The best designer is the one who can polish the most facets of the diamond

Everyone should read this article on the Creative Review blog. It holds some answers and a lot of questions to some fundamental changes needed in design education; I am pleased at last to read something current which addresses these issues (albeit right now only channelled through the question of who is going to take over from Dan Fern as head of school at the RCA). And even more excited to find that everyone wants a piece of it.

The relatively new book Art School by Steven Henry Madoff would make great further reading for anyone really interested in this.

I am lucky enough to meet with a huge number of people teaching art & design in the UK on a regular basis and believe that these individuals are only too capable of knowing the right thing to do; but more than that I hope they don't break to the burocracy which has grown above them, in a world which now only understands the organisation of information and not the information itself.

I have spent the as long as I can remember working my way through my Dad's library. He was the head of a regional art school from 1976-2008 and suddenly the two books which I have been reading over the last month have been given some wider context; they have become an absolute necessity. Godspeed!