I Profess: The Graphic Design Manifesto: http://www.visualingual.org/iprofess/introduction.html
This is a collaborative effort between Chris Corneal, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Michigan State University, and Maya Drozdz, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA. The call for entries resulted in almost 100 submissions, out of which the jurors selected 30. The resulting exhibit showcases a wide range of viewpoints and pedagogical and ideological priorities that will serve as inspiration and as starting points for dialogue among students and faculty. With this exhibit, the curators aim to encourage debate and to provoke the next generation of graphic designers to actively shape the future of our profession. > back to type and experiments

Statement:

I'm squeamish, so I went to art school instead of the family trade of plumbing--lots of uncles, cousins and father all solder pipes together. Graduate school is where I deliberately began to include pipes and valves in my work. But what began as a joke, wound up bringing a toughness to my aesthetic and an "everyday" point of view to my design language. Plumbing became a structural metaphor for me to see the world through.

It doesn't have to be plumbing though. There's an unexpected value in holding one activity up next to another. As in my case, the act of inspecting helps reveal unexplored layers of meaning. Part of my teaching method is to convey this to students.

This doesn't mean that general graphic design problems don't or won't get solved. Just that they get solved by a graphic designer who's been encouraged to also build a solid body of work that they can call their own.

Where are you from, what do you know well, what past experiences do you see factored into your design approach? Questions like these lead to the creation of personal myths, the awareness of which, through class projects, get integrated into each student's graphic design.

By finding themselves in their work, students, by default, develop their own visual vocabulary and personal style. Design begins to personally mean something; design becomes valuable.