thedoglived

"Dear Oliver
"Also a hard realization is the University situation. The connection between the industry and university is in this case parasitic. What makes out the parasite is the invisibility of visual communication. A paradoxical state of image surface spectacle. With invisibility i mean that non marketing based communication is invisible. Although universities are working on visual communication many times with best intents, the educational and research results are in almost all cases in favor of reproduction of the dominant marketing ideology. Either marketing methods are being explicitly promoted and taught or implicitly through the many artistic and or »socially responsible« projects that are created in the classrooms. The later fall in to the trap of social marketing and usually without knowing they do more harm than good."

As a course leader in communication design with 400 undergraduate students in my care I couldn't agree more with you.

I have just re-written my entire course and taken out all of the "Marketing training" in an attempt to create designers that think for themselves and invent new communication devices.

I do think that you are too harsh on educators as a whole and taken a bit of a swipe at us, we are trying to change things from the inside which is a really hard task. It would be great to have a discussion with you at some point about this.

The event looked really interesting it would be great to host one at our Art school.

Regards
Thedoglived "