Vignelli Center Lecture: Timothy Samara

Lecture title: "The Wheel is Still Round: Renewing Focus on the Study of Form in Graphic Design Education"

If graphic design is about creating and organizing visual form to communicate, it follows that the goal of graphic design education should be to facilitate an understanding of form. Much current teaching, on the other hand, minimizes the study of form in favor of such tangential issues as media multiplicity, technological determinism, co-creation, design authorship, and vocational viability. How did design educators become so distracted from what really matters? This provocative talk hypothesizes the disturbing reversal of priorities as a confused response to intense cultural and economic pressures before offering a prescription: A form-driven curriculum is the means to best grow authentic expertise in students while simultaneously–and organically–resolving the concerns that are detrimentally occupying educators’ minds. 

Timothy Samara is a New York-based graphic designer whose career has focused primarily on visual brand identity and information design. Since 2000, he has split his time between professional practice and academia, defining a highly-respected reputation as an instructor at Parsons/The New School for Design, the University of the Arts, Purchase College, Rutgers University, the School of Visual Arts, New York University, and FIT. Mr. Samara is a frequent conference speaker, university lecturer and contributor to design publications both in the US and abroad. His 10 published books on design have been translated into ten languages and are used by students, educators, and professionals around the world. He is currently developing an expansive new visual history of graphic design.