Graphics education

The majority of schools, colleges and universities around the world educate students on the subject of graphics and art.

The subject is taught in a broad variety of ways, each course teaching its own distinctive balance of craft skills and intellectual response to the client's needs.

Some graphics courses prioritize traditional craft skills—drawing, printmaking and typography—over modern craft skills. Other courses may place an emphasis on teaching digital craft skills. Still other courses may downplay the crafts entirely, concentrating on training students to generate novel intellectual responses that engage with the brief. Despite these apparent differences in training and curriculum, the staff and students on any of these courses will generally consider themselves to be graphic designers.

The typical pedagogy of a graphic design (or graphic communication, visual communication, graphic arts or any number of synonymous course titles) will be broadly based on the teaching models developed in the Bauhaus school in Germany or Vkhutemas in Russia. The teaching model will tend to expose students to a variety of craft skills (currently everything from drawing to motion capture), combined with an effort to engage the student with the world of visual culture.