Nancy Stock-Allen's created her website on design history in order to help her students throughout their learning process and to make course content accessible to them through a non conventional medium.
Q: What gave you the idea of creating this website? Why do you think it's important to look at the history of graphic design in this way?
The designhistory.org website is the product of my organizational training as a graphic designer, my observations as a teacher and my studies in graphic design history. While teaching the course, History of Graphic Design, it became apparent to me that the students became overwhelmed trying to absorb the course content through the text we were using - an intensive historical tome written in a chronological sequence. However they were focused and engaged when discussions connected the course material to their studio activities. It appeared that prioritising the link between graphic design history and graphic design studio was a potential approach to explore.
Q: The site has been running for 10 years now. Tell us about your research methodology for populating the site.
First I itemised a list of topics needed to support the historical roots for each studio course in the graphic design curriculum: typography, identity, symbol design, composition and layout etc. The next step was to combine that content with what I considered to be "must knows" in design history. Interestingly a series of topics emerged that could be arranged almost chronologically.
This new arrangement allowed me to assign a richer variety of reading assignments. No longer tied to a specific text, I could include readings from various sources. Eventually Design, Writing, Research (Miller and Lupton) was adopted as the text for the class. It includes a collection of essays that compliments the historical breadth of the course lectures as well as related contemporary issues.
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