| WEB activities, curriculum for relational design |
| Inomata Yuichi |
| Digitalization and internet Applications in TAMA ART UNIVERSITY |
| The
Faculty of Design at the
KAMINOGE campus of TAMA ART UNIVERSITY has initiated the use of computers for design education in Japan since 1989.
In the beginning, our curriculum had to emphasize the learning of the manipulation of specific applications for design. Starting from there, we developed the manipulation of computers as new communication design tools up to a level where we could create expressions for two- and three- dimensional scenes as well as complex worlds with dimensions for time and user input. As a result, interactive communication design became quite accessible to us.Of course, conventional skills in editorial design, graphic design, and knowledge of methodologies for layout design are still indispensable to qualified design professionals. With the development of interactive media the ability to specify target users correctly and to customize the design of information accordingly became an important design issue. Progress in network communication has drawn public attention and, of course, the internet is its essence. Although the internet was introduced to a larger public only a few years ago, it has been propagating like amoebae at an amazing speed.This medium gives us the opportunity to think about future communications and confronts us with the basic question: What is design and what is its innate nature? We are living in a period where the internet, the most innovative medium invented since the aera of the Industrial Revolution, or even since the invention of paper as a communication tool, is causing essential changes in our social structures. |
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The Faculty of Design at the KAMINOGE campus started exploiting this untapped field for designers in 1995 expecting that it would develop into a new basic form of visual communication.
We set up a campus- wide network and a WWW- server. In small adhoc seminars we started to critically study many sites on the internet. Both teachers and students recognized these searches as occasions to evaluate this form of information as well as the media itself. In parallel we experimented within our design education to find new ways of expression which would best suit or relay the content of our studies to the world. The internet is still in its creation period where lots of trials and errors continue to occur. But it is exactly this that allows us to engage in the challenge of developing advanced tools and new methods for the design of communication. the webteam is always curious to get mail... |