The elegant Alice Twemlow is a design writer, curator, and critic based in New York City. A long-time voice within the graphic design community, she has directed several conferences for the AIGA and is the author of What is Graphic Design For? (Rotovision, 2006) and StyleCity New York (Thames & Hudson, 2005).
As the Chair of Design Criticism (D-Crit), an MFA program she co-founded with Steven Heller, she is at the forefront of design education. Always with her fingers in many pots, Alice is also a doctoral candidate in Graphic Design History at the Royal College of Art/V&A Museum History of Design in London. Base was happy to sneak a few moments of her time this summer to learn more about her work and impressions of the design community at-large, and to catch up on life after the inaugural year of one of the world’s first graduate programs in critical design thought.
The following interview was contributed by Amelia Black, a student of Twemlow’s in the D-Crit program at SVA.
Amelia Black: With the world in a recognized state of financial and environmental crisis, what roles do you see designers playing to help shape a new future?
Alice Twemlow: Blimey, that’s a meaty one to kick off with. Aren’t you going to start with something simple like what I’m reading at the moment? Actually, don’t because, to be honest, it’s Health Sleep Habits, Happy Child, which is really lame. Anyway, some excitable claims are being made these days that designers are in a unique position to make a difference. I think the real answer is that some are and some aren’t. I think that, just like any of us, if they are so inclined, designers can help to improve things at every level, from the small, local decisions they make, such as specifying minimally harmful inks, papers, materials, and production processes, or designing long-lasting systems which their clients are able to update themselves, to the more far-reaching interventions where the designer has the ear of an organization or government body that can effect real change at a much larger scale. The important thing is that they really believe in the projects they get involved in. I feel as if some designers are talking about their commitment to socially and environmentally driven causes from a sense of obligation or because it’s fashionable right now, rather than because they actually have something to contribute.
AB: Well, we didn’t want to discredit you by starting this off too lightly! How can you tell when a designer really believes in his or her project?
AT: Because they’re too busy doing it to put it on their website or to talk about it at conferences! I’m being a bit flip; the real way to find out would be to spend time with the designer, to interview them and to study their work closely—it soon becomes apparent if someone is as truly committed to a cause as their promotional rubric claims them to be. In fact, second-year D-Crit students will be learning all about this with Change Observer editor Julie Lasky in her class on Reporting on Design and Social Change later this semester. She’s going to be introducing them to techniques for investigating design that claim to be in the service of the environment, health, education, and economic development. This should be a really exciting and important course and hopefully the outcome will be some hard-hitting features that take design as seriously as it deserves to be.
AB: D-Crit is one of the world’s first graduate programs in design criticism. What forces came together to make now the moment for higher education in critical design thought? And do you think these same forces will support the first generation of design critics you will be launching into the world next spring?
AT: One of the main forces is Steven Heller, who had the idea for the program in the first place. And then there has to be a platform like the School of Visual Arts to support what we’re doing and to recognize the opportunity for creating something new. My feeling when I started work on the program a couple of years ago was that there was plenty of noise and activity in the design criticism arena and that it was time to provide a forum through which to hone and refine this activity as an academic discipline. I’ve tried to develop a curriculum, which provides graduates with the methodologies, tools, historical precedents, and the inspiration they need to flourish as critics and to improve design discourse. I think it’s an incredibly exciting time to be an emerging critic, with so many new venues in which to practice, from design firms and museums to blogs and publications.
AB: Does that mean that D-Crit is fast becoming the professional degree for the critical-design-thinking community?
AT: That’s one way of putting it, yes. Through our weekly lecture series, conferences, publications and web site, D-Crit also helping to provide a forum and indeed to build this community of critical thinkers.
AB: How have your own academic experiences and research into the world of design criticism shaped the way in which you developed the D-Crit program at SVA? Were there other programs that you looked at for inspiration?
AT: I studied Design History on an MA course run by the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Royal College of Art. I hold this as the gold standard of graduate programs in my field and, where possible, I seek to weave the academic rigor of that program into the fabric of D-Crit. And yet, I’ve also embraced the fact we are in an art college with a rich tradition of practically applied pedagogy and of hiring the most vital practitioners in each discipline. All of our teachers are at the top of their respective fields and they come straight from their day jobs as practicing critics, editors, curators, and radio producers to teach at D-Crit. It is a great pleasure to find confluence between my two lives as a PhD student and a program chair. There are definite overlaps between my PhD research, which focuses on the history of design criticism in the US and the UK since the 1950s, and my role as a chair where I can help to determine the future of the discipline. For example, Ralph Caplan, who was editor in chief of I.D. magazine in the late 1950s, is someone I’ve interviewed extensively for my research, and I’ve also brought him to teach on the program.
AB: Going into the second year with one class of seasoned students and a brand new crew coming in, what are your biggest goals for the year ahead? What is causing you the most anxiety?
AT: My goal for the second-year students is to keep offering different slants on the subject, new perspectives that will both enrich their thinking about the theses they are working on and better prepare them for finding work next summer. This fall, for example, we’ve got some fantastic new classes, including one led by Gawker founder Elizabeth Spiers which maps the new-media landscape, focusing on the economics of online content, and Change Observer editor Julie Lasky’s course on the role of investigative journalism in design criticism. My goal for the first-year students is to implement some of the refinements I’ve learnt from those students entering their second year.
What’s causing me anxiety about the incoming students? There are not enough boys.
AB: What mediums of critical-design-thought expression (blog, radio, book, exhibition, conference, etc.) excite you the most and do you feel are best-served by the pedagogical structure of D-Crit?
AT: I’m excited by them all, that’s why I’ve included them. As you know, writing is at the core of the program, as it is at each of these mediums, but we’re not a purist operation here. By necessity and predilection, I’ve always had a lot of different interests, supporting my writing with teaching, conference and event planning. Likewise, I’m keen to provide the students with the opportunity to explore and master as broad a range of mediums as possible. I see curriculum design as a kind of choreography or curation in which all the elements must be delicately balanced.
AB: In your opinion, what will be the greatest challenges for the graduates of the D-Crit program? And are these the same kinds of challenges that you faced as a burgeoning design writer, critic, curator, and educator?
AT: At a meta-level, one of the biggest challenges will be to help others (designers, the public, and decision makers) understand what criticism actually means. There is misconception out there that criticism is merely reactive and always negative. The way to change this conception, to demonstrate how criticism can be a creative force and is just as much about pointing out what’s good as what’s bad, of course, is to do great work and to do it visibly. Yes, that’s the same challenge I faced and continue to face as a writer.
Read part 2 of this interview.
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