Craft: before, during and after graphic design

The training of the printer in the black art was always a secretive activity, but one largely born out of commercial imperative and protection of jobs rather than any concern for the integrity of the craft itself. The ‘rules’ that might be applied to typography evolved during the five hundred years that the printing trade had a monopoly of all things ‘graphic’. These rules were established to expedite the composition of text at a time when printing was labour-intensive and the range of individual competence variable. Rules, therefore, were necessary to ensure ‘house’ standards were maintained, that the layout was technically feasible and that the work could be completed within a commercially viable time scale. 

By the end of the nineteenth century, almost all of the printing processes were fully mechanised and there were many within the printing industry who saw its future being less and less related to individual craftsmanship. The steady increase in scale of manufacturing operations and the resultant loss of personal contact and sympathy of employers to the workforce had slowly strangled the traditional master/apprentice relationship of indentured service). After the Second World War, the printing industry seemed eager to make a fresh start. The way forward, echoed at the 1951 Festival of Britain, was to play a significant part in the growing international markets – the new, ‘real’ world – and to achieve this fresh start, there were many who felt it had to drop much of its illustrious past. The printing industry, which now often referred to its own work-force as technicians, considered science, technology, economics and management studies to be at least as relevant to its future success as the craft skills traditionally associated with quality printing. Those who had been trained pre-War in the craft of typography and print, found it particularly hard to adapt. Disillusioned, or fearful of redundancy, a few would change career and work within the education system, perhaps in the sincere hope that their knowledge, firmly based in sound practice, would be used to redress the balance of new technology with that of their own tacit, craft knowledge. However, as typography slowly retreated from the printing syllabus, followed by the rapid demise of many print courses those remaining would find themselves being asked to pass on their wisdom to the new breed of type user, the graphic design student instead! 

In the middle of the twentieth century, the establishment of graphic design (design for print) courses was a direct response to economic demand and technological opportunity. These courses were housed within established art, not printing, schools. The dilemma facing these new graphic design courses was that whilst the history of their subject was one based on craft, its future had been aligned to art. In his highly influential book, Art and Industry, (1934) Herbert Read argued that the relationship of the artist to the designer was like that of the research scientist to the industrial chemist and physicist. ‘In both cases, artists and scientists are concerned with research into the previously unknown, one into the creation of new arrangements of form and colour, the other into previously underdeveloped scientific regions... The results of these discoveries, both in science and art, are then made manifest to a wider public by the industrial scientists, who apply the new facts to practical problems, while the industrial designers and commercial artists make use of new relationships of form and colour to enliven their work’. This view of the designer’s subsidiary, or even predatory, relationship to art was a generally held belief right up to the mid 1960s and the establishment of Pop Art taking the term 'preditory' to a whole new level. 

But the establishment of graphic design education in the UK was also in direct conflict with the hundreds of printing courses throughout the UK. 'Preditory' was again the accusation aimed at graphic design students but this time it was printer's jobs they were stealing. graphic design were lumped together by the printing lecturers as ‘art’ students who (in their opinion) displayed the worst possible combination of arrogance and ignorance by questioning (or simply ignoring) every traditional typographic ‘norm’. Students attempting to extend their subject by making visible what, for them, had not existed before, required self-belief and cceptance of their vulnerable position from some quarters. Good design lecturers provided enthusiastic support but such students still, inevitably, had to go to the printing school if their layout were to be turned into a (printed) reality. 

As a student in the late sixties, I remember a sympathetic graphics lecturer saying with a wry and apologetic smile, ‘welcome to the real world...’ as I set off down the corridor, layout in hand, to the compositors’ workshop. The compositor’s view of the situation in which we were now engaged was described by Beatrice Warde like this: ‘The craftsman perceives he is dealing with a pernickety person who has read a book, if not several books, on layout, and owns a pica gauge, and in general has every intention of getting his own way’. The graphic design student could not win. If the layout was in any way deficient, he would be told as much with a delight and ruthless mirth that was impossible to fathom and sent back to the studio puzzled and crest-fallen without quite knowing why. If, by chance, the layout happened to be was faultless – ‘insultingly precise... the kind which gives the executant no chance whatever to ‘use his head’ – the student was accused of insulting the compositor’s intelligence and ignoring his craft skills. None of this would be said, of course, because to admit as much would also be demeaning. So the very best a graphics student could expect – if the oral interrogation was passed – was a display of mock subservience, ‘...and when would the master typographer hope to see his proofs?’ 

As a student in the late sixties, I was intrigued by this toxic cultural gulf that existed between the design studio and the printing workshops. But for a student – of design or print – the cultural differences between the two meant that you were aligned with one camp only, making an intelligent understanding of the subject in its totality impossible. 

Not surprising then, that Letraset, widely available as a dry-transfer product by 1965, proved to be so popular among graphic design students. The reason being; it liberated them from the print school. Nothing needed to be explained, justified or apologised for. Suddenly typography was easy! Letraset was a highly ‘flexible’ medium, allowing endless distortion of letter forms and total freedom regarding alignment and spacing. If a mistake was made it could be painlessly removed with sellotape. The results, however, were viewed by many as proof that typographic standards had now sunk to an all-time low as graphic design students, left to their own devices, appeared to display a total ignorance of (or chose to ignore) typographic craft. 

Letraset, with its plethora of new, often trashy, amusing, and occasionally beautiful typefaces, plus its availability and relative cheapness, had many of the characteristics that computer technology would bring twenty years later. But the digital revolution has gone another, very important, step further in that it has destroyed the notion of cultural barriers. The whole graphic process has become a singular activity. Educators have the best opportunity they have ever had to consider the ‘whole’ designer as a realistic goal. Today, for graphic design students, there is no distinction between the design process and the craft process. Tacit knowledge has become an integral part of conceptual thinking; the craft process creates knowledge, and the knowledge is applied in the design process. 

So much to teach, but sadly, so little time to teach it. Most design courses at higher education level can now only offer one taught studio day to each year group at a time when computer technology has placed far more responsibility upon a vastly reduced lecturing team. ‘Craft and making’, as part of the graphic design curriculum, is being squeezed out as studio spaces are reduced and computer suites expanded (10). In fact, studio culture, once the mainstay of design education is in danger of dissappearing altogether. If we are serious about developing creativity in particular, and human knowledge in general, we have to maintain the rich and diverse physical, as well as mental activities associated with the exploration and production of graphic communication. Knowledge (and pleasure) gained by engaging in activities that can be described as tacit, hands-on, messy, or, simply, ‘craft’ is in danger of being lost in the general ‘streamlining’ of higher education.