Thanks for visiting! A few of you heard about this idea several months ago and asked periodically if I was ever going to get it off the ground. Well, here it is. I have left it just as you see it, a bare shell, in hopes that we can build it up collectively. This forum is not called ‘design ed,’ although that is what it is about. It is called ‘designed’ in hopes that is what it becomes. The site begins with a need to discuss and develop new ways of approaching and teaching the ever-growing base of consideration required of graphic designers.

There is very little comment about how one weaves together print and new media while maintaining a healthy foundation in history, refined generative processes, technical skills, and some ethos. New media? Globalization? Specialist/generalist? What can be expected of a 4-year professional degree in a field that has gone considerably beyond its founding? If it remains a 4-year degree, how does this change the national/global sense of graduate or doctoral studies or the expectations of undergrads when many are hired for their range of technical expertise and not for a well developed strategic mind set?

Nobody wants to talk about teaching software—egad. It has been 20 years since the Mac debuted. How has academia considered a designer’s relationship to the screen and its impact on process? Only in the past year or two have we seen computers catch up with our demands and exceed them. Media experimentation has turned to application and what was alien is now every-day. A synthesis of performing arts and design language is old news—now, how do we use it?

This forum was started with the idea that new teaching faculty in graphic design would benefit from sharing their experiences, research endeavors, and thoughts about these issues and many others in both design practice and education. Over the next few months I hope to find a few of you that would be willing to write a short piece and share it here for further discussion. There are plans for a resource section with bibliographies and links, as well as a calendar of events, but first I'd like to hear from you. What are you thinking?