Design School Confidential: Extraordinary Class Projects From the International Design Schools, Colleges, and Institutes

by Steven Heller, Lita Talarico

Every great design school in the world is defined, in part, by the work of its students at any given time. The various project challenges given to a class determine the success of a school’s pedagogy, but also the ingenuity of its faculty and students. This book features fifty real-world class assignments from top design programs at universities around the world, and examines the resulting student projects. From undergraduate to graduate work and basic class challenges to final thesis’s, students delivered a wide variety of graphic and multimedia design projects from print to motion to exhibition. The book has three functions: 1) To exhibit a wide range of challenging problems and successful solutions. 2) Provide practical models to be inspired by and learn from. 3) Examine how sophisticated design school projects are and what value they have in relation to real-world practice.

Genres: Design, Education, Art Design

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Steven Heller writes a monthly column on graphic design books for The New York Times Book Review and is co-chair of MFA Design at the School of Visual Arts. He has written more than 100 books on graphic design, illustration and political art, including Paul Rand, Merz to Emigre and Beyond: Avant Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth Century, Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design Second Edition, Handwritten: Expressive Lettering in the Digital Age, Graphic Design History, Citizen Designer, Seymour Chwast: The Left Handed Designer, The Push Pin Graphic: Twenty Five Years of Design and Illustration, Stylepedia: A Guide to Graphic Design Mannerisms, Quirks, and Conceits, The Anatomy of Design: Uncovering the Influences and Inspirations in Modern Graphic Design. He edits VOICE: The AIGA Online Journal of Graphic Design, and writes for Baseline, Design Observer, Eye, Grafik, I.D., Metropolis, Print, and Step. Steven is the recipient of the Art Directors Club Special Educators Award, the AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement, and the School of Visual Arts' Masters Series Award.

Reviews

[Andrew Klem · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was okay, but it was not one of the better Art books I've read. The discussions of student work lacked much depth, and I'm not sure that I learned anything from the book.

[Michael Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

TODO full review:
+++ Overall, inspiring: we should do this kind of books for more domains.
+++ Excellent idea: we keep seeing finished designs, or at best a selection of proven sketches that we know led to success, but wouldn't it be interesting to see the basic elements of teaching and the first exploratory steps of students? I know it is for me, a most amateur designer.
++ Good approach: the authors select 53 projects from around the world. Each project is an assignment given by a design school. This book summarizes the project and a small selection of its results, presumably across multiple cohorts of students.
--- Only 50-ish projects. The selection is too narrow and too shallow, and in merely 50-ish samples it does not do justice to the notion of covering the world's heritage of projects in design schools.
+ I kinda liked the results. Not the best projects in the world, but already nice and demonstrating what students can do.
? I would have liked to see: the book expanded to include enough samples (perhaps 1,000 pages?); explain the cultural influence of each location; each assignment described in more detail, say double the space, including place in the curriculum and evolution over the years; each project given more space for analysis and also for assessment by the teacher (with both positives and negatives); a notion of evolution of topics in each design school covered in this work.

[spike シ · Rating 5 out of 5]

♥ this, its a beautiful book and filled with the top design schools best design project briefs, and encourages you to do these projects yourself. guessing it assumes you're a designer already in that respect (obvious). My favorite one was using Helvetica font and dissecting it with the knife tool in AI to create icons with.

[Mari Hosho · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of class projects done in art and design schools all over the world.

In spite of the fact it was written over a decade ago, every class project was memorable and provocative in attempts to draw students’ creativity out. Every project was challenging, had no fixed answer yet connected design to the real-life issues the world faces today.

As a prospective student in design school myself, I felt more interested in these classes that try to expand my skills and thinking outside of my box. I also got a good picture of what is expected in the classroom situation by reading about these projects.