by Ian West | Mar 27, 2012 | Design education
In design, as in all education, students are often more aware of cultural shift than are their tutors – even if they can’t at first articulate them. As the course progressed we began to recognise some of the tensions in the world of design. The college was...
by Ian West | Mar 19, 2012 | Uncategorized
Serendipity led me to stumble over one of the most influential designers and educators of the ‘Swiss’ school. My intake at college was the product of what was known as ‘The Bulge’ (later called ‘Babyboomers’) – the children of soldiers recently returned...
by Ian West | Mar 19, 2012 | Uncategorized
Every discipline has its own language and its own narrative. And stories need heroes. Part of getting to grips with design lay in understanding the history and the key players. Slowly my awareness of the output of graphic designers was growing. There were exhibitions...
by Ian West | Mar 18, 2012 | Uncategorized
When you know little about design, important choices such as whether to pursue graphic or product design may be made for the the most ill-informed reasons. In the early months of my course I still had a muddled vision of where I was going, though I was influenced as...
by Ian West | Mar 14, 2012 | Uncategorized
It is hard to believe today, but there was a time when Helvetica was a rare and costly resource. In my early graphic design studies, I was impressed by the work of Swiss and German typographers and one thing that seemed to characterise them was a cool and distinctive...
