Design education in the post-digital age

Design Management Journal, Summer 2002 by Maeda, John

Thus, when looking at the trees around my backyard, I often see programs that I know. A small, scrappy tree I recognize as an early version of Photoshop-say, Version 1.0. There is not much capability, as exemplified by its few sets of branches. Furthermore, the small scale of the tree signifies the fact that I might be able to understand its entire program.

The tall oak tree beside my shed is clearly Photoshop all grown up. There are three extremely thick branches that I recognize as the key features I use: resize, crop, and blur. The rest of the branches are thin and not worth climbing, much like the twirl, glow, and frazzle features that I would never use. The grand scale of the tree is such that it exceeds my field of vision and exemplifies the futility of trying to completely understand something so complex-much like my feeling when I see the giant manuals for Photoshop 6, which I know I will never read. Couple this metaphor with the fact that the software trees are manmade, and you begin to see the screws that bind each branch together, ever so precariously. It's a wonder that the software tree doesn't fall apart. But, of course, it does-when the program crashes for some unforeseeable reason.

Once software can be recognized as magnificent yet fragile manmade systems of logic machinery, and we can see that using a software package entails traveling the discrete branches of the logic, a fundamental realization can occur. If originality is defined as "out of the box" or, in general, out of the range of what can be possibly imagined, and if using a digital tool places you directly on specific branches of the tree, then all at once you realize there is no way to get off the tree and be free to be truly original. A common example of this phenomenon is the ubiquitous Adobe PostScript language for defining graphics on a page. PostScript lies at the heart of the desktop publishing revolution and was the result of years of computer graphics research and interest by its inventors in modern graphic design. However, for years all the digital tools built around PostScript suffered from the inability to render transparency. Only by writing your own software could this inadequacy be averted-in other words, you had to grow your own tree.

A future in which designers are free to author their own software, or even modify existing software, seems out of reach due to the complex nature of programming today. However, if this unlikely possibility could be realized, it would be possible for designers to define the trends today rather than wait for industry to define the terms of an evolving expression. As new releases of software begin to look like re-runs and Frankenstein-like mixtures of old systems made into new systems, there is now more than ever a need for design to concentrate on the redesign of digital software expression systems.

The ecology of expression

The ecology of expression (figure 2) describes the cyclical regeneration of visual culture in three phases: 1) manipulation, 2) perfection, and 3) expansion.