Review of My Practice by PgCert Tutor, John O’Reilly
Session/artefact to be observed/reviewed: Stage 2 GCD Practices, Typography, BAGCD, Central Saint Martins
Size of student group: 30
Observer: John O’Reilly
Observee: Stephen Barrett
Part One
Observee to complete in brief and send to observer prior to the observation or review
What is the context of this session/artefact within the curriculum?
This is the third session of a five-week ‘block’ titled GCD Practices: Typography for Stage 2 of BAGCD. These sessions explore skills, techniques, approaches, theories relating to our five GCD Practices: Computation, Contexts, Lens, Print Production, and Typography. The sessions have been designed to be standalone allowing students to explore theoretical and practical knowledge relating to each GCD Practice and utilise this knowledge in their platform projects.
How long have you been working with this group and in what capacity?
I have been working with this group for two previous sessions but have also taught them in Stage 1 as a Unit 1 tutor and then as Typography Tutor in Units 2 & 3.
What are the intended or expected learning outcomes?
Upon successful completion of this unit students will be able to demonstrate to an appropriate level the following learning outcomes:
1: Make critically informed choices about media and methods appropriate to your chosen platform relevant to your practice (AC Enquiry)
2: Investigate and evaluate historical and contemporary contexts of Graphic Communication Design approaches in relation to your Platforms and your practice (AC Knowledge)
3: Develop your practice by initiating iterative and interrogative experimentation appropriate to your chosen platforms (AC Process)
4: Examine how media and messages can be used to effectively communicate with relevant audiences (AC Communication)
5: Present evidence of the design decisions that have informed the production of your work and reflect on how they have helped to develop and locate your practice (AC Realisation)
AC = Assessment Criteria
What are the anticipated outputs (anything students will make/do)?
During the three-hour session students will design a simple grid-based typeface, by hand using pens/pencils.
Are there potential difficulties or specific areas of concern?
Accommodating / engaging students from a broad range of interests and abilities.
How will students be informed of the observation/review?
Emailed in advance of the session and informed at the start of the session.
What would you particularly like feedback on?
Any aspects of planning and delivery would be welcomed.
How will feedback be exchanged?
Notes on form, emailed after the session.
Part Two
Observer to note down observations, suggestions and questions
Courtesy www.apracticeforeverydaylife.com
Pedagogy of constraint and problem space
It’s easy to forget the pedagogic value of narrating the timing and place of a teaching session, where it sits in flow of a unit’s ideas and practices, and Stephen provides positioning of this class, running through slides and contextualising with reference to a previous session.
The subject matter is around typeface design, and he is inclusive in explaining the very basics, not assuming a standard knowledge-base across the classroom, as he explains typefaces come in different shapes and sizes, the exercise is around grid-based typefaces. He explains ‘the grid’, and there is a really powerful use of visual examples. As much he has curated a rich collection of visual examples from graphic design history, they are delivered as a compelling story. He contextualises the work, the concerns, the drivers, the technologies of the time which afforded the creation of these typefaces, such as the work by various designers associated with De Stijl.
As I follow the unfolding of the class Stephen has seamlessly threaded at least five significant learnings through the session:
1) A brief lesson in design-history that situates the practices of making typefaces.
2) The key learning of the experience of ‘restriction’, central to the cognitive experience of design practice, where the problem space of creativity is situated by a horizon of ‘restriction’. This can initially be experienced as the scarcity of means or resources – but also where the ingenuity of designers is in discovering creative resources in the problem itself.
3) Stephen locates this problem of constraint/restriction for students in the workplace, where one is constrained by the client, the budget, the deadline, the available space.
4) The lesson and learning from the assigned task of designing a letterform.
5) Learning from quantity, and the creation of capacity that comes out of “the production of more”.
Stephen gets the class to fill the grid with their letterforms, it is such a useful exercise in the pedagogic power of iteration – the embodiment and movement involved in doing a practice. You can sense some resistance from students to the quantity being asked for, but Stephen has already flagged up this ‘worry’ about quantity for the students, and by doing so makes this worry feel ok.
From Max Bill to Wim Crouwel and the idea of creating a visual language, to Peter Saville, to letterforms designed to be read by computers, Stephen’s narrative is chronological, aesthetic and conceptual.
He asks students to put away their laptops, and nearly all of them do, not re-appearing until the very end of the task. Stephen makes himself accessible walking around the workspaces – it is a difficult skill for a teacher judging when to offer comment, support and guidance, or when to keep a distance and let students discover what the doing of the task feels like. This feels especially important in this task. As much as the session is about the experimentation and task of designing the shape of a letterform, looking around the classroom it is also about students designing the shape of their body in trying out letterforms. Arms reach and stretch-out, curving; necks and backs lean over, connecting with Stephen’s grid; taut hands bend and curl, directing the pen/pencil through the movement.
When it comes to analysing and evaluating the work Stephen also suggests concepts for students to consider such as ‘aesthetic’, ‘legibility’, ‘innovation’, and asks them to choose one design they like. These concepts also become useful reference points for students to dig deeper around how they look at their own and at each other’s work. Stephen probes again, “think about the criteria you are using for liking your own work and liking other people’s letterforms.” When there are lots of moving parts (in your head and your body) when you are literally trying to figure-out what you are doing in the figure of the letterform, the pedagogy of the reference point is critical. The reference point as a kind of stillness in complexity.
Stephen’s suggestive teaching is also reminder of the pedagogy of creative direction that students will experience at work, if they are lucky to work with a supportive and creative leader who probe with questions. He asks and suggests: “In developing your letterforms what might you have to adapt?”; “Maybe there isn’t enough complexity?”; “Each letter doesn’t have to have visual characteristics but needs to work as a whole.” There is so many significant learnings going on in Stephen’s teaching, from the place of being a graphic designer. A question for Stephen is how am I developing this making-thinking pedagogy for myself? To what extent does it/can be made explicit for students? Or maybe it doesn’t need to be?
#constraint #quantity #capacity #evaluation
Further reading
Orr, S., & Shreeve, A. (2017) ‘Teaching practices for creative practitioners’, Art and design pedagogy in higher education: Knowledge, values and ambiguity in the creative curriculum. Taylor and Francis Group.
Lury, C. (2021) ‘What is a problem space’, Problem Spaces: How and Why Methodology Matters. Polity Press.
Part Three
Observee to reflect on the observer’s comments and describe how they will act on the feedback exchanged
Thank you for the very detailed and positive feedback, John. I found the feedback very encouraging and affirming. I put a lot of thought into the sessions, the activities and how these are contextualised, both in terms of the history of the subject and industry/commercial practice so it’s really good to read how you picked up on all these aspects. I will definitely follow up on the readings. Your question at the end of the feedback is thought provoking: ‘A question for Stephen is how am I developing this making-thinking pedagogy for myself?’, a question I will take forward as the PgCert progresses.