In this process-driven collaborative research project, Livia and Jenny sought to demonstrate the value of time-honored, labor-intensive craft-based production techniques to a contemporary graphic design education.
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Project Name: Fusion
Project Year: 2007
Many tertiary institutions, in their eagerness to “modernise” their design programmes—ostensibly to compete in the marketplace for students—rid themselves of production facilities deemed antiquated or extraneous to the requirements of a forward-looking curriculum. The future, they believed, lay squarely within the realm of digital technology.
Jenny Man and Livia Lima, however, see a slightly different future, one informed by a student’s perspective. Fusion is affirmation of the continued relevance and importance of these so-called obsolete technologies. It is a celebration of time- and labor-intensive production techniques that can enrich students’ educational experience by extending their creative possibilities, enhancing the potential for more telling, visually richer communication.
Their position is not a rejection of the computer as a useful design tool, far from it. After all, it performs all manner of tasks with a ruthless efficiency. No, they simply contend the computer should not have sole domain over the creative process; that there is a need to embrace all available production techniques, both old and new, as part of the process of shaping communication.
Their work illustrates in exquisite detail how technological “relics” are not only relevant, but vital to providing a robust design education. Places of learning have a critical role to play in ensuring guardianship of these most valuable processes for the benefit of all.
Mark Stammers