Graphic Design Theory : Readings From the Field

84 | Graphic Design Theory

lorraIne wIld eMerged out of the experIMental, theoretIcal world of cranBrook

acadeMy of art’s desIgn prograM, run By MIchael Mccoy and katherIne Mcc oy.

As head of the California Institute of the Arts’ visual communication program from 1985 to 1991, Wild worked

furiously to revamp graphic design education. There she boldly confronted the insular objectivity of modernist

design education. Students, she maintains, must “see themselves within the historical continuum of visual and

verbal communication.” In this excerpt from a larger essay, Wild questions her own earlier assertions of concep-

tual, verbal skills as the key to training future designers. Instead, she suggests, in our post-postmodern world

we should take another look at form, moving beyond past considerations of technique into something more

complex yet also elemental, which she terms “craft.” “A new commitment to the practice of craft,” she asserts,

“will supplement design theory and help reposition design at the center of what designers contribute to the

culture.” Across her career, Wild has been one of design’s clearest voices of critical and historical inquiry; at the

same time, her visual work has embodied a passion for typographic detail and formal invention and analysis.

the MacraMé of resIstance

lorraIne wIld | 1998

craft

Instead of technique, I think it might be useful to talk about craft. A contem-

porary mistake assumes that craft has something to do with papier-mâché, or

that it is merely the manipulation of production. It is true that the more one

understands the computer or printing, the better one can devise solutions to

problems. But to define craft trivially, only in terms of technique, does not

address the way that knowledge is developed through skill.

My own interest in craft stems from my experience as a design student at

Cranbrook, where “the crafts,” like weaving and ceramics and metal smithing,

were taught seriously. I was always confused by what seemed like a strict but

unexplained wall between design and craft; “craft” seemed to be limited to the

making of one-of-a-kind things, whereas design was aimed at mass produc-

tion. We all made things for use, but a deeper issue seemed to exist at the heart

of how things were made.

In my search to understand this, I encountered The Art of the Maker, a

book by the late British design theorist Peter Dormer.^1 He discusses craft in

terms of two different types of knowledge. The first is theoretical knowledge,

the concepts behind things, the language we use to describe and understand

ideas; the second is tacit knowledge, knowledge gained through experience,

or “know-how.”

1 Peter Dormer, The Art of the
Maker: Skill and Its Meaning in
Art, Craft, and Design (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1994),
11–13.