Through Process

Designer-speaker-entrepreneur Aaron Draplin joins Mitch and Joshua for a talk about authenticity, his influences, and motivating students (and yourself).

After Mitch and Joshua explain just who the hell Joshua is, they take questions from you: the loyal Through Process listener! They have a wide-ranging discussion covering how to evaluate your own portfolio, making a living versus building a body of work, whether you need grad school to teach, the importance of a methodology, how to avoid a a cult of personality as a teacher, and, surprisingly, legibility (in the 90s sense).

What are the digital humanities? Mitch and Namdev are joined by designers and educators Amy Papaelais and Jessica Barness to try and answer that question. Amy and Jessica are co-editing a special issue of the academic journal Visible Language, that is dedicated to exploring the emerging field of digital humanities. We also discuss critical making, research, peer review, and how it all might fit together in academia and practice.

Mitch and Namdev revisit an early topic - critiques. What are they good for? What are they bad at? And what exactly are you supposed to do in class if you get rid of them? They also dig into new approaches they’re taking in the class room with assignments that help students to teach themselves and open-ended creative initiatives.

Mitch and Namdev are joined by designer, author and educator Michael Rock. They discuss design as metaphor, being present in your work, writing as form, why you are your most important audience, and what students should be taught in design school. Michael also gives Mitch and Namdev an on-air design assignment to help explain graphic design.

What makes a great design student great? Mitch and Namdev discuss some real ways students should approach school, and why being engaged and excited matters. We talk about time and space management, the benefit of having human relationships, and why your history classes are more important than you think.

Mitch and Namdev welcome designer and educator Erin Hauber to talk about the differences between graduate schools, and the value of an MFA degree. We also discuss adjunct faculty, changing up your design game, why Namdev has not gone to grad school, and why we should not try to teach every student everything.

Mitch and Namdev revisit the first episode of Through Process and discuss their past semester of teaching. Topics include what worked and what did not, upcoming changes, the value (or not) of group critique, and ways to make the design school experience more useful to students.

Should every designer pay attention to design criticism? Mitch and Namdev are joined by design writer, critic, and educator Chappell Ellison to continue the discussion about design criticism and its place in design. We talk about the Design Observer redesign and backlash, haters, criticism in design school, and the Buzzfeedification of design.

Design criticism — what is it, where is it, and why does everyone want it so bad? Inspired by his essay "What Do We Want From Design Criticism?", Mitch and Namdev welcome Jarrett Fuller to the show to discuss the supposed dearth of critical writing about graphic design from every angle. We have a lengthy talk complete with unhinged speculation, full-circle conclusions, and an irresponsible call for everyone to write and publish about their work, filter-failure be damned.

Should you get an MFA? And if so, what kind of school should you go to? Mitch speaks with Silas Munro, faculty chair of the Vermont College of Fine Arts' low-residency MFA program in Graphic Design, and Jason Alejandro, who is currently enrolled in the program. Together they discuss pros and cons of full-residency vs. low-residency schools, the nature of graduate education, and what you can gain from attending a graduate program.

Mitch has a conversation with designers, authors, and educators Nancy Skolos and Thomas Wedell, who have taught design at Rhode Island School of Design for more than 20 years. In addition to discussing how their teaching and practice inform each other, we talk about magic, the problem with silos, and attempt to define what graphic design is (if it is anything at all.)

Why are students - who’ve often never had a client - so down on them? Is it something we’re accidentally teaching them? Mitch and Namdev discuss the differences between school and professional life (the good and bad), ways to make parts of academia more like client work without making worthless projects, and whether students should graduate straight into freelance instead of looking for a job.

Namdev and Mitch are joined by designer and educator Benjamin Shaykin from Providence, RI. Together they discuss what the goals of teaching are, the difference between prompts and assignments, cults of personality, and whether you should ban DIN in the classroom.

In the second of a two-part episode, Mitch and Namdev continue their in-depth conversation about the design process, this time examining two of Mitch's projects. First, a poster design for a lecture by British graphic designer Craig Ward, and a series of compositions for collateral he created for the Illumination Engineering Society of San Francisco.

In the first of a two-part episode, Mitch and Namdev delve into process with capital P; not process as a generalization, but the specific Processes for making real projects. Namdev talks through two projects: "Past Objects" is a book he designed in 2010, and "R.U.R" is a poster he made last year after completely rewriting both his ideation methods and how he works with clients. The end result is a wide-ranging conversation about how something gets designed.

What is critical practice? Mitch enlightens Namdev with a workable definition, and gets questioned about his process and how graduate school has affected his work and design philosophy. Namdev accidentally disses Tomato, and then drags Mitch into the art versus design debate (though it's not as bad as it sounds). Tertiary topics include meaningless business cards, architecture school, and why graphic design is fantastic.

Graphic designers learn their craft through group critiques. Or do they? In this first episode of Through Process, design educators Mitch Goldstein and Namdev Hardisty discuss the crit and why Namdev finally killed them after 5 years of teaching and what he’s replacing them with. Mitch talks about design school as a place of discovery and why he likes how Elliott Earls runs critiques. We also find out why Namdev got rid of deadlines - turns out you can blame Armin Hofmann.