How to make an egg:
My reflections on the Design for Visual Communication course
The first thing that stood out to me about the PG Dip DVC as a student was how structured it was. On my BA in Social and Cultural Studies at the University of Nottingham ten or so years before, I’d had a great experience in terms of the ideas, content and people I had worked with, but I did wonder by the end of the course if anyone on the core teaching and learning team had any idea I was on the programme! The attitude seemed a little ‘take it or leave it’ – the course’s content was available to students and it was up to you what you made of it, or didn’t. Arguably an effective way to foster agency and self-reliance in what might be described as an casual buffet approach to course delivery. Imagine my surprise when I found myselfon the five course set menu of the PG Dip DVC.
From my perspective, the core foundation the PG DVC courses were the five initial workshops built around fundamental principles of typography, visual language and grammar, type hierarchy, colour and information design. Unlike a set menu which might ease you in gently with a small soup, the approach to the delivery of these core ingredients was total immersion. I have to admit at times it did feel a little surreal when I, and the other 20 or so students on the course, followed precisely Tony or Ben’s specific instructions for activities like putting a small yellow square of paper on a slightly larger white square of paper and then discussing at some length how it looked quite like an egg. But reflecting on it now, I can see how each of those activities were thoughtfully and deliberately defined and distilled through many years of professional practice and teaching and learning experience in graphic design.
As I walk round the college today, I regularly see variations of these workshops being delivered. I deliver them, or at times adaptions of them, in my teaching and learning practice, and I see them cropping up at other institutions too. This is not to say that these approaches were invented on DVC. More so that they are the result of a deep and sustained commitment to teaching and learning in graphic design. In my view, they draw on a long legacy of that practice in largely UK and European higher education institutions, but also a general, but deeply held interest in interesting ideas and captivating approaches to engaging others in the task of fostering their own creative process. I think what is really valuable about DVC is the way that Tony, with the help of Ben Richards, and also Susannah Rees and Vanessa Price, took years of knowledge, experience and expertise and condensed them into those core, foundational workshops and activities, as well as the projects across the rest of the DVC course that stemmed from them. Doing so at LCC arguably brought practical, applied sensibility, a spirit that didn’t take itself too seriously, but was in many ways very serious about the work and a strong sense of ambition for the students.