Why I Teach What I Teach
by Steven Heller
To answer the question, why I teach, I must return to why I design, why I art direct, why I write, and why I helped found this program. It’s a simple evolution.
I stumbled into graphic design while pursuing a job as a cartoonist and illustrator for an underground newspaper. I loved to draw, although not very well. My favorite pastime was drawing autobiographical cartoons in the manner of Jules Feiffer. At 16 years old, I aspired to get them published, but every magazine I pestered turned me down. At the age of seventeen, I was given a job doing mechanicals at one of them when, by chance, the editor liked and published my cartoons.
Eventually, I realized my drawing skill was severely limited so I devoted myself to learning typography and page layout. This helped to push me up the ladder to art direction. After a few years, I was brought on as art director of The New York Times Op-Ed page. There, I hired great illustrators (both old vets and newcomers) to do work and conceive ideas that I felt incapable of doing myself, but felt rather comfortable critiquing their work. Understanding my limitations as an artist, I became obsessively interested in the history of caricature and illustration. I curated exhibits, wrote a few articles, and conducted oral history interviews. I liked the writing process, even though I had no real idea what I was doing. I also enjoyed the research — finding artifacts from the past that prefigured the present. I began to write about this history using graphic art as a lens through which I explored politics and society. I somehow parlayed — and to this day I am amazed that I did — these interests and skills into a job writing about graphic design, illustration, satirical art, and popular culture. There were not many people doing what I was doing when I started doing it. Now it is an academic discipline.
I was asked to teach at SVA in the newly formed MFA Illustration as Visual Journalism department. I taught illustration history. I also began writing about it for Print, Graphis, and even The New York Times (where I was an art director of the Book Review section for 30 years). Twenty years ago, I was asked to conceive an MFA Design program — the first in SVA’s history. It was called the MFA Design: Designer As Author. By “author” my cofounder, Lita Talarico, and I really meant “entrepreneur.” But at the same time, design writing and research was experiencing movement and growth. I edited the AIGA Journal for eleven years and started writing books too. I believed there was a need for designers to write their own history and criticism, that writing was an essential skill. Legendary designer Massimo Vignelli said that “Design will never be considered a real profession without a body of criticism.” I took that literally and instituted a critical column for Print magazine, wrote critically for other publications, and convinced SVA President, David Rhodes, that it would be a useful master’s program.
In 2010, together with design writer and critic Alice Twemlow, we founded MFA Design Criticism (coined “D-Crit”) and now MA Design Research, Writing, and Criticism. I requested a spot teaching a research and writing course devoted to telling stories about designed objects. The catch, however, was it would be the “No Google” course. Students were prohibited from doing their research using Google’s search engine. The students may have found it sadistic, but without the help of Google they learned to dig into the weeds, go to the library, follow leads, and develop research methodologies. Guest writers, editors, collectors, curators, librarians, and others were invited to explain their own research procedures and by the end of the course, papers were written about a wide range of physical and virtual objects. It proved a very satisfying learning process for all of us. Personally, I have never lost my excitement when it comes time to read and hear what the students discover and how they turn their findings into engaging storytelling.
Why do I teach? I love to learn. In watching students address the challenges I present, I am also learning from each one of them — it’s a two-way street.
Faculty Bio
Steven Heller is the co-chair of the SVA MFA Design / Designer as Author + Entrepreneur program and the SVA Masters Workshop in Rome. He writes the Visuals column for The New York Times Book Review, a weekly column for The Atlantic online and The Daily Heller / Imprint online. He has written more than 160 books on graphic design, illustration and political art, including The Design Entrepreneur (with Lita Talarico), Paul Rand, Merz to Emigre and Beyond: Avant Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth Century, Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design, Citizen Designer, Stylepedia: A Guide to Graphic Design Mannerisms, Quirks, and Conceits (with Louise Fili), The Anatomy of Design: Uncovering the Influences and Inspirations in Modern Graphic Design, Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State and 100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design. He is a contributing editor for Print, Baseline, Design Observer, and Eye. Heller is the recipient of the Art Directors Club Special Educators Award, the AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement, the School of Visual Arts’ Masters Series Award and the 2011 National Design Award for “Design Mind.”
About SVA MA Design Research, Writing and Criticism
The SVA MA in Design Research, Writing and Criticism is a one-year, intensive MA program well suited to the circumstances of established professionals, in addition to graduates wishing to continue their studies at an advanced level. In providing the research tools and journalistic techniques for researching, analyzing, and critically interpreting design, the program amply prepares its graduates for future-facing careers in research-driven design practices and institutions, in journalism and publishing, or for continued studies in a design-related subject.
We are now accepting applications on a rolling basis. Our next application review will be February 15, 2020. Successful candidates will be granted significant scholarships. Apply here.
Please contact us for more information at designresearch@sva.edu.
