On Wednesday, October 23, 2013, Richard Wilde, Chairman of the Design and Advertising Department at the School of Visual Arts, spoke as part of the AIGA/NY Breakfast Club series about how to become a great design educator.

Wilde began with a few words on how to break into teaching graphic design, and about what he looks for when hiring SVA instructors. “I actually look for teachers 365 days a year,” said Wilde. He considers SVA portfolio review participants, TAs, and even winners of awards such as the ADC Young Guns. During interviews, Wilde said he prefers candidates who admit their insecurity about what to expect. He explained that he is wary of candidates who claim full understanding of what teaching will entail. “Don’t come from knowing — come from being honest,” Wilde said. “There’s something about just being yourself.”

Wilde described his own approach to teaching and shared some of the projects he assigns his sophomore Visual Literacy class. By their junior and senior years, these students will be doing computer-based portfolio projects for real or imagined clients. But in Wilde’s class, the focus is on finding a voice and developing a visual language, often through hand-based work.

In one assignment, students are given twelve phrases — such as elevator music, faulty lightbulb, or headache, and asked to illustrate the sound of each. “It doesn’t exist. You have to invent it,” he tells his students.

In another assignment, Wilde asks students to illustrate hypothetical class members using only the visual language of a sheet of notebook paper. When students are forced to use the same vocabulary to communicate different messages, he explained, they are must stop thinking literally and experiment with abstraction.

As for how to critique student work, Wilde discouraged teachers from planning exactly what to say ahead of time. Instead, he suggested, let your students’ work guide what you say — describe what’s successful about a piece, and what it still needs. Challenge yourself to respond directly and honestly to student work — you will engage students much more successfully this way than with clever, pre-planned anecdotes.

Lastly, Wilde shared a preview of his newest book, which presents several open-ended drawing- and collage-based projects that he used in the classroom over the years. He believes that hand-based work empowers students to develop their own vocabulary and voice, and to follow their interests. In the same way that he values teachers and critics who embrace the unknown, Wilde clearly pushes his students to discover creativity through not knowing. “All of my projects are predicated on placing students in a condition where they cannot possibly know what the answers are,” he explained, “because there are no answers.”

At the end of the session, audience members were treated to a lovely surprise. Each participant was given a copy of the 2013 SVA Graphic Design Senior Library, designed by Joe Marianek and Julia Hoffmann. Happy reading!

Additional Information:
SVA BFA Advertising & Graphic Design
Richard Wilde

Event Details:
Click here to view all photos from AIGA/NY Breakfast Club: Wilde Teaching on Flickr.
To view additional photos, or to contribute your photos, visit our AIGA New York Flickr group.

Special thanks to contributing writer Karen Vanderbilt for the AIGA/NY Breakfast Club: Wilde Teaching event recap and photos. Karen can be found at karenvanderbilt.com, @k_vanderbilt and Studio Kudos.