Structuring learning through Design within Art & Design
Can we improve our structuring of CreativeBeing creative or 'creativity' relates to or involves the use of the imagination or original ideas to create something. Learning to better develop a breadth of learning?
ArtArt refers to a diverse range of human intellectual and expressive activities and the outcomes of those activities. Within this context art is further defined as visual art and includes painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, photography and work made using digital media., CraftCraft can be designed as intelligent making. It is technically, materially and culturally informed. Craft is the designing and hand making of individual objects and artefacts, encouraging the development of intellectual, creative and practical skills, visual sensitivity and a working knowledge of tools, materials and systems. More about craft can be found here and DesignDesign shapes ideas to become practical solutions and propositions for customers and users. Design is all around us, everything man made has been designed. The majority of designers work in teams, following a design brief and a process towards realising a commercially driven product, building, system or service, creative visual practice and all forms of designing for makingThe process of making or producing something. The making of meaning is a decisively integral component of art-making. Meaning-making in relation to the creation of art serves a symbolic and practical purpose. On a symbolic level, the essence of meaning-making is highlighted when we encounter works of art that are of an abstract nature., presenting and visual representation all operate by a set of ‘creative rules’ or shared fundamental principles. These have been arrived at over time and across cultures to set a standard, a language of visual grammar and to help us share an understanding of how we think, create and what we wish to communicate visually.
The Artistic (or Formal) Elements formForm refers to three dimensional objects. While shapes have two dimensions (height and width), forms have three dimensions (height, width and depth). The overall unity of the visual elements in an art work; it is usually contrasted with content. Form is sometimes used to refer to the three dimensional aspect of an art work, as opposed to shape, which is seen as referring to two dimensional aspects. the basis of how we teach basic skillsTechniques and attributes acquired through learning, engagement and practice, build technical and creative knowledgeFacts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject., alongside building an understanding of visual literacyVisual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image, extending the meaning of literacy, which commonly signifies the interpretation of a written or printed text. The term “visual literacy” was defined in 1969 by John Debes, the founder of the International Visual Literacy Association, as: “Visual Literacy refers to a group of vision-competencies a human being can develop by seeing and at the same time having and integrating other sensory experiences. The development of these competencies is fundamental to normal human learning. When developed, they enable a visually literate person to discriminate and interpret the visible actions, objects, symbols, natural or man-made, that he encounters in his environment. Through the creative use of these competencies, he is able to communicate with others. Through the appreciative use of these competencies, he is able to comprehend and enjoy the masterworks of visual communication.” – John Debes, 1969 Since this definition by Debes, researchers and practitioners have re-defined ever more complex definitions that reflect the breadth of its applications. The term itself takes on different meanings in different contexts and you will therefore encounter new ideas in education, science, graphic design, art, and visual communications. These seven elements are elemental in so much as they are the building blocks of lineLines are used by artists and designers to describe objects, add detail or create expression. Lines define an artwork and reveal the artist’s techniques. Line is one of the visual elements. It is the path of a moving point, such as a pen, pencil or brush. In your work, it is important to vary the quality of lines, making them bold and heavy or light and delicate to suggest different things. Line can be used to give the impression of different textures and tones as well as simply showing where the edge of an object meets space - remember that objects do not have outlines in real life., shapeShapes are two-dimensional. Positive shapes represent solid objects and negative shapes show the surrounding space. Geometric shapes are perfect and regular. Organic shapes are irregular and natural., toneThe relative lightness or darkness of a colour. E.g. Light, dark, tint, shade, black, white, grey, shadow, highlight, contrast, monotone, high key, low key. Tone is normally seen as one aspect of colour, concerned with its lightness or darkness; in painting, if different amounts black and white are added to a hue, the results are different tones., form and colourChoices of colour and the relationships between colours have a huge influence on how a piece or art or design looks and feels and the emotions it provokes. Colour is made up of different aspects. The most useful terms used to describe these aspects are probably: hue, tone, saturation, complementary, analogous, tint, shade, primary and secondary. etc. But they don’t offer a complete set of elements, for example, we also need to consider ‘mark’, ‘expression’ and other principles of design and visual grammar. Hence, these elements are a list, they don’t define the totality of how we draw a line, how we make it descriptive or expressive. Similarly, they don’t explain what value of tone means and how you might use tonal value to create a representation of light and tone, or the way surfaces can be defined and appear by the way light strikes a form.
Achieving a deeper knowledge and understanding of visual literacy and visual grammar, requires context and teaching through a structured sequence of learning and a well-defined curriculumIn education, a curriculum (or curricula) is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view of the student's experiences in terms of the educator's or school's instructional goals. A curriculum may incorporate the planned interaction of pupils with instructional content, materials, resources, and processes for evaluating the attainment of educational objectives. Curricula are split into several categories: the explicit, the implicit (including the hidden), the excluded, and the extracurricular. Curricula may be tightly standardized or may include a high level of instructor or learner autonomy. Many countries have national curricula in primary and secondary education, such as the United Kingdom's National Curriculum.. There are many published examples from the English National Curriculum, or see:A Practical Guide to Teaching Art and Design in the Secondary School. Edited by A Ash and P Carr. Routledge (2024). Equally, we can also reference examples from education history, such as Bauhaus examples from the Preliminary Courses by Johannes Itten, László Moholy-Nagy or Josef Albers. Further evidence can be seen in Paul Klee’s Pedagogical SketchbookA vehicle for exploring and containing visual or written prompts ideas and sketches, a means of information gathering, traditionally in a specific book with blank sheets of paper. Sketchbooks can be virtual, they can be handmade, and creative works of art in their own right which explore mark and the expressive qualities of line, or the minutes of his Bauhaus classes on shifting, rotating and mirroring, documented by Lena Bergner (see the Links below). The evidence from this periodA specific historic time and context of an art, craft or design form adds up to a Manifesto for Visual Learning, certainly worthy of consideration.
'In the epistemic context of a fundamental skepticism towards the existing knowledge system, the Bauhaus school was in pursuit of “unlearning”: dismissing conventional learning and promoting pre- linguistic, intuitive approaches- which also led to adoptions of non-academic modes of perceptionVisual perception, which is the ability of the artist to recognize and understand visual phenomena and aesthetic clues, is fundamental in creating and responding to works of art. Several basic visual factors like symmetry, complexity, contrast, curvature, color, and lines can influence aesthetic experiences of simple patterns, but also of artworks. and included an interest in pre-modern knowledge systemsA set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole.' Regina Bittner
Bittner confirms the importance of unlearning from ‘existing knowledge systems’ in order to build new epistemological models of creating and design thinking. This is the processA series of actions, changes or operations performed in the making or creating of a product or outcomes. The procedures that one goes through in creating an art-work, e.g.: the process of printmaking. of innovationInnovation is a process by which a domain, a product, or a service is renewed and brought up to date by applying new processes, introducing new techniques, or establishing successful ideas to create new value. The creation of value is a defining characteristic of innovation. in creative subjects and is continuous. This was how design as we know it now, was created and it is evolving again around Design and to embrace AI.
To support our understanding of ‘design’ and design processes (phases or stages) when teaching, you might find it helpful to use this graphic which adds typical art and design language to design processThe design process is a way of figuring out what you need to do, and then doing it. Along the way you might solve one or more problems, try to achieve a goal, and/or create something specific. The first critical step to understanding the design process is that it’s not about working the “right way” or “wrong way”. The design process is a method you use to be more creative, productive, and accurate. The process should conform to you, rather than the other way around. It’s not a rigid list of steps to follow, but a tool you use to do better work. The goal of this guide is to teach you how to use the design process to tackle real-world scenarios. stages, common to both art and design and D&T. The use of dotted arrows linking stages, typify the non-linear flexibility and complexity of thinking in art and design. By making our emphasis on design more explicit in our art and design teaching, we can increase understanding, explore the tension between the twin aspects of our disciplineA specific way, a set of procedures and techniques for a specific activity e.g. the discipline of drawing embraces perspective, figure and conceptual ways of working, each with their own specific attributes, widen the scope of contextual references and boost career focused thinking about the creative industriesA range of economic activities concerned with the generation or exploitation of creative knowledge and information. The creative industries include advertising, architecture, radio and TV, publishing, the arts and antique markets, designer fashion, crafts, performing arts, design, film, software and computer services, music and computer games.
This diagram was published in AD 45, The Design in Art and Design issue, Jan 2026. See links below
How does the Bauhaus help us understand the evolution of both Art and Design?
The Bauhaus teachers thought carefully about how to teach the artistic elements, how to make them expressive and communicate meanings. They also considered issues such as tactility and the haptic, as a means of knowledge generation to develop understanding of the sensual properties of materialsThe resources that artists, craftspeople and designers use to create work, to include thread, plastic, stone, wood, clay, paint and paper. They developed our modern-day understanding of art and design as a process of investigation rather than knowing, promoting a transformation of human modes of perception and leading to contemporary concepts of modernismMuch of the art of the first half of the 20th century can be called ‘Modern’. It is characterised by a concern for new ways of representation and the use of new materials. Modernism was essentially rebelling against anything which had gone before; eventually, once Modern art became established, there was a need to rebel against itself - resulting in PostModernism. Modern art should not be confused with Contemporary art. Not necessarily abstract art, it usually refers to artwork produced during the latter part of the nineteenth and up to the middle of the twentieth century. Art produced currently is often referred to as Contemporary art..
However, these Artistic Elements get you only so far. They require further principles and concepts to help us design, to be creative and control the arrangement of elements to make more complex images, design new paintings, products and communicate complex meanings. For this, we need ways to build student’s understanding of aestheticsA term used to explore and explain the look and sensual appeal of a work of art, craft or design. The term embraces aspects of beauty across all the senses; touch, taste, smell, sight and sound. Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that is mainly concerned with making judgements about what art is and is not. and through this, manipulate and implement control. These include, the Principles of Design and the ability to manipulate the ‘grammar’ of visual expression, including an understanding of compositional rules, design and stylistic conventions.
'Knowledge is power. I condemn this sentence as the most dangerous pedagogical false doctrine, even if many do not want to understand it that way. What is ‘knowledge’? Not being able nor knowing, not seeing nor looking, neither building nor forming. It is possession of so-called facts, which one can buy dearly in schools and books, collect and accumulate, in order to reproduce them first in the examination and afterwards, perhaps, also (re-evaluate) in order to understand something better.[…] Instead of “knowledge is power,” I recommend for education important tasks of our time.' Josef Albers
