På tal om att vårt jobb som lärare och studenter är på fullaste allvar.

John Maeda, f  d professor på MIT, sedan i somras president på Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), uttrycker samma sak.

12 september 2008 höll han sitt invigningstal på RISD och uttrycker allvaret så oändligt mycket mer nyanserat och inte fullt så drastiskt som jag gjorde i föregående inlägg:

”I’ve always been someone who hates labeling myself – I don’t feel like an artist, a designer, a technologist, an administrator, or any other one thing. I feel like me, someone who likes making things. When I was younger, people used to tell me, “maybe you should be a graphic designer.” I didn’t know what that meant until I stumbled upon a book by Paul Rand called A Designer’s Art, and I was humbled and changed. Paul Rand created the well-known IBM, ABC, UPS logos and many other lasting works. In Rand’s work, I saw an exquisite understanding of space combined with a deep, playful sense of what it means to be human. Later, I was fortunate to meet Rand at his studio in Connecticut and spend some time with him before the end of his life. He imparted to me not only wisdom about art and design, but also wisdom about life. He said to me, “You cannot play if you cannot earn.” I am grateful that in my life, I’ve found many ways to earn through play, and play through earning. It’s a life I wish for all RISD grads, and I’m sure their parents feel the same way.”

Och han avslutar sitt tal:

We can Start. And Finish. Here. The creative mind is not limited to black and white. It is comfortable with ambiguity, and ’doing both’ as I like to say. You can be both a designer and an artist, a humanist and a technologist, a student and a teacher, a hand craftsman and a Photoshop guru, a global and local thinker, a leader and a servant, a president and a citizen. And we can start as many times as we like when we are open to the spirit and rigor of the creative way of being.”

Det du.