns a grade to a student’s project, and students still benefit from a final peer and instructor review, even though the project is concluded. They learn broadly about graphic design by paying attention to the group’s shared feedback about other classmates’ work. By comparing finished designs with those of their classmates, they develop strategies for ongoing or future design projects. Witnessing the variety of ways that classmates successfully approached a design problem exposes students to more solutions than they may have determined alone and can help them develop new methods of using a particular tool or technique to achieve a specific result.

Critiques also develop students’ abilities to be conversant about design using professional language. In their discussion of signature pedagogies in the fine and performing arts, Klebesadel and Kornetsky note, “At the center of an excellent education in the arts is the development of critical and linguistic skills that enable students to describe, analyze, and interpret visual culture” (2009: 99). In design, this learning objective is largely achieved through critique, which requires students to develop and demonstrate discipline-specific language skills and knowledge of appropriate industry terminology. While learning the meaning and general use of new words may not be that difficult for students, learning how to use new terminology to critique a peer’s work—where success means the peer benefits from the feedback rather than rebels against it—is a more sophisticated task. Critique thus challenges students by calling on their abilities to synthesize observations with both newly learned language and newly learned lessons about design.

By way of example, let’s imagine a student named Suzy is critiquing a design by her peer, Steve, and she tells him she likes his design. In terms of usefulness, Suzy has told Steve little, as he hasn’t heard anything specific about his work except that she is responding to it positively. If Suzy goes a bit further and says, “I like your design. The layout seems to be working well,” she’s advanced her critiquing skills somewhat by being more detailed about a specific component of the project, and she’s also used a discipline-appropriate term (“layout”) to name that component. However, Suzy still hasn’t offered Steve very much in the way of useful and actionable information. She could push her critique even further if she said something like, “I like your design, Steve. The layout seems to be working well, especially in how you’ve used an underlying grid to keep the various portions of the design lined up and evenly spaced out.” In this scenario, Suzy is giving Steve valuable information to reinforce his own thinking and experimentation about whether his efforts were effective. The same scenario would be true if what Suzy said about Steve’s design work was negative and constructive. As long as the information was light on platitudes and replete with specifics, then Steve should be able to make use of Suzy’s critique.

Critiques also help students develop the ability to discuss their own work and others’ (Shreeve et al., 2010). Barrett (2000) describes critique’s role in engaging students with each other and their instructor in discussions where they can share differing perspectives on an artifact in a space where all voices and opinions are valued. Critiques are “collaborative efforts” that should cultivate “stewards of design rather than dictators” (McDaniel, 2011), as successful critiques should be conversational, rather than one-sided or dictatorial. The best critiques are full of energy, are dynamic and enthusiastic, even contentious at times, and are driven by many voices. In a good critique, students share their views as often or more often than the instructor, and the student being critiqued knows that the observations are not mandates but suggestions that can be adopted or ignored. This judgment is part of maturing into professional designers: students must weave what they hear during a critique into their own developing aesthetics and sense of style as visual problem solvers. The collaborative nature of the design process, where peers share serious and sometimes sharp observations about each other’s work, is both a privilege and a responsibility. The conversational aspect of critique, then, requires students to establish and improve other skills: the ability to give criticism that is sharp and to the point, but isn’t personal or petty, and, when being critiqued, the forbearance and ability to inhabit, even if only temporarily, a thick enough skin to survive a critique emotionally and still benefit from the given feedback.

Design process in the graphic design classroom

The second signature pedagogy of graphic design is the design process. Graphic design students are expected to find their own solutions to problems and adopt their own pathways to the development of a body of work (Shreeve et al., 2010). Students learn that adhering to a dedicated design process benefits them in many ways: it can help them define personal strategies for achieving high-quality results, provide a reliable mechanism that allows them to progress through complex design problems, and help them understand how they arrived at specific outcomes instead of feeling that they simply got lucky when searching for solutions.

Though there are many variations, a typical design process follows seven steps. First is problem definition: What is the design supposed to do? What are the constraints? What form should the design take? Next is information gathering, or conducting research on the topic of the design problem and collecting information in the form of examples that inspire immediate possibilities. Third is ideation, or brainstorming, mind-mapping, and other idea-generation techniques to generate a large number of possibilities. Concept development is the fourth step. From the broad ideas captured in the previous step, the designer creates concept sketches and design mockups. Step five is implementation, when the most promising concepts are developed into prototype designs. Next is feedback, when critique helps identify any problems with the design. Finally, the seventh step is refinement, when the designer uses the feedback generated in the previous step to rework and refine designs. This process, especially the last two steps of feedback and refinement, is repeated as many times as necessary to achieve high-quality results that solve the design problem or satisfy the client’s needs. In the professional world, this is when the client receives the final design deliverables for the project. In the classroom setting, this is when all design work for the project is submitted for grading.

The utility of adhering to a design process is that it encourages students to embrace experimentation, engage in iteration, and confront failure, all of which are aspects of working as a professional designer. Students who embrace a design process acknowledge that successful design work is often based on trial and error and that failure can be fruitful. In fact, students shouldn’t only be asked to follow a design process; they should also capture it in tangible form. The activities of a deliberate design process—researching the design problem and related content, sketching concepts, testing typefaces and color combinations, building prototypes, etc.—are valuable in and of themselves. However, the products created as part of the process can be revisited and used during the entire life of the project. Because of their potential use and reuse, these products along the way become living documents. When a designer gets stuck on some aspect of a project, one of the most common ways to get unstuck is to revisit early sketches or concepts that seemingly were headed in a different—even wrong—direction than the current design solution. To reinforce this part of the process, graphic design instructors will often require students to submit evidence of their design process along with the final project artifact for assessment. Requiring documentation of the design process in the form of sketches, design mockups, prototypes, and the like serves two purposes: it is a straightforward way for a student to make her learning and development as a designer visible and explicit to herself, her peers, and her instructors (Shreeve et al., 2010), and it reflects the activity of a typical professional designer.

At the core of virtually all design processes is the idea of iteration: the designer comes up with many ideas, and from those ideas he develops possible design concepts. Iteration can lead to solutions, but at some point in the iterative process, there must be a review to narrow the possibilities. How does the designer proceed from many rough ideas and arrive at one or two possibilities that should then be pushed further? And when those have been honed and further developed, how does the designer know where to go next? The answer to these questions points to the critique and its importance in all design processes.

Linking critique and process

Most professionals recognize that critique is a crucial part of the design process. McDaniel illustrates:

As designers, we begin by filling space with temporary messes and uncertain experiments. We make a thousand tiny decisions quickly, trying to shape a message that will resonate with our audience. Then in the middle of the flow, we must stop and share our unfinished work with colleagues or clients. (2011)

The steps of a dedicated design process through which a designer achieves her work are therefore linked—some would say inextricably linked—to the act of the critique. While a specific design process includes many stages, such as research and idea development at the front end and prototype testing and approval at the back end, the steps that come in the middle rely heavily on critique to evaluate potential solutions by helping a designer think critically about the decisions he’s made so far. In most cases, the critique stage comes after the research and concept development steps, but before any refinement work is done. Regardless of the permutations and variations of an individual graphic designer’s process, the need to critically observe, reflect on, and judge a design concept’s value before it proceeds too far should be clear. When a student doesn’t self-critique early enough in the development of a design, it can lead to apprehension about considering other ideas or reluctance to change directions if needed. A student who critiques her work alone will usually be able to make positive and useful observations about her work and thus be able to take advantage of the process. However, a collaborative critique that provides a variety of views instead of a single perspective is often more effective.

In the graphic design classroom, learning becomes an integrated experience when a student’s design process overlaps with the act of critique. When a critique is separated from a designer’s process—such as a summative critique that happens at the conclusion of a project—it can be beneficial for a student, but the benefit is often in general terms. Broad ideas about graphic design can be learned in this manner, such as how to design something in a different way in a future project, but those lessons are not as immediately applicable to a student’s work. However, if the critique is directly tied to the student’s ongoing design process, then anything learned from the critique can be applied immediately to the project being examined. Likewise, a design process implemented without the inclusion of a critique can become a shallow, one-sided series of steps for a designer to follow, perhaps one that leads to many dead ends. Without critical reflection and review of the work by others, a graphic designer, especially a student designer, may have a hard time progressing and refining her skills and abilities.

Signature habits of the graphic designer

In his introduction to signature pedagogies, Shulman (2005) describes distinct habits that professionals routinely follow within their own fields of expertise: “habits of the mind,” or ways of thinking, analyzing or synthesizing disciplinary information; those “of the heart,” or emotional dispositions related to a discipline; and “habits of the hand,” the skills, techniques, or abilities that are part and parcel of a discipline (59). Professional graphic designers often refer to these habits as the hard and soft skills of the discipline. Critique clearly contributes to the development of these habits as graphic design students make the transition into the profession.

Conclusion

The critique and the design process are not only the defining characteristics of the graphic design classroom; they are also its signature pedagogies. Both the critique and the design process encourage students to adopt the habits, mind-sets, and ways of performing that will be required of them in the workplace. When exercised and applied with regularity, critique can help guide students in their growth and independence as designers. As Shreeve et al. state, “Learners perform as practitioners, developing their own creative processes and critical judgment with decreasing amounts of support and increasing insight and development of identity as an artist or designer” (2010: 132). Because design education is professionally oriented, students are required to approximate the real, and thus they benefit from such authentic teaching and learning activities. Critique is an authentic activity—one that holds as much or more prominence in the profession as it does in the classroom—that is useful in helping students develop the hard and soft skills needed for eventual career success. Use of a design process is also an authentic component of a working designer’s approach to problem solving and design development. The intentional integration of the two, where the critique process fluidly sockets into a designer’s creative process, leverages the strength of both tools in such a way that each is maximized for the novice—or the professional.