Abstract

To meet the challenges of our age, designers must deal with change, complexity, and contingency—key aspects of historical thinking. Nevertheless, many graphic design students have little opportunity to develop these skills in design history. In the United States, most undergraduate programs require design students to study art history, while offering substantially fewer courses in design history. The exception is the design history survey, usually a single semester in which students broadly explore the development of design professions from a perspective that tends to favor art historical framings and a Eurocentric canon. In this article, the author brings critical historiography to bear on graphic design pedagogy, arguing that teaching historical research methods supports the development of critical practices. By teaching methodology, educators invite students to think historically about design, rather than reduce history to a record of aesthetic exemplars. The author substantiates this claim with data from the field and a case study, the course, “Making History” at Washington University in St. Louis. The key point is this: when educators expose students to the historian’s skill set—examining sources, interpreting evidence, framing arguments, and understanding historiographical issues—students learn to interrogate inherited narratives, connect design to social worlds, and find the content that most resonates with their interests.