The rollout of the new Leaving Certificate curriculum has been ongoing since September 2021, and as part of this, the new Leaving Certificate Art syllabus launched last September 2021. One question that arises is why Design as a stand-alone discipline continues to be housed within the ‘Art’ curriculum? And will these new arrangements be sufficient to transform Ireland into a nation of innovators?

As someone who has worked as a designer in the industry for over a decade, I often reflect on my own journey to becoming a professional designer. Finding the right educational opportunities that suited my needs was challenging, with several false starts along the way. Transitioning from secondary school to third-level education was also difficult. I eventually found the right programme of study, but only after going down the wrong path, due to my own lack of understanding of design and creative thinking as applied disciplines. When I now compare my educational experiences at both secondary and third level to the students I encounter in my part-time role as a third-level teacher, I find that many lack a basic understanding of design and its importance as an essential discipline in the 21st century.

To explore this issue further, I spoke with Gerard Fox, a communication designer who teaches communication and information design at IADT in Dublin. Gerard is a design lecturer, curriculum author, and former Co-programme Chair (2013-2021) of Visual Communication/Graphic Design at IADT. He’s interested in helping students understand how design can be used to investigate and solve problems, using communication design but also incorporating aspects of user-experience design, digital product, and service design. Gerard is also a Principal Investigator on a three-year Erasmus+ European project, Digital Mythologies, and has served as an external examiner for several national design programmes. He has also given guest lectures on design programmes in Europe and the UK, and is a mentor for The Big Idea, a national Transition Year programme that develops learners' skills in creative problem-solving processes. Additionally, I spoke with Fred Boss, Education Officer at NCCA, and IDI.

How would you define design to someone who doesn't have a clear understanding of the discipline?

Firstly let’s say what design is not. Design is not about prioritising a world of aesthetic primacy. Design uses critical and creative problem-solving to identify improvement opportunities in our human-made world and create effective solutions. These solutions can take tangible forms, like artefacts and products, or intangible ones, such as services, policies, and regulations. They can be incremental or disruptive and can address any problem scale, from user-friendly digital products to warmer homes to patient-centred healthcare services.

Can you tell us about your transition from second to third level and the role the Art curriculum played in it?

To be honest, while I found STEM subjects more intriguing during my time in school, I appreciated the mental space that art provided as a break from the more routine aspects of the Leaving Certificate. At Coolmine Community School, my art teacher, Donal MacPolan, was an involved and encouraging presence. He oversaw a wide variety of activities, such as workshops on hand-lettering, glazed ceramics, copper etching presses, lino printing, life drawing, and a small photography darkroom. He treated us as independent young adults and granted us access to the art rooms beyond class time, giving us keys and equipment responsibilities. Exposure to this culture invariably helped my transition to third level.

Did your experience studying Art leave you with a greater understanding of Design as a discipline?

While the Art curriculum provided me with a foundation in the fundamentals of visual media and encouraged me to think independently to some extent, it did not prioritise ‘creative problem-solving’ as a core process, nor did it highlight contemporary design practices. Later, as a design educator, I became aware that the Junior and Leaving Cert curriculum's ‘craft’ element was considered the ‘design’ component. However, I do not recall this being foregrounded to me as a student. Though ‘design’ was technically covered as a minor aspect within the Art subject, the emphasis was on traditional artefact crafting rather than design as a crucial and pragmatic problem-solving process.

During your school years, do you remember noticing any ‘design’ in your day-to-day life?

As a visually curious person in my childhood (1980s), I noted various elements around me without realising they were the products of designers. Record covers and the ephemera of youth culture caught my attention, as did the functionality and usability of the first wave of home electronics. The buttons, menus, GUIs, control knobs, colour schemes, and their effects on usability fascinated me. Although this was interaction and user interface design, I didn't realise it at the time. I assumed I was the only person noticing these things so kept things to myself. During my first visit to London, the Tube transport system also made a big impression on me. I found it incredible how one simple map diagram and colour system could organise such a complex network of objects, products, services, and systems. It exemplified communication, service, and wayfinding design, which I did not recognise as design at that point. On all the above, I assumed this stuff just happened naturally because the grown-ups were simply doing things ‘properly’. How little I knew…

As the Art Curriculum did not teach design's core principles of invention, utility, and functionality, my understanding of ‘DESIGN’ during the 1980s was mainly influenced by mainstream international media. This era saw the rise of the ‘designer product' as a mainstream ‘trend’. Unfortunately, like many others, I naively believed that ‘design’ and ‘designer’ implied nothing more than brash, hyper-styled and elitist aesthetics. In my memory, the mainstream representation of design in the 1980s prioritised beauty, aesthetics, and exclusivity which was not of particular interest to me. In my view this misrepresented the discipline and undermined the public's comprehension of its real value as an inventive problem-solving tool.

As a design educator at Third Level, how could design be used in second level to prepare students for transitioning out of education, how could it be used to equip them in the future?

While most of us were educated using the classical 3Rs model (reading, writing, and arithmetic), today's rapidly changing world demands that schools and universities focus on teaching new core literacies; the key transferable and durable skillsets of creative problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration, interpersonal communication, mental agility, resilience, persistence, and self-reliance. Numerous national and international reports have highlighted deficits in these skills within educational and workplace institutions. The World Economic Forum asserts that these skills have surpassed hard technical skills as the primary workplace priority in the 21st century. There exists a significant opportunity for us to tackle these deficits at every level of education and for all students.

How can we address the deficit in creative problem-solving skill sets?

Addressing this issue requires acknowledging recent developments in Senior Cycle Art curriculums by the NCCA, which have incorporated contemporary practices found in national and international art and design foundation programmes. However, it is worth noting that design will continue to be integrated into the subject of Art at both Junior and Senior levels, which could continue to undervalue its universal significance as an essential skill set for the real-world. What if creative problem-solving (often called ‘Design Thinking’) became a compulsory subject strand in primary and secondary school curricula? Could this accelerate the attainment of new core literacies for all citizens?

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‘To prioritise design as a discipline, we must recognise that our world is in crisis and requires radical solutions at scale’

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How do we advocate for the foregrounding of a discipline that no one understands?

To prioritise design as a discipline, we must recognise that our world is in crisis and requires radical solutions at scale. This necessitates universal critical and creative problem-solving skills that could be taught to all citizens. To achieve this, it would be my view that design education should be incorporated at all levels of education to create a universal literacy in critical and creative problem-solving skills. Increased awareness of the benefits of these thinking modes could dramatically accelerate their adoption across all sectors of society and hasten the collective development and implementation of large-scale radical solutions.

Recent noteworthy developments in line with this thinking include initiatives such as ‘Designing Our Public Services,’ a prototype set of design principles for public services in Ireland, and ‘The Big Idea,’ a pilot programme that introduces Transition Year students to creative problem-solving and design thinking. Most significantly, the Irish Citizens Assembly utilised participatory processes to enable evidence-based co-creation and broad citizen engagement, allowing an Assembly of citizens to work through a complex and divisive issue and reach a conclusion without compromise.

What do students often come into the course wanting to ‘be,’ and how does that change over the four years?

Based on my experience with entrants who studied the now outgoing 1963-2021 Leaving Certificate Art curriculum, most students have a limited understanding of design as a discipline and are not practised in implementing a coherent working methodology in the initial stages of their studies. Due to their prior learning on the Leaving Certificate Art curriculum, they often believe that generating one solution from their imagination, with no research, and executed to a high level of fidelity, is the approach to take. However, to work like a designer and meet the programme's requirements, learners must demonstrate control and coherence in their working methodology when investigating a problem which can be quite challenging at the initial stages of study. Key skills such as research methods, objective analysis, ideation, iteration and testing of alternatives, independent critical thinking, effective planning, time management, and driving their own independent learning are all new to them. Thankfully, the new Leaving Cert Art curriculum places much more emphasis on working processes and this is a significant development. But I would still like to see Design as a separate subject on school curricula. That said, I look forward to working with students who have undergone the updated Art curriculum. It will be interesting to see how it affects the speed of their knowledge and skills attainment once on the programme.

Your current research centres around teaching methodologies. You’ve taught and studied abroad. How do you find the pedagogical approach in design courses differs in Ireland from other countries?

Reflecting upon my own experience as a learner, teacher and visiting educator in various programmes in Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Finland, Lithuania and Poland, my general observation would be that programmes in Ireland tend to focus on the Anglo-American view of design as a pragmatic discipline which must serve industry. In contrast, my post-graduate studies in the Netherlands focused on the individual’s creative development and allowed for a broader interpretation of what design ‘could be,’ allowing learners to explore graphic authorship, social advocacy, environmental intervention and film-making as they applied to the broader remit of ‘visual communication.’

More recently, I have been involved as a Visiting Lecturer and Principal Investigator on international Erasmus initiatives with various Third Level Universities in Finland (Aalto University), Poland (ASP Katowice), Belgium (Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp), and Lithuania (Vilnius Academy of Arts). In these institutions, there are a variety of different approaches and philosophies. Ultimately, the teaching team leading each programme determines the approach. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages, and it often comes down to the relevance and suitability of each programme to individual students' learning requirements and the level of support they need.

Regarding Leaving Cert Art, in your opinion, what should the goals be regarding the curriculum? I was always labelled an ‘artistic’ student, but there is a gulf between the curriculum I was taught in school and my understanding of the creative industry now. For me, the Leaving Cert taught craft practices, whereas a curriculum centred around creative thinking would have been far more advantageous.

Agreed. As suggested previously, separating Design and Art into distinct subjects at both Junior and Leaving Cert levels would expose a broader range of students to design as an applied creative problem-solving discipline. This could raise the baseline of 'universal design literacy,' leading to a deeper understanding of the discipline's practical value in the 21st century. Ultimately, this increased understanding could fast-track the integration of design, and its benefits into all aspects of our human-made world of products, services, systems, networks, policies, regulations, laws etc.

Can you tell us a bit about your own teaching approach? In your years of experience, what tactics have been successful?

A: I am driven by the challenge of making design more accessible and understandable to all learners. To me, curriculum development and teaching practice are forms of "designing for design." While it's not always easy, the key challenge is to simplify abstract principles for students. My approach to curriculum design focuses on incrementalism, prioritising the foregrounding of core design principles and applying them to interdisciplinary communication design contexts. I find that iteration and trial and error are the most valuable tools for improving a module's effectiveness. Regular reflection and discussion with trusted colleagues, industry experts, and students also guide project design and delivery. Building a library of ever-evolving resources, such as workshops, projects, lectures, references, and reading lists, is crucial. Ultimately, my goal is to develop a toolkit of projects and workshops that clearly demonstrate a student's grasp of core principles and produce diverse and meaningful outcomes. For me, this is the ultimate design challenge.