Design History - Design History As A Component of British Practice-based Courses

Design History As A Component of British Practice-based Courses

Design history also exists as a component of many practice-based courses.

The teaching and study of design history within art and design programmes in Britain is one of the results of the National Advisory Council on Art Education in the 1960s. Among its aims was making art and design education a legitimate academic activity, to which ends a historical perspective was introduced. This necessitated the employment or ‘buying in’ of specialists from art history disciplines, leading to a particular style of delivery: “Art historians taught in the only way that art historians knew how to teach; they switched off the lights, turned on the slide projector, showed slides of art and design objects, discussed and evaluated them and asked (art and design) students to write essays – according to the scholarly conventions of academia”.

The most obvious effect of the traditional approach design history as sequential, in which X begat Y and Y begat Z. This has pedagogical implications in that the realisation that assessment requires a fact-based regurgitation of received knowledge leads students to ignore discussions of the situations surrounding a design’s creation and reception and to focus instead on simple facts such as who designed what and when.

This ‘heroic/aesthetic’ view – the idea that there are a few great designers who should be studied and revered unquestioningly – arguably instils an unrealistic view of the design profession. Although the design industry has been complicit in promoting the heroic view of history, the establishment by the UK government of Creative & Cultural Skills has led to calls for design courses to be made less 'academic' and more attuned to the 'needs' of the industry. Design history, as a component of design courses, is under increasing threat in the UK at least and it has been argued that its survival depends on an increased focus on the study of the processes and effects of design rather than the lives of designers themselves.

Ultimately it appears that design history for practice-based courses is rapidly becoming a branch of social and cultural studies, leaving behind its art history roots. This has led to a great deal of debate as the two approaches forge distinct pedagogical approaches and philosophies.