Why the teaching of visual art is now a necessity

Here we are in the Christmas season and once again we are inundated with new digital technologies.

Young people are now able to create their own music CD’s and video DVD’s; they have their own websites and publish their own blogs, young people create their own stationary and greeting cards and corporate identities for their bands and sports teams.
Naturally it is possible that a student with no training in hand lettering can scrawl a title across a disk with a permanent marker, but it can be so much more finished a presentation with a printed label. When the DVD includes an interface that looks and behaves professionally and includes such features are previews, chapter breaks and access to slide shows as well as video, the student should be also able to create a professionally printed DVD label and DVD case insert with pictures and credits.
What are the issues in graphic design for a young person:
Composition: How does the layout direct the eye, how easy is it to read the text and how attractive over all is the composition?

Use of color: Does the use of color contribute or detract from the design, are any of the common mistakes of color present i.e. changing color under text, color fades or spectrum changes that fight one another, bright colors at the periphery of the design, color text in conflict with background colors and so on.

Photography: Does the photography work with the composition, is the photography bit-mapped, does the mood of the photograph fit with the mood of the design?

In other words, the issues of desktop graphic design are many of the same issues as for studio art. Furthermore the student may, and should be encouraged to, use original illustration in their designs.

The problem for many art teachers may be that while issues of composition and color theory are similar, the tools for graphic design are different. But the good news is that tool pallets are very similar across the variety of graphic design products on the market. AppleWorks, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Macromedia Fireworks and even freeware products like SmartDraw all share tool icons that do very similar jobs and all of these programs also navigate in similar ways. I don’t wish to mislead, that are tremendous differences between these products as well and learning one does not indicate that there is no longer a learning curve when one launches an application for the first time. But they do share many tools, ways of navigation, styles of placement, layout commands and so on. My recommendation is AppleWorks as a gateway application, its easy to use, does many of the tasks associated with more expensive applications and, in fact, comes already loaded on Macintosh computers for school at no charge.

The point of this essay is to suggest that visual art as an elective course is probably not a valid interpretation of the necessity of visual art in the daily life of today’s students. In a world where students commonly are doing so much finished design, from tee-shirts to corporate identity, that I believe a course in art and design should be a requirement for all middle and high school students.

Read our November essay: Teaching Collage as Social Critic
Read our October essay: The Place of the Body in Education
Read our September essay: The Ways Artists Support Themselves
Read our August essay: Why students should copy the great works
Read our July essay: Hidden Clues in Works of Art
Read our June essay: The Mathematics of Art
Read our May essay: The Importance of School Art Competitions
Read our January essay : Art History and the Internet
Read our March essay: Ink Jet Printers and the Color Wheel:
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