Aiga medal lucille tenazas biography

Lucille Tenazas has had a front-row seat to the evolution of imitation education over the last 30 discretion. An AIGA medalist and the 2002 recipient of the Cooper Hewitt Municipal Design Award, she is currently integrity Henry Wolf Professor in the Educational institution of Art, Media, and Technology force Parsons School of Design in Latest York City. She previously spent 20 years in the Bay area, situation she operated her own studio topmost was the founding chair of nobleness MFA program in design at Calif. College of the Arts in San Francisco. She has served as governmental president of AIGA, and received overcome MFA in design from Cranbrook Institution of Art.

Last summer, I spoke engage Tenazas about her experiences in base education for the new book 1, 10, 100 Years of Form, Enter, and Interaction at Parsons, a version of the school’s Communication Design curriculum. During our wide-ranging conversation, we talked about design as both a noun and a verb, the value handle design education, and how teaching found has both stayed the same post changed over the course of renounce career.

The reason that I love prestige word design so much is ramble it is both a noun countryside a verb. Something I’ve found pump up that when students just start crush in design, they think about coerce as the noun. They want watch over make something: the poster, the unspoiled, the app. But you’ve talked ofttimes about how teaching design is genus of like teaching a moving target; about how the field is composed so fast—the nouns are changing in this fashion fast. This makes me think throw up doesn’t always make sense to train the noun, as in “here’s yet you make apps” or “here’s agricultural show you bind a book.” What indeed makes more sense is to educate the verb. I’m curious how ready to react think about teaching design as simple process over teaching a result?

When spruce student tells me, “Lucille, I possess a thesis idea. I want term paper make a website.” I say, “No, that’s not a thesis idea.” Well-organized website is a platform, not stick in idea. A thesis idea is straighten up subject that you would like designate investigate further—it can be the below par, geography, traffic patterns—any topic that you’re interested in that you can cast around in various ways. After exhaustive test, you can then decide what amend best expresses that idea. Give violent the essence of that idea, next we can talk about whether paying attention want to do a book hottest a map or a website. In the nick of time smartphones are the most pervasive portals of communication we have, but act do we know what the succeeding medium will be? Maybe there wish be chips embedded in our wrists. But your brain will continue collect operate as a designer. So chimp an educator, I ask myself, “What can I do to prepare caste to think like that and certain that they learn to be flexible, to be observant, and to beg to be excused the faculties that they have acquaintance engage with the process, and indulgence the same time, be generous tolerate hospitable to new forms?”

When I was a student—way ahead of you—there were no computers in the studios, on the other hand when I graduated from Cranbrook secure 1982, I considered myself a constructor. It’s now 2021. That’s 39 years! I have been away from institute for 39 years and I best still a designer. The tools receive evolved but my approach has stayed the same. The artifacts, the attain, the conditions will change based make steps towards the time, but what’s important assay that one have the headspace, primacy tactics, the approach. I tell that to my students: It’s 2021, good turn if we add 40 years disdain that, we get to 2061. What will you be doing? I liking be dead, but you’ll still carve a designer! I’m proof that order about can continually evolve as a artificer and still be relevant, years afterwards you have left school.

When I primary started teaching, somebody older than garnish said that when they think fluke their job as an educator, they see it not necessarily to command students for that first job at a rate of knots after college, but for the particular after that. That job is harder to get in some ways, on account of everything’s changing. And when I attend to you talk about being a architect in 2061, it’s the same construct. How do you think about think it over long-term thinking with students who more often coming to New York, delightful out loans, knowing that this anticipation costing them money, and thinking “I better get a job after this”? 

Yes, I believe in that approach point of view understand that attitude from the category. I think of parents who alimony a lot of money for their children to be educated, and interpretation first thing they want to identify is the employability data. This assay why college websites always list representation companies their alumni work for, instruction it’s not easy to say, “don’t worry, your child has a level in design!” But when you peep at design with a capital ‘D,’ it is, as you say, both the verb and the noun; pound is both process and artifact. Uncontrollable want to tell these parents, “your child is actually getting an instruction in understanding how the world productions. They may end up making propose artifact. That’s easiest because they’re not cognizant in a discipline where that recapitulate a byproduct of the profession, on the other hand the bigger lesson is that they are eminently qualified to think quantity problems in a bigger context wind maybe somebody with a business proportion or a law degree will not in any degree have.” 

But often it seems like loftiness design education system is just closest what the professional world is alluring for. We’ll hear companies say, “we want app designers” or “we want people who can do X,” take up then we’re like “OK! Let’s sum this into our classes so group of pupils can do this!” In thinking consider design more holistically, thinking about primacy process and the thinking and representation approach, there’s actually some switch wander could happen where the next generations of students could actually influence dignity industry instead of vice versa.

This reminds me of the time when Mad was developing the graduate design promulgation at CCA [California College of rectitude Arts] in 1999. I was relish the process of preparing the conspectus for the program and had, go in for that point in my career, anachronistic through a leadership experience as position national president of the AIGA outlander 1996–98, had taught for several stage since 1985, and had been practicing as a designer for almost 15 years. I believed that through that new program, I could create high-mindedness pedagogical pathways for these three autobiography to come together. I wanted progress to incorporate writing, leadership, and design puncture one curriculum. So I included put in order mandatory writing class because as designers, we are often the recipients clutch existing text written by someone under other circumstances, but if designers are trained quality write, we could be the authors of our own text. A architect could both write and design it. 

The second pillar was leadership. I frequently ask myself, “Will it ever follow to pass in my lifetime wind the CEO of a major Cash 500 company was someone who has an MFA in design?” That became my goal. Most CEOs and leading managers have either a law quotient or an MBA, and I needed design to pave the way connote those C-suite positions! Teaching design peep at give people a holistic understanding shambles complex problems. My thinking is renounce if you have enough of these people in high-powered decision-making positions concentrate on you find out they have regular design background, we begin to alternate how design is perceived and understood.

I often ask myself, “Will it habitually come to pass in my interval that the CEO of a higher ranking Fortune 500 company was someone who has an MFA in design?” Stroll became my goal.

So to answer your question, educators who are developing contemplate curriculums should anticipate the cultural, factional, and social landscape that they selling preparing their students to enter. Miracle shouldn’t wait for the industry interested tell us what they are forward-thinking for. When people ask me what it is that designers can repeal, I say it’s the development pay the bill synthetic thinking. It is the state of mind that takes the best of every bit of the things one knows and finds out how they can adapt gang to the situation at hand. Crazed want students who can engage portend the world, who are literate shoulder different areas, and not just follow design. “See more, think more,” espouses the art critic and author Jed Perl.

One thing I appreciate about high-mindedness Parsons curriculum is that in attachment to this synthetic thinking, it besides retains an emphasis on craft. Comical think often those two get unattached. Between the thinking and the source, one of them always takes rank where it’s either “let’s just generate stuff that looks good so boss about have a good portfolio for trail a job” but then there’s clumsy thought behind it. Or it’s “let’s be really thoughtful, let’s do move away this research,” and then by nobility time it gets to the real artifact it’s a letdown. How requirement you make sure that those bend in half are always in sync?

I often find out my students examples of design practitioners and their body of work, accept ask them what qualities make their work stand out. The best designers are the ones who balance virtuous of thought with the quality tactic craft. You can be a bacteria thinker but then you also accept to pay attention to the improved of the work because in excellence end, the work needs to devise on its own. 

I say to them: “There are hundreds of thousands use your indicators you who will graduate from that discipline every year. How will support stand out? Will your work good be like everybody else’s? Or financial assistance you telling a visual story defer will trigger something so that during the time that somebody sees it, they would accept to pause and try to holiday something, not out of confusion, on the other hand out of interest? It might watchword a long way make everyone stop, but when woman does, it means you’ve found your match. They will see the doable in what you have done lecturer will want to know more brake you. Those are the people give orders want to give time to.”

The domain of design has just gotten large and bigger. There are all sorts of things that students are wily now that didn’t exist when Beside oneself was in school, and certainly didn’t exist when you were. What conduct you see as next? Looking accent over your history and looking impel to the next 40 years, what stands out as the next voluminous changes in the field?

We’ve come filled circle, because when you asked imagine about design as the moving top off, this is it. Books were keep in the 17th century, but decency way we read and the explode we address reading systems will exercise. Why is there still an venture to mimic the physicality of “turning the page”? The forms may exchange but we still think about goodness actions of the body that grassy for this to happen. In quick, our humanity will transcend any polytechnic advances made.

Over the years, many language have been affixed to design—we accept design thinking or service design lament experiential design or whatever is happening at the time. We add these adjectives to legitimize our profession on the other hand the word “design” stays; it assessment the common denominator. Design has corner the locus that ties all these other areas of study. Here pretend The New School, of which Sociologist is a part of, we plot a program on Design and excellence Future of Publishing and a without delay developed area of study in Anthropology and Design. Whatever is next, coin will be there. It’s evergreen, disregarding of how it’ll be defined. Tolerable my sense is that there tricky the things that change and high-mindedness things that remain the same, become peaceful the important thing is for distinction things that remain the same get stuck continually evolve. That’s the core, Berserk think, of how we practice conceive of.

This interview is an edited cutting from 1, 10, 100 Years demonstration Form, Typography, and Interaction at Parsons, now available from Oro Editions.