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The Education manifesto was presented to the Congress in Seoul in October, 2000. Translated into ten languages, the worldwide distribution of this document is critical to achieving coordination and support for human agency.

While the manifesto can be put into circulation, what is also desired is comment and reaction. Rather than putting a message into a bottle and setting it adrift on the electronic sea of communications - even in an array of languages and typographies - this needs an action response. The measure of the manifesto's success will be taken over time - in discussion and argument in the short-term and through educational program change in the long-term.

Sharon Helmer Poggenpohl and Ahn Sang-Soo stated: "While many notable manifestos are the work of a single individual as a representative of some group, whether self-anointed or elected, the origin of this manifesto is quite different - it was a collaboration among an international group of designers. The participants represented were from Brazil, China, Germany, India, South Korea, the Netherlands, South Africa, and the United States.

The collaborative nature of this undertaking was significant as the participants came with different experiences of the world - geographically, politically, economically, culturally, and socially. With particular personal experiences in design and education colored by their access to technology, media, the nature of their clients and/or students, the traditions and associations in which design was commonly related - all of these and more marked their differences.

The complexity of their representation -- as world citizen, representative of some country, member of some professional group, faculty of some university, teacher of particular courses, designer with particular expertise, human being with certain religious, humanistic, political, social affinities - created a rich and diverse discourse."

Between word and deed - the manifesto and its actionable results - from the manifesto (the noun) to making manifest (the verb), we all are party to the outcome.

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Design Education Manifesto

Graphic designer
The term 'graphic design' has been technologically undermined. A better term is visual communication design. Visual communication design has become more and more a profession that integrates idioms and approaches of several disciplines in a multi-layered and in-depth visual competence. Boundaries between disciplines are becoming more fluid. Nevertheless designers need to recognize professional limitations.

Many changes have occurred
Developments in media technology and the information economy have profoundly affected visual communication design practice and education. New challenges confront the designer. The variety and complexity of design issues has expanded. The resulting challenge is the need for a more advanced ecological balance between human beings and their socio-cultural and natural environment.

Designer
A visual communication designer is a professional:

who contributes to shaping the visual landscape of culture

who focuses on the generation of meaning for a community of users, not only interpreting their interest but offering conservative and innovative solutions as appropriate

who collaboratively solves problems and explores possibilities through the systematic practice of criticism

who is an expert that conceptualizes and articulates ideas into tangible experiences

whose approach is grounded in a symbiotic conduct that respects the diversity of environmental and cultural contexts not by overemphasizing differences, but by recognizing common ground

who carries an individual responsibility for ethics to avoid harm and takes into account the consequences of design action to humanity, nature, technology, and cultural facts.

Future of design education

The new design program includes the following dimensions: image, text, movement, time, sound, and interactivity. Design education should focus on a critical mentality combined with tools to communicate. It should nurture a self-reflective attitude and ability. The new program should foster strategies and methods for communication and collaboration.

Theory and design history should be an integral part of design education. Design research should increase the production of design knowledge in order to enhance design performance through understanding cognition & emotion, physical, and social & cultural human factors.

More than ever, design education must prepare students for change. To this end, it must move from being teaching-centered to a learning-centered environment which enables students to experiment and to develop their own potential in and beyond academic programs. Thus the role of a design educator shifts from that of only knowledge provider to that of a person who inspires and facilitates orientation for a more substantial practice.

The power to think the future, "near or far," should be an integral part of visual communication design. A new concept in design promises to tune nature, humanity, and technology, and to harmonize east and west, north and south, as well as past, present, and future in a dynamic equilibrium. This is the essence of Oullim, the great harmony.

For further information please contact:

Ahn Sang-Soo
E: ssahn@icograda.org

Sharon Helmer Poggenpohl
E: poggenpohl@id.iit.eduh

"This manifesto seems to have put down very precisely the very urgent needs of the design community. The emphasis on the resposibility of a designer, being the operative point. Today design is getting pulled across the line towards ART usually because the designer is only aware of the self and the portrayal or the projection of the self. In an attempt to achieve the radical, graduates of design rarely touch down and remain blissfully unaware of ground realities or requirements. This manifesto is sure-shot way to burst that bubble and show you the solution that was under your nose."

"I'm sorry but this is so wide-open and boring all it really makes me think about is how important it is for designers to be 'engaging'. And engagement, like humour and fear, is never ever going to be entirely tangible? This manifesto is sooooo 'collaborative' in fact, it has no guts anymore . I mean it's just one big wishy-washy compromised piece of crap that tells us all what we already know. Manifestoes should have some sparks and edges÷start a fight. If you want to learn things you need to be willing to be wrong, and to be wrong you need to stake a claim at some point.

Pathetic. Wish I hadn't bothered..."

"good page, very interesting indeed. But when all these committees members spent so much time on redefining the term "graphic designer", why don't they just move on and improve themself instead. Is the title of your job really that important? if you're good, why do you still care about how people look at your title?? don't get me wrong, I give my respect to AGDA, but about this manifesto, it's just seem to be so unnecessary and, perhaps, childish."

"even though 2001, it's a pleasure to see interest in definition and identity in the field of graphic design.

I am personally researching for my masters with a title, "a school to work model". I am approaching this from the leaners preparation perspective to be better prepared for industry than just his/her 3 years of study at a tertiary institution like a technikon or university. If you have any info related, please feed me some.

Thanking you"

"Good page- I have all I need to know now.
Very interesting - and I would come back. Thanx alot
ella"