Jarrett Fuller asks, How does someone become a designer? in the first episode of Season Two of With Intent. This episode features Tomoko Ichikawa, Associate Professor of Visual Communication, and Marty Thaler, Associate Professor of Product Design. Tomoko and Marty discuss ID's Foundation sequence—possibly the strongest tie that ID has today with its history as The New Bauhaus. (Foundation at ID makes it possible for nondesigners to enter our graduate school.)
Jarrett Fuller:
Hi. Welcome to With Intent, a podcast from the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech about how design permeates our world, whether we call it design or not. My name is Jarrett Fuller and I am your guest host for With Intent 's second season. This season I am turning the mics back on ID's faculty for a series of roundtable discussions and interviews that explore questions facing designers, design educators, and design students today. On this week's episode, we are talking about Foundation classes. Foundation courses in art and design schools are perhaps one of the most enduring legacies of the Bauhaus. These courses would focus on materials and processes that one's design education could then be built upon.
When László Moholy-Nagy started The New Bauhaus in Chicago, he reinstated these courses as core for all students. I took Foundation courses when I was a graphic design student 15 years ago, and many design students today still across countless design fields enroll in these types of classes. But what is their purpose? Why has this model endured? What should Foundation classes look like today to train future designers? To answer these questions, I am joined by Martin Thaler and Tomoko Ichikawa. Martin and Tomoko teach the Foundation courses at ID, yet they both come from very different backgrounds and bring different things to these programs.
Martin has taught product design and environmental design full-time at ID since 2008 after a career in industry where he worked with clients including Motorola, Gateway, and McDonald's. Tomoko has taught at ID since 1993, becoming clinical professor in 2017. Her classes focus on communication design and visualization. She previously was an information designer at Siegel and Gale in New York, Doblin in Chicago. At ID, Tomoko and Martin are thinking deeply about what today's design students should be learning and in the process are redefining what a Foundation's curriculum could look like regardless of the type of design one is interested in practicing. So I hope that you enjoy this conversation with Martin and Tomoko.
Martin and Tomoko, welcome to the first episode of season two of With Intent. It's really good to have you here.
Tomoko Ichikawa:
Thank you.
Martin Thaler:
Yeah, thanks for inviting us.
Jarrett Fuller:
This episode is all about how we become designers and what it means to study design today, and one of the legacies of the Bauhaus was this idea of the Foundation courses, this sort of set of courses that every student would take that sort of level set, give everyone a sense of both tools and ideologies and kind of ways of thinking to be a designer. And this is something that Moholy-Nagy brought over when he started what is now the Institute of Design. And in preparing for this and thinking about talking to you, I found a memo of what would be taken in the Foundation's courses when the school was started. In the first semester, he writes that the emphasis is on tools, technique, and analysis of form and space. The second semester is on technical perfection and further analysis of form. And then the third semester is on presentation and sociological functions. And so Marty, I kind of want to start with you. I'm wondering hearing that, how does that ring to how you think about Foundation courses today at ID?
Martin Thaler:
I think all those elements are still there. When you said it just now, it's like, "Wow, he had a lot of time."
Jarrett Fuller:
Yeah. Yeah. It's three semesters. It's crazy.
Martin Thaler:
Oh my goodness. The Foundation course now at ID is a single 14 weeks. So 14 sessions and the topics are of course changing due to the culture, but we still want to maintain that baseline. One of the interesting parts of what the challenge is at ID, to cover enough information at the right pace that students can learn without getting overwhelmed and design is just so vast that's a kind of difficult thing to do. I don't know. Tomoko must have another answer to continuation.
Tomoko Ichikawa:
In the 85th anniversary exhibit, Marty, I found a graphic that I actually took a photo of and it was a graphic visual of the... and I don't have the captions, I don't know what it is, but it's got semesters going. It's got these bullseyes and the components of them, especially in the first two semesters are, and it's sort of harkens back to what Jarrett had originally said, elements of design, materials and tools, techniques, social context. And I use a framework at the beginning of my first week actually to situate the students in terms of what they're learning. And we separate the 14 weeks into, the first five weeks is all about elements and concepts. What are the elements of two-dimensional design? Like topography, like graphic elements, like imagery, and then the techniques and concepts that we use like really important things like how do you know when you have contrast, what do you do to attain visual hierarchy?
And then the second five weeks of the class goes into applying actual information content matter so that it is about analyzing the information and figuring out how do you use those elements that we just taught you in the first third of the class. And then the last capstone project is to understand the social context. And so we do a live project using a real scenario in an equipment that is lacking in terms of good visual design. And so we try to get the students to work on that. And when I saw this graphic, which I didn't know about, I'm like, "Wow, it's kind of alarming that I'm still using that as a basis," and I don't know if that's good or bad, should we have some evolution, but there are some things that are perennial, I think, that Foundation students who come from a non-design background need to understand about two-dimensional design to get... Because I see my classes being a bridge between, and I think the Foundation program is a bridge from the non-design world into a design world so that they could be proficient enough to go into the main MDes program.
Jarrett Fuller:
I want to talk about that bridge in a second, but I want to go back to something else that you said earlier and hear you and Marty talk through this a little bit. It is interesting to hear that that outline is almost the exact same as that original plan. And I think that the perennial nature of these ideas is key here. And so you mentioned that your class is really focused on communication design or graphic design, typography, contrast, layout, those types of things. Marty, you come from a more industrial design background. What's happening in your Foundation class?
Martin Thaler:
My class is also very Foundational, I think, and I also see it as a bridge. What's wonderful about it is we get people from all areas. It's one of the few programs at the graduate level that welcomes students from every background. They can enter the school without a design background. So that makes for very interesting work. Many people come to the school, have never built anything, made things or become aware about the know-how needed to actually build prototypes and physical objects. That is the philosophy of the school is that people need that knowledge because it's a way of thinking as a designer, whether you end up designing objects or communications or strategies or service design. It's all, I think, I've always thought of it and I believe this is the philosophy of the school too, all those principles are interconnected. There is some underlying structure there.
We start with very basic modeling techniques with chipboard and used to be foam core. I'm a little concerned about the environmental impact of foam core. So I just said no more foam core. We do a similar, I think, thing as Tomoko's class, we try to progress slowly from the early stages of making simple objects to a more complete complex problem to solve towards the end of the semester. But it does take time. It's a field that needs iteration. You can't jump to something very difficult, you have to start with the simple things and then progress. That's a struggle. You know?
Tomoko Ichikawa:
What's interesting I think is that, and I don't know Jarrett if you know, that Foundation is actually five different classes. So Marty's product... I mean there's also photography, there's also interaction design and...
Jarrett Fuller:
And all students take all five of these classes? Is that how that works?
Tomoko Ichikawa:
All the Foundation students need to take all five classes. Yes.
Jarrett Fuller:
Okay.
Tomoko Ichikawa:
So the idea is that we're trying to make them a much more well-rounded design student coming, so that they can enter into the MDes program. The students that we get coming straight into the MDes program who have a background in design are often highly specialized. So they're either web designers or graphic designers, and they kind of lack that well-roundedness, which is required. Our Foundation students bring in a lot that is not of design, but that's extremely valuable.
Jarrett Fuller:
Hearing you say this is taking me back to my own Foundations classes, which I've not thought about in a really long time. As soon as you said foam core, Marty, it was like, "Oh, wow. I remember cutting foam core." And what strikes me in thinking about this, and it didn't even occur to me until hearing you describe this sequence, my own Foundations classes, it was learning how to mix paints so you could use white and black to get a range of grays, which is something I've never done in my life since then, by the way. Or basic contrast using black and white or life drawing classes, in general, figure drawing and pencil drawing classes. I have two questions about that, or two things I'm thinking about, in thinking about my own experience in hearing what you're talking about is one, those classes were not, as someone who studied graphic design, nothing in those classes were limited to things that graphic designers do.
I went to a school where there were industrial designers and fashion designers, and they all had their own Foundations classes. I have no idea what was happening there in those classes, but I was only doing those things with graphic designers. And I think that speaks to institutional boundaries and departments wanting to own things. And then I've been on the flip side as a faculty member in discussions at a range of institutions about the point of Foundations, what are students supposed to get out of this time? And a lot of it's like, "Do they still need to take life drawing or not?" Those types of conversations. And I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit to this interdisciplinarity of design and the fact that students are either coming in maybe with a highly specialized form of design or no design background at all, and they're all going to be mixed together and they're all going to do different things. How do you think about, these are the things we think students should know as they go through their time here? You know what I mean?
Tomoko Ichikawa:
Yeah, so I think maybe the concept of design is a little bit different compared to a more traditional design school where the two-dimensional graphic design is the end product.
Jarrett Fuller:
Right. And I'm speaking 15, 16, 17 years ago now that I was in Foundation. So who knows what it's like now.
Tomoko Ichikawa:
But I think that what we're asking our students to do is the communication design is not the end product. We're asking the students, because we are a graduate level school, the kinds of things that they think about are much more complex and big, things that have to do with sustainability or healthcare, civic design, more systems based type of thinking or innovation. And the idea is that we are training our students with these Foundational skills so that they can then participate in that larger level of thinking and communicating broad ideas through either diagramming or good communication design skills or good prototyping skills to demonstrate the kinds of ideas that are coming out of the advanced classes that they'll be taking in the main program. So it's not about perfecting the product design skills or it's not about perfecting the two-dimensional design skills, it's so that they can then apply them for much bigger things.
Martin Thaler:
I would second that. What I emphasize in my, I think it's now called Object and Artifacts class, is kind of understanding the design process itself, more of an approach and a way to communicate your ideas and create a way to think about them and present them so that people can work together on them. So the other thing they get out of it besides this ability, once they get into the main program to work together, is I think there's a real strong sense of community that's built. Foundation students have played a strong role in the culture of the institution, of the Institute of Design.
Jarrett Fuller:
Marty, you mentioned something earlier about service design and systems design, and I'm wondering how you think about how there are increasing fields of design that are almost intangible. It's hard to actually look at the thing that has been designed. How do you think about that? Or are you thinking about that in the Foundation classes when you're doing modeling or something and thinking about what a lot of these students might end up doing doesn't actually have a physical form. How do you see the connections there?
Martin Thaler:
Because I'm biased because I love objects so much? But I didn't feel like when you deal with the tangible thing and you're dealing with even human-centered design, that it's easier to explain values of this detail or the way that it fits into a system like we're doing, our last project is about the future of work, which is...
Jarrett Fuller:
Oh wow, wow.
Martin Thaler:
Which we've been doing. But it started out as years ago, just as more, let's do the next generation of an in-office product that holds your papers under your desk like in the old day. And of course, it's become a very topical, really interesting, it's always been interesting as an object, but now the students get to learn to think about how their object can help people, whether it's going to help them doing their work in a hybrid work environment or all these interesting things. And luckily enough, we've always had a relationship with Steelcase all these years, which has a fantastic research group, and now they can get the beginning of exposure of sophisticated research in their first semester. So it's like a testing ground, like get your feet wet. The other thing, which Tomoko and I want them to get used to is this culture of critique. And that's not easy.
Jarrett Fuller:
Oh yeah, you're telling me.
Tomoko Ichikawa:
So in the main program, the ideas come from being able to apply various design methodologies to develop really good concepts that are appropriate for the context it's being presented in. But the idea is that we have to communicate these ideas really well so that people can envision what it's going to be like. And so that's where the communication design comes into play. It's not graphic design, it's communication design. It's very purposeful and intent-driven. So the idea of iterative prototyping is alive and well, and how do we get people to iterate and every iteration you get better and better and getting the idea to move forward. And so the ability to communicate your ideas to whomever with, even if it's to your own teammates so that you can get alignment around them, that comes from really understanding what is it that you are trying to communicate. So intent-driven communication rather than form-driven communication.
And I think the part that Marty talked about in terms of critique, students are very fearful at first because of often they don't come from a critique culture. I poll my students every year and there's maybe one or two because they were either in creative writing or maybe in studio art, but everybody else has never been in a critique culture. And so even teaching them the right kind of language that it's not personal, we don't use I like or I don't like. So that the bigger goal then becomes elevating the work of a team. Because I think the multidisciplinary part, big design projects, it's not possible for one person to solve it alone. And there's always going to be other people that they're going to be working with. And in the main program we do emphasize teamwork and dynamics and how do you work productively and constructively within that context.
So we're trying to get them to not just with the craft, but also with the thinking, the approach, maybe even their own identity changing somewhere along the line in the semester to be able to say that "I am a designer now" as opposed to "I am an electrical engineer." And we try to foster those moments where they can maybe even recognize that transformation within themselves.
Jarrett Fuller:
Where, if at all, does software and technology fit in here? I imagine that there are students who have never used particular sets of software, whether that's like the Adobe Suite or even web development or something like that, or prototyping tools. How much of this is spent teaching specific tools, teaching specific software? The reason I ask that, I took three years of what at the time was Macromedia Flash, which now doesn't exist anymore. And so that's sort of a tension I always have with my students is how much am I teaching them software that just won't exist when they're 10 years into their field? How do you think about that?
Tomoko Ichikawa:
I think tools are tools and the idea is that we use tools as a means to accomplish things. So understanding the basic principles such as contrast or visual hierarchy, composition and layout, whether it's PageMaker or Cork or InDesign, there are those principles, or even affinity publishers coming up now, but the ability to apply those concepts, you could even do it by hand if you wanted to. So the tools come into play only because that's what's existing, that particular tool is existing in this moment. And also being able to critique tools that don't do what you want it to do. We have a lot of students who end up using Figma because it's cheap and you don't have to pay a subscription, but it's limited. You don't do multi-page layout design in Figma because it's, that's not what it was made for. So being able to understand what it is that they are first and foremost, trying to accomplish visually or three dimensionally, what kind of principles they want to apply, what kind of approaches, and then the tool just becomes a way to serve that aspiration.
Martin Thaler:
One big thing that was introduced a long time ago is to have a sketchbook. I thought that was the... we both started teaching, I thought that was just fantastic. Chris Conley introduced that in 2008 or something to get the students just to use their notebooks to keep track of their ideas or develop ideas or use paper. I think it's become more... I don't know if Tomoko agrees, but I think because of the digital nature of what they're doing, it's harder to get them to draw.
Tomoko Ichikawa:
Is it harder because they want to sit in front of the computer first. But if you get them to understand the process, I think they understand that actually you should work out a sketch first. I always tell them that the computer programs actually are prematurely asking them to make decisions about things before you even know. I require my students, along with their finished digital assignments to provide sketches of their idea development. My co-instructor, Jody Campbell, who I teach the class with, and I are firm believers that is an important step for them to do first, as I mentioned, the software actually forces you to make decisions very prematurely about what kind of font should you use, what kind of type size should you... And you don't even know because you don't know what the layout's going to look like. So we have been emphasizing that a lot.
And I believe there have been studies done where the hand, eye, and brain coordination is actually very powerful and it helps you to think about things that you may not when you're sitting in front of a computer. So yeah, sketching, we give all of our students a sketchbook at the beginning of the semester. And last year and this year, I think Marty, we tried an experiment instead of giving two separate sketchbooks for the different classes, we had them integrate both 2D and 3D classes together in one sketchbook to see if they notice anything in terms of their conceptual and craft and hand skill development. We haven't surveyed with them to see what resulted from that experiment, but that was something that we thought maybe we could try.
Jarrett Fuller:
That's really interesting.
Tomoko Ichikawa:
Marty, are you seeing anything in your class in terms of your students and their sketch abilities?
Martin Thaler:
So there's different kinds of visualization, I think it can be anything from just a good clean sketch to we teach them Illustrator, we teach them Photoshop, we teach them 3D CAD just a little bit. They just need exposure to what's possible in terms of visualization or anything in design. It's just a whole new world essentially. And many students have no sense of what is possible and there's so many ways to do things.
And then I was going to mention one more thing about the software side. With so many things going on, the use of say, software like Mural to do research or to collaborate, we kind of made, at least in my class, a real effort to like, "Okay, yeah, you could work on Mural, but wouldn't it be better just to put up a bunch of images on a physical board next to you and have them always there and you walk by?" I mean, I noticed that all the time walking through the studio, some sketch that one of my TAs does, and I know what project they're working on and with which student, then that's just fantastic. It's this awareness and using all of your senses and being aware of all the things around you to draw on, to develop your ideas.
Tomoko Ichikawa:
Yeah, physicality is absolutely critical. And I think it's because it's on all the time. It's there in front of you all the time. Whereas if you're working on your computer, you turn it off and you close your laptop and it's gone. And so even in getting students to reflect on their own work, we talk about the refrigerator test, you do a little assignment, put it up on the refrigerator, walk away, go do something else, come back. And as you're passing by it, glance at it. And so you could have a fresh view of what you just created. And you can't do that if it's stuck in your computer. So the physical quality, the analog quality of the work that we do.
Of course, it would depend on the class. Like Zach teaches an interaction design class, which is very much digital. So that would be different, more appropriate opportunities for reflection would differ. But I think for Marty and my class, we see that a lot and we try to emphasize that a lot because the students are very much on their phones. And if they're here to become UIX designers, that's what they're interested in is creating apps. And that's not always the way to go, especially when you're starting up to become proficient in these concepts and skills.
Jarrett Fuller:
I think this sort of multimodal approach, both to the things that you are designing, and I use the word things there very loosely. Maybe it's things, but maybe it's also messages or systems or even institutions, and that the way you go about doing that, there's not one set way to do that. All of these things you're talking about are ways of working that students can adopt or not adopt as they move through their careers.
And I want to close with a flip side of what we've been talking about. I read a really beautiful commencement speech, I think it was last year's commencement speech from one of your former students, Justin Bartkus. And he had a line in there where he says, "ID doesn't erase our unique set of skills, experiences, and quirks, rather it embraces them, equips them, and amplifies them. We come as engineers, architects, business folks, theologians, and we leave as engineer-designers, architect-designers, business-designers, theologian-designers," and he calls this the dash-designer, that that's what you're getting there. And I'm wondering if you could just talk about the flip side of that, how you think about teaching the set of skills, teaching these ways of working, teaching these processes while also embracing and encouraging and incorporating this range of experiences that every student is bringing in. How do you think about that balance or that mix of personality types, backgrounds, that sort of thing, with these things you're teaching?
Tomoko Ichikawa:
Well, if I may, I think they're coming to the Institute of Design to become something bigger and they're coming to the Institute of Design not to become, like Marty said, not to become product designers or graphic designers. And so in a way, they're bringing in their collective background and during the time of Foundation, it's almost like we're asking them to squeeze into and hyper focus on a part, and then once they get into the main program, they expand back out again so that they could work in this much larger context of the world. And I love Justin's articulation of that, the dash-designer, the design plus. And I think it does go back to the idea that design isn't really for design. Design is for the world. So design, it always works with other disciplines.
A lot of times Foundation students come and see the other design students doing incredible work, and they often feel bad about that. They come from a point of deficiency, or at least that's what they see in themselves. "I am not a designer, I don't have the design skills." And we try to encourage them to say, "Well, you have all this other skill. It's not a deficiency. It's actually more of a strata like layers that you are taking what you bring and then layering design on top of that so you can go do design plus, the design dash," that Justin had mentioned. And I know Marty, you... so Marty, actually he lives at the Institute of Design. He's there from seven o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock at night and you go out with your students and you have drinks and things like that. So you have a much more, I think, an intimate relationship with the Foundation students that they really, really value. And I'm sure that kind of conversation comes out a lot.
Martin Thaler:
Yeah, I mean-
Tomoko Ichikawa:
What do you hear from them?
Martin Thaler:
They're fascinated by all these things. They can get overwhelmed by, I mean, listen to the list of things they're trying to study all at once. From my perspective, I also try to emphasize with them they do have, even if they didn't go to a traditional design program, that they do have a beginner's mind. That can be a real advantage if you use it properly. We've seen it over and over again. It's a lot. Which is why I hang out with them. I do think part of design is to go through this struggle and then celebrate, you've done the work and now you take a little bit of time to reflect on it. So yeah, going back. So what do we keep? You could say, I tell them also Charles and Ray Eames are the ones who started this complete devotion to the idea of being a designer. You don't start and stop, it's like you're completely engaged with it. And that's where I think they start to get that idea, hopefully. They're definitely... They don't have much time to do much else.
Jarrett Fuller:
And what is really nice about that is it's not just that you're a dash-designer or design plus, but it's that you're able to filter your previous work and experiences through the lens of design now. And that those also are maybe a form of design if you didn't even sort of realize that or not. And in some way, that's sort of what you've been talking about throughout, is that all of this stuff comes together. All of these things are ways of working that you can now go on and do different, bigger, more complex things, which I think is a really nice message and a really nice way to wrap up this conversation. So Tomoko and Marty, thank you so much for this. This was really fascinating to listen to you talk about your classes.
Martin Thaler:
Thank you.
Tomoko Ichikawa:
Thank you so much for the opportunity.
Martin Thaler:
Yeah, thanks Jarrett.
Jarrett Fuller:
With Intent is a production of the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech. This season is produced in collaboration with the school's 85th anniversary as part of the 2022–2023 Latham Fellowship. A special thanks to all of our guests this season and everyone at ID for their support. My name is Jarrett Fuller. Thanks for listening.