Teaching Graphic Design: Course Offerings and Class Projects from the Leading Undergraduate and Graduate Programs

Edited by Steven Heller. New York: Allworth Press, 2003. 290 pp., illus. Softbound, $19.95. ISBN 1-58115-305-8.

Reviewed by Aaris Sherin, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0362, U.S.A. E-mail: aaris.sherin@uni.edu.

As a relative newcomer to design education, I am constantly looking for new ideas on how to communicate graphic design principles and practice to students, and on how I might improve upon design curricula. This book is a welcome addition to my collection of teaching resources; already filled with post-it notes, it is well on its way to becoming heavily thumbed. The book's editor, Steven Heller, who art directs the New York Times Book Review and co-chairs the graduate design program at the School of Visual Arts, has called upon some of the country's most successful and best-known design educators to share their methods, ideas, and notes on the teaching of design. Included are detailed course plans for a variety of design-related subjects, ranging from beginning undergraduate level courses through graduate, and from traditional to innovative, some of which make opportune use of new media and changing tides within the field. These syllabi are presented to the reader in the form that the students would see them, complete with overviews, course requirements, suggested projects and selected readings. Those new to teaching will find of particular value the depth of the book's information, but longtime educators will surely also benefit from the unusual breadth of the entries. In his introduction, Heller defines a teacher as one who leaves her students inspired and always hungering for more. What is especially encouraging here is the willingness of educators to share their work with others. This is a book that one can peruse over and over, for as each of us grows as a teacher, then the pertinence of the syllabi will no doubt evolve as well. The book includes about forty syllabi by more than sixty educators (including some team teachers), among them Ellen Lupton, Elizabeth Resnick, Katherine McCoy, Inge Druckrey, Stefan Sagemeister, and Johanna Drucker.

(Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 19, No. 2, Winter 2003-2004.)