Welcome to Dracula Vs. Eisenstein.
If you like what you see, please subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks!

I want to share a multi-part series on design practice that I recently read in Voice: AIGA Journal of Design. Author David Barringer’s humorous and insightful writing begins to cover “the fallacies and truths of design practice in the 21st century” in Myths of the Self-Taught Designer: The First Conversation between Ego and the Devil.

The three-part series conjures a conversation between the professional designer (Ego) and the amateur designer (the Devil). Both characters represent and argue the extremes of their positions as educated or self-taught. It raises some good questions as to what skills are necessary for design and at what level of design.

While this conversation does address the feelings that many educated designers have about amateur design, it does not address the larger-picture concern that graphic design as an institution is adjusting far too slowly to the business demands of our internet culture. Our formal training has been stuck in the rut of previous decades. This has allowed amateur design to creep its way into the professional realm of graphic design.

Barringer’s imaginative writing is certainly worth a read and will at least make you consider both sides of the “educated vs. self-taught” argument.

Myths of the Self-Taught Designer:
The First Conversation between Ego and the Devil
The Second Conversation between Ego and the Devil
The Third Conversation between Ego and the Devil