Are basic design skills important for students?

Submission statement: Meyer and Norman (2020) note that; “Designers are entrusted with increasingly complex and impactful challenges. However, the current system of… education does not always prepare students for these challenges.” In a world in which critical thinking, entrepreneurialism and visual communication are increasingly valued, basic design skills have become a necessity for our students.

The unfortunate reality is that these skills are rarely taught explicitly in our schools. Students do learn how illustrators, artists and advertisers construct and convey meaning through visual literacy (often through detailed studies of picture books, artworks and advertisements) but I often find that this ability to critique the work of others is rarely carried forward when students communicate their thinking through their own creations.

Ask a student to create a presentation, an advertisement, a website or a video and the result will often be a hodgepodge of brash colours, garish fonts and inconsistent design choices. This is partly because students are not professional (graphic, UX, web) designers but also because they have not explicitly been taught the skills to avoid these design follies.

Your students might not all grow up to be professional designers but I guarantee that one day they will need to produce a slide deck to impress a client or a boss, or create a walkthrough video to develop the skills of new employees or make a website to promote that new side hustle. First impressions do make a difference and I believe that students should be equipped with a sound understanding of design skills in order to solve problems and communicate their thinking.

We explore five important design skills in our latest video ‘Create a mountain landscape using Google Drawings’ including using gradients, creating custom shapes, duplicating, grouping and layering. We’ve used Google Drawings in this video because it is free (with a Google account) and a relatively simple program for younger students to grasp. That being said, the design skills explored in this video would easily apply to other design software such as Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW and Gravit Designer.

Meyer, M. W. & Norman, D. (2020). Changing Design Education for the 21st Century.

How do explore design skills in your classroom? How important do you think they are?

Submitted March 18, 2021 at 04:06AM by teachwonderful https://ift.tt/3vFHwbY