Month: January 2025

The brand designer Michael Johnson describes in his book “Branding in Five and a Half Steps” the role of the half step as “bridging the gap between strategic branding and the design process” (Johnson, 2016). He calls this “leap of faith moment” as the most challenging yet rewarding part of the creative process. In that very moment the designer must let go intellectual strategies and logical insights and embrace intuition, emotion, and creativity to develop visual concepts. The leap from research to design requires a shift from logical reasoning to embodied knowing, where tacit knowledge plays a crucial role (Grey & Malins, 2004).

This stage in the creative process seems to fill students with the most amount of anxiety. There have been many times in my ten years in teaching where students turn up with metaphorically blank sheets of paper and “talk me” in my tutorial through their ideas up to two/three weeks before the hand-in date. The reason why they haven’t gone put their ideas to paper yet is often because they are too afraid of making the jump of their beautiful and perfect idea in their head to giving it a physical shape.

In order to distill a sense of of excitement instead of fear to make this “leap of faith” from an conceptual idea to an initial visual expression, I try make the studens realise that communicating ideas verbally (as suppose to being shown it on paper / on the screen) has limitations. Each solely verbally described idea – by the very nature of our minds – will evoke a completely different imagine in each person’s mind. I talk them through how it currently looks in my mind. With this exercise I often manage students from turn their fearful staring at the gap into joyful laughter and the following week they eventually jumped to the making and trying stage within design. 

I want them to learn to trust their intuition (tacit knowledge) as it naturally will guide them in finding the right expression and help them understand that the design process is a messy one and full of little uncertainties. Gray and Malins highlight that the jump from strategy to design is not a straight path—it involves iteration, uncertainty but ultimately result in a beautiful outcome and add embodied knowledge to the tacit one. The studio and tutorial settings are where ideas can truly take shape, bridging the gap between research and tangible design outcomes. Design research does not follow a linear path; it is iterative, where insights from making and testing continuously refine the process(Grey & Malins, 2004).

References
Johnson, M. (2016) Branding: In Five and a Half Steps. London: Thames & Hudson.
Gray, C. and Malins, J. (2004) Visualizing Research: A Guide to the Research Process in Art and Design. Farnham: Ashgate.

As a practictioner I engage in creative practices, my knowlege as a practioner is often tacit, experiential, and process-driven. As a teacher I facilitate learning, translating practice into structured pedagogy. I guide students through reflection, critique, and skill-building in ways that may differ from their own practice but often are the same.

Orr and Shreeve explore in “Signature Pedagogies in Art & Design” how practitioner and teacher identities interact, cross fertilise and influence each other (Orr & Shreeve, 2017). As a practitioner I am bringing industry relevance, live projects, and experiential knowledge into teaching. As a teachers I use critical pedagogy, structured reflection, and student-centered learning to deepen both my own and my students’ understanding of creative processes. 

The studio environment however blurs those boundaries, making learning immersive and fostering a community of practice where students learn by doing, just as professionals do. The studio highlights the hybrid nature of my roles, requiring both creative expertise and academic rigor. As practitioner-lecturer I often act as translators, making tacit creative knowledge accessible in a educational context (Biggs & Karlsson, 2011).

As much as I expect creativity from my students, I believe it is the role of us teachers to show outstanding practice as part of our teaching, to take risks and to surprise. Teaching in art and design is not a one-way transfer of knowledge; it is an exchange where practitioners also learn from students. Students bring new perspectives, approaches, and cultural influences, which can inform the practitioner’s own creative practice (Shreeve & Trowler, 2010). Students learn as much from observing the practitioner’s creative processes as they do from direct instruction. Practitioners model professional behaviors, ways of thinking, and problem-solving strategies which students absorb through observation and practice. The practitioner’s own work and research become a source of inspiration and learning. On the other hand the process of explaining artistic decisions and critiquing student work often leads practitioners to reconsider their own methods. It is constant interplay where teaching is informed by real-world practice, and practice is enriched by pedagogical reflection, for the students as well as teachers.The research informs the teaching, and student work conversely inspires new directions for research, as students and graduates become collaborators. 

References
Biggs, M. and Karlsson, H. (2011) The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts. London: Routledge.
Orr, S. & Shreeve, A. (2017) Signature Pedagogies in Art & Design. Abingdon: Routledge.
Shreeve, A., Sims, E., & Trowler, P. (2010) A Kind of Exchange: Learning from Art and Design Teaching. York: Higher Education Academy.

Students perceive the differences between undergraduate and master’s study to include a shift of responsibility from the teacher to the learner – lecturers provide direction, with students following up on this with their own studies and research (QAA Scotland, 2013).

Figure 1. The characteristics of Mastersness (QAA Scotland, 2013)

It can be a hard shift for students going from undergraduate to postgraduate studies which involves taking responsibility of their own learning in terms of self-organisation, motivation and acquisition of knowledge.

Fig. 2: Vectorstall, Noun Project 

Lars Lindström explores how vocational knowledge is acquired in creative education, emphasising different ways learners engage with the arts. His framework outlines four key dimensions of learning: Learning About, In, With and Through the Arts (Lindström, 2012).

Figure 3. The Four Forms of Aesthetic Learning (Lindström, 2012).

The graphic design undergraduate programmes I am involved in often employ project-based learning as a pedagogical approach to deliver vocational knowledge, fostering practical expertise and aligning education with professional practice. This reflects what Lindström describes as learning ‘in the arts’, where knowledge is developed through artistic processes and the making in a context that mirrors real-world practice (Lindström, 2012).

Postgraduate study in graphic design tends to emphasise aesthetic learning about and with the arts, encouraging critical reflection and engagement with artistic practices as part of the research process (Lindström, 2012). Billett places a strong emphasis on the learner’s agency, suggesting that identity and engagement are crucial to how vocational knowledge is acquired and applied (Billett, 2011).

I encounter the studio setting aids as a space where these different teaching dimensions and approaches blend by fostering both technical advice as well as giving gudiance for vocational knowlege (i.e. how to start primary and secondary research, synthesising ideas, exploring them visually, but also how to be professional and an proactive thinker), but mainly strengthen their confidence and ask them to reflect on where they situate themselves as critical practictioners based on their lived experiences and identity. 

References
Billett, S. (2011) Vocational Education: Purposes, Traditions and Prospects. Dordrecht: Springer.
Lindström, L. (2012) ‘Aesthetic Learning about, in, with and through the Arts: A Curriculum Study’, International Journal of Art & Design Education.
QAA Scotland (2013) What is Mastersness: A Discussion Paper from ‘Learning from International Practice: The Postgraduate Taught Student Experience’. UK: Scottish Higher Education Enhancement Committee.