The RCA Looks Back to 1963 Graphics RCA to Explore Future of Practice
The Royal College of Art’s School of Visual Communication will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the seminal 1963 exhibition, Graphics RCA this year with Mapping Futures, a series of academic events leading up to a major alumni exhibition in 2014. The aim is to examine the future of graphic design, with the outcomes helping to shape a more robust higher education strategy.
Headed up by the Associate Dean of the School of Communication, Professor Teal Triggs and Deputy Head of Visual Communication programme, Jeff Willis, the School is organising a panel discussion and a week-long series of workshops in November, bringing together current students with alumni to address the changing nature of graphic design; to explore new perspectives; and to propose new principles.
Speakers will include Jonathan Haskell, professor of Economics at Imperial College; author and hacker Leila Johnston, Chris Sanderson, co-founder of The Future Laboratory and BBC technology critic Bill Thompson. The London-based consultancy Julia, a trio of Visual Communication alumni, will facilitate workshops with students, re-imagining the future of graphic design.
The outcomes from these workshops and the panel discussion will inform a day-long symposium on 20 November. Mapping Futures: Graphic Design Education and the Professionwill be attended by leading educators, practitioners and academics. Guest speakers will include renowned Korean designer Ahn Sang Soo; Professor David Crow, Pro-Vice Chancellor from Manchester Metropolitan University; the highly reputed London consultancy, A Practice for Everyday Life; and the RCA’s Neville Brody; Teal Triggs; and Adrian Shaughnessy.
According to Jeff Willis, Deputy Head of programme for Visual Communication, it’s a timely opportunity to re-examine the discipline – ‘what students, educators and practitioners are doing and where they are going’. The events will also seek to engage the undergraduate sector and bring it into discussions.
Willis said: ‘It’s really now that the changing nature of graphic design is being brought into focus: we’re seeing generations of digital natives, who have grown up with computers and internet devices all their lives. What will their working lives be like?’
He added that graphic design has shifted from being about commercial print design and branding to being about user-centred design, understanding behaviour and ‘effectiveness of communication’.
‘We’re interested in stretching it beyond its current understanding, aligning it to more mature disciplines. We’ll be looking at the essential principles – research, practice, understanding – placing greater emphasis on new contexts of social science, computer programming or philosophy.’
As part of the events throughout this academic year, the School will build a digital archive of alumni work – a visual exploration of how student, alumni, education and industry expectations and outputs have changed since the industry’s early days, and the founding of the School at the RCA by Richard Guyatt in 1948.
‘Graphic Thought Facility, Fuel, Why Not Associates, The Partners, Fletcher Forbes Gill – they all graduated with that RCA “notion”, which changed the shape of graphic design in the UK and globally,’ Willis said.
One of the reasons the RCA has been so influential in graphic design over the years, according to Willis, is because of the emphasis on rigorous critical analysis, in-depth examination of context and meaning, deconstruction and re-assemblage. Such a process means that graduates are ‘allowed to take into the world what they want, not just what is expected of them to get a job’. Such a process has produced groups with clear purpose, such as Thomas Matthews.
This year’s events will draw on the rich history of graphic design at the RCA, and the seminal 1963 Graphics RCA – a culmination of a 15 year period, where Modernism and intellectualism gave way to a Pop zeitgeist and the rise of Post-Modernism. Read more about the founding of graphic design at the Royal College of Art here.