Beyond the classroom 3:45 - 5:15pm Thursday June 14th

Ronni Rosenberg (Co-presented with Ann Szeto)
Associate Dean, School of Animation, Arts and Design
Sheridan College, Oakville, Ontario
“Artist, Artisan or Entrepreneur: Who Drives Design Education?”

Recently, graphic design has matured as an academic discipline, developing its own theoretical canon and interdisciplinary approach. A new generation of practitioners see “artist” and “designer” as interchangeable, but graphic design continues to serve traditional needs of corporate and commercial communication. How is this playing out in design education and which world are we preparing our students for? Various design programs throughout the province will be highlighted.

Ronni Rosenberg is an architect and registered graphic designer with a background in the fine arts. She has taught design for the past nine years in the York/Sheridan Joint Program in Design. She has worked in commercial and residential architecture both as a sole practitioner and with larger Toronto firms. Currently, she is an associate dean in the School of Arts, Animation and Design at Sheridan College in Oakville. Her exhibit, prepared for the Design Exchange together with Ann Szeto on design education is on display during the National Design Conference.

Ann Szeto (Co-presented with Ronni Rosenberg)
Professor, Communication, Culture and Information Technology, Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning and the University of Toronto.
“Artist, Artisan or Entrepreneur: Who Drives Design Education?”

Recently, graphic design has matured as an academic discipline, developing its own theoretical canon and interdisciplinary approach. A new generation of practitioners see “artist” and “designer” as interchangeable, but graphic design continues to serve traditional needs of corporate and commercial communication. How is this playing out in design education and which world are we preparing our students for? Various design programs throughout the province will be highlighted.

Ann Szeto teaches all design-related courses in CCIT at Sheridan: Design Thinking, Design and Implementation of Multimedia Documents, and History and Practice of Design. Prior to joining Sheridan, she worked at the Art Gallery of Ontario as art administrator and educator, Nortel Networks as senior graphic designer, and Piper Group as art director. Her current research focus is graphic design and art direction, as well as Canadian graphic design history and design education. Most recently, she delivered a presentation on Teaching Design Thinking in Higher Education at the 30th McGraw-Hill Ryerson National Teaching, Learning and Technology Conference, comparing various Design Thinking courses in a number of post-secondary programs in the city both in and beyond the traditional realm of design.