SESSION 03
08.31.26

Design in the Age of New Mediums
How new tools keep remaking design work, and what design thinking is.

Workhorse Collective

NameAbraham GarciaEmailabe@wrkhrs.co

ART 418 · Fall 2026

MeetsMon + Wed, 1:30 to 2:50TodaySession 03 · 08.31.2026
Workhorse meaninglayer.com/course/business-of-design
Session 03
Workhorse

Today you set up your repository, then we look at how new tools have changed design work.

01 · The repo

GitHub Desktop, hands on. Your repository goes up and your personal statement is its first commit. The statement itself is turned in on Blackboard.

02 · How we got here

A short history of the field as a dialogue between designers and their technology, and two schools of thought, disegno and the Bauhaus, arguing over whether the head and the hand are one job.

03 · Design thinking

What the phrase means, where it came from, and where this course sits inside it. On Wednesday you use it to state your first problem.

The Repo
TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES, TOGETHER.
GITHUB DESKTOP, NO TERMINAL. Workhorse
First: an account
01

Sign up

github.com, free account. Pick a username you'd put on a resume; this becomes a public address for your work.
You getA home for every project
this semester and after
02

Install

GitHub Desktop, from desktop.github.com. Sign in with the account you just made. No terminal required.
You getGit with buttons
03

Learn the save

Saving to git is two moves: commit, a named save of what changed and why, then push, which copies it to GitHub.
You getVersions with reasons
attached, backed up
COMMIT = SAVE WITH A REASON. PUSH = BACK IT UP. Workhorse
Stand up your repo
01

Create

Sign in to GitHub Desktop. New repository: art418-<lastname>. Initialize with a README.
You getA folder git watches
02

Commit

Drag your personal statement in. Commit it: "personal statement, first pass." Say what happened, never "update."
You getA log entry
The first version of record
03

Publish

Push to GitHub, private. Add me as a collaborator so I can see your work.
You getA backup
Every version, kept
04

Log

Add LOG.md, one line about today. The log holds what a commit message can't: decisions, and what the machine did.
You getA record of judgment
Graded from October 19
EVERYTHING IS TURNED IN ON BLACKBOARD. THE REPO KEEPS EVERY VERSION OF YOUR WORK. Workhorse
Workhorse

You just adopted a medium that didn't belong to designers ten years ago.

That's the third or fourth time this has happened to this field.
A short history, with the work on screen. Then what design thinking is.
How We Got Here
THE FIELD KEEPS BEING REMADE BY ITS TOOLS.
THERE IS GREAT GRAPHIC DESIGN IN EVERY ONE OF THESE ERAS. Workhorse
"There will be successive such waves, and they will demand more than big ideas and powerful design."
Foreword to Davis, Creative Strategy and the Business of Design, written in 2016, before AI arrived.
MKMarjorie KalterWrote the foreword to the course's main book.
Every wave is a new medium arriving. The history of this field is a dialogue between designers and their technology: the technology speaks first, designers answer.
How We Got Here
Each stop is one exchange in that dialogue: a technology arrives and moves the line between design and production, and designers answer with new forms. For most of this history those were two separate jobs.
1400s
Woodcut. The illuminated page
1450s
Gutenberg. Movable type
1563
Disegno. The first design academy
1700s
The type founders. Design becomes a product
1814
Lithography. The steam press
1851
Victorian mass manufacture
1890s
Arts and Crafts. The poster
1919
Modernism. The Bauhaus
1950s
The International Style
1970s
Postmodernism. Theory
1984
The Mac. PostScript
1990s
Multimedia. CD-ROM
1995
The browser. Then the phone
Now
AI
TWO JOBS, WITH THEIR OWN SETS OF SKILLS AND EXPERTISE. THAT SPLIT HOLDS FOR CENTURIES.

The printed page

1400s to 1560s
Tres Riches Heures manuscript page
Saint Christopher woodcut, 1423
Print shop, 1568
The woodcut is the first mass-produced image; the illuminated manuscript is a one-off luxury object. Movable type industrializes the word, and printing settles into trades: composing, engraving, presswork.
LIMBOURG BROTHERS, TRES RICHES HEURES, C. 1412 · SAINT CHRISTOPHER WOODCUT, 1423, THE EARLIEST DATED EUROPEAN PRINT · JOST AMMAN, PRINT SHOP WOODCUT, 1568
Disegno
Workhorse

Italy names the split before the machines exist: disegno.

ItaliandisegnoDrawing, and design. The plan made before the work.
One word for drawing and design both: the idea in the mind before the hand moves.
Vasari, Accademia del Disegno, Florence, 1563. The first design school, founded to lift the designer above the craftsman.
The head and the hand become two different jobs, and two different social classes.

Disegno

1500s to 1560s
Michelangelo, studies for the Libyan Sibyl
Enea Vico, The Academy of Baccio Bandinelli
Vasari portrait plate from the Lives, 1568
This is what disegno looks like. Michelangelo works the whole fresco out in red chalk before a brush touches plaster: the design exists on paper first, and assistants can execute from it. In Vico's engraving, an academy at work: students drawing by lamplight, learning to think on paper. Vasari writes the drawings and the drawers into history.
MICHELANGELO, STUDIES FOR THE LIBYAN SIBYL, C. 1510, THE MET · ENEA VICO, THE ACADEMY OF BACCIO BANDINELLI, C. 1544, THE MET · GIORGIO VASARI, PORTRAIT PLATE FROM THE LIVES, 1568

The type founders

1700s
William Caslon type specimen sheet, 1734
Fournier, Manuel Typographique alphabet page
Bodoni, Manuale Tipografico spread
Design becomes a product you can buy. Caslon's specimen sheet is a catalog: letterforms designed once, cast in metal, sold to printers everywhere. Fournier invents the point system so type from different founders can work together, and Bodoni's Manuale is a designer publishing his own life's work as the artifact.
WILLIAM CASLON, SPECIMEN SHEET, 1734 · PIERRE-SIMON FOURNIER, MANUEL TYPOGRAPHIQUE, 1766 · GIAMBATTISTA BODONI, MANUALE TIPOGRAFICO, 1818

Mass production

1814 to 1890s
Koenig steam press, 1814
Pears Soap chromolithograph advertisement
Crystal Palace, Great Exhibition 1851
The steam press, lithography, and machine typesetting make print cheap and fast. Victorian manufacturing imitates handmade luxury at mass prices, and printed advertising becomes an industry with its own artists.
KOENIG STEAM PRESS, 1814 · PEARS SOAP CHROMOLITHOGRAPH, C. 1900, AFTER MILLAIS · CRYSTAL PALACE, GREAT EXHIBITION OF 1851

Arts and Crafts, and the poster

1880s to 1900s
Kelmscott Chaucer page
William Morris, Strawberry Thief
Toulouse-Lautrec Moulin Rouge poster
William Morris rejects machine production and returns to hand work: Kelmscott cuts its own type and prints on handmade paper. In the same decade, color lithography makes the poster a painter's medium.
KELMSCOTT CHAUCER, MORRIS AND BURNE-JONES, 1896 · MORRIS, STRAWBERRY THIEF, 1883 · TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, MOULIN ROUGE: LA GOULUE, 1891 · MORRIS'S BOOKS ARE IN OUR OPEN LIBRARY

The avant-garde

1909 to 1923
El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge
Marinetti poem plate
Tzara Dadaist invitation
Futurists, Dadaists, and Constructivists treat the printed page as a composition. The experiments come from outside the printing trades: painters and poets setting type themselves.
EL LISSITZKY, BEAT THE WHITES WITH THE RED WEDGE, 1920 · F.T. MARINETTI, LES MOTS EN LIBERTE FUTURISTES, 1919 · TRISTAN TZARA, DADAIST EVENING INVITATION, 1923 · PLATES FROM TSCHICHOLD, THE NEW TYPOGRAPHY
"There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman."
Bauhaus manifesto, 1919. Read the manifesto
WGWalter Gropius1883 to 1969German architect. Founded the Bauhaus in 1919.
The direct answer to disegno. Four centuries after Florence split the head from the hand, Weimar tries to put them back together: in workshops, not lecture halls.

Bauhaus

1919 to 1933
Oskar Schlemmer Bauhaus exhibition postcard
Bauhaus Dessau building
Bauhaus curriculum wheel diagram
Moholy-Nagy Malerei Photographie Film cover
The counter-school to the academy tradition. Art and craft are taught as one activity, in workshops, at the machine: masters of form teach beside masters of craft. Gropius drew the curriculum as rings: every student starts in the basic course, works through the material workshops, and ends at building. The ideas in this diagram are still most of what design school teaches.
OSKAR SCHLEMMER, BAUHAUS EXHIBITION POSTCARD, 1923 · GROPIUS, BAUHAUS DESSAU, 1926 · GROPIUS, BAUHAUS CURRICULUM DIAGRAM, 1922 · MOHOLY-NAGY, MALEREI PHOTOGRAPHIE FILM, 1925

Painting reaches pure abstraction.

VASSILY KANDINSKY, COMPOSITION 8, 1923 · GUGGENHEIM, NEW YORK · KANDINSKY TAUGHT THE BAUHAUS FOUNDATION COURSE

Abstraction goes to work

1921 to 1925
De Stijl journal cover, van Doesburg
El Lissitzky, About Two Squares spread
Rodchenko, Books poster, 1924
Designers take abstraction to printed matter. They believe abstract form can work as a universal language: no ornament, no national style, no illustration standing between the message and the reader. Type set on the diagonal carries energy, asymmetry directs the eye, and the page is composed the way a painting is, but printed in the thousands.
THEO VAN DOESBURG, DE STIJL JOURNAL COVER, 1921 · EL LISSITZKY, ABOUT TWO SQUARES, 1922 · ALEXANDER RODCHENKO, BOOKS (LENGIZ) POSTER, 1924, WITH LILYA BRIK

The New Typography

1928
Walter Dexel postcard plate
Pelikan catalog plate
Jan Tschichold writes the movement down as working rules: asymmetric layout, sans serif type, whitespace as a compositional element. He turns the avant-garde experiments into a method any printer can follow.
PLATES FROM JAN TSCHICHOLD, DIE NEUE TYPOGRAPHIE, 1928 · WALTER DEXEL POSTCARD · PELIKAN CATALOG PAGE · THE FULL BOOK IS IN OUR OPEN LIBRARY
"The essence of the New Typography is clarity."
Die neue Typographie, 1928. The full book
Jan Tschichold1902 to 1974German typographer. Wrote the avant-garde's experiments down as rules.
Nearly a century later, most design still follows it.

The International Style

1950s to 1970s
Muller-Brockmann beethoven poster
Akzidenz Grotesk specimen
Helvetica specimen
Grids, objectivity, sans serif type. Swiss designers turn design into a rigorous, repeatable practice, and corporate identity work is built on it for decades.
JOSEF MULLER-BROCKMANN, BEETHOVEN POSTER, 1955 · AKZIDENZ GROTESK SPECIMEN, BERTHOLD · HELVETICA SPECIMEN, 1957
Postmodernism
Workhorse

Theory breaks the modernist certainty.

The 1968 crisis

Vietnam, civil rights, urban upheaval. Young designers see modernist rationalism as the style of the corporate machine and go looking for alternatives.

Theory enters design

Semiotics, cultural criticism, and postmodernism reach design education. Students and teachers start questioning the values and hierarchy of the profession.

Punk and new wave

Torn paper, ransom-note lettering, photocopied flyers. Weingart in Basel, then Cranbrook and CalArts, push typography past the Swiss rules.

Meanwhile, in the office

Wild: designers were reading Derrida while "these pale gray machines that made awkward looking typography were multiplying in their offices."

Workhorse

Through all of this, design and design production are still two separate jobs.

Their own sets of skills. Their own expertise. Their own departments.
The Bauhaus argued against the split. The industry kept it anyway.
1984 changes that. The tools close the seam the theory couldn't.

Desktop publishing

1984 to 1995
Macintosh 128k
Paul Brainerd with PageMaker
Macintosh, PageMaker, PostScript. Production becomes synonymous with design as designers are asked to do more. The production department goes away.
APPLE MACINTOSH 128K, 1984 · PAUL BRAINERD, ALDUS CORP., WITH PAGEMAKER, 1985 · THE PHRASE "DESKTOP PUBLISHING" IS BRAINERD'S
Workhorse
EMIGRE NO. 39
1996
Reading
Lorraine Wild, "That Was Then, and This Is Now"
Why it's here
Your Session 2 reading, in its original pages: the field arguing with itself, in 1996, about what the computer had done to it. Full text at emigre.com
Her historical point: the graphic designer's identity "was only constructed after printing and typesetting technologies isolated the activity of planning and form-giving from... the actual production of printed matter." Arrow up and down to page through.
"Is the business world finally beginning to appreciate the value of what you do? Or is public access to technology going to put us all out of business?"
AIGA national conference advertisement, 1995. Quoted in Wild. Read the essay
The question was about the computer. Thirty years on, the field is bigger than it was then.

Multimedia, Wild's "what is next" from 1996: time, sound, motion, interactivity. Myst is an art-directed environment on CD-ROM, and the best-selling PC game of the decade.

MYST, CYAN, 1993 · PUBLISHED BY BRODERBUND

Web 1.0

1995 to 2004
Netscape Navigator 2
Space Jam website, 1996
The browser turns the screen into a page anyone can publish. HTML tables, GIFs, then Flash. The experimental approach moves to the web, where the only limiting factor is the technology itself.
NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR 2, 1995 · SPACEJAM.COM, WARNER BROS., 1996, STILL LIVE AT /1996 · MOST OF THIS ERA'S WORK IS ALREADY LOST

Web 2.0

2004 to 2015
Web 2.0 concept map
Original iPhone, 2007
Broadband, web standards, and then the smartphone. Publishing moves onto platforms, the feed replaces the page, and design work consolidates into products, apps, and systems.
WEB 2.0 MEME MAP, MARKUS ANGERMEIER, 2005, CC BY-SA · APPLE IPHONE, 2007
The 2000s
Workhorse

Design works to legitimize itself.

More rigorous methods

Design leaders push methods and process to counter the view that the work is just "art." Words like "intuition" and "style" are deemed too flimsy for the new era.

The seat at the table

It works. Design gets into the boardroom, and the field fills up with people, practices, and policies that reflect the structure of corporate culture.

Knowledge workers

Designers are now knowledge workers. Process, systems, and governance define the job, and the call goes out for more technically focused workers and fewer tinkerers.

What it cost

Real influence and real salaries. Also a generation of younger designers with very little knowledge of the experimental era that came before.

The pattern
Each wave, the technology takes over more of the production, and designers answer with new work. The field gets bigger every time.
1400s
The print replaces the painted page
1450s
Type replaces the scribe
1563
Disegno splits head from hand
1700s
Type is sold, not cut in house
1814
Steam replaces the hand press
1851
The machine replaces the artisan
1890s
Craft pushes back
1919
The school replaces the apprenticeship
1950s
The grid goes corporate
1970s
Theory breaks the rules
1984
The Mac replaces the type shop
1990s
The screen gains time and sound
1995
The web replaces the print run
Now
AI takes production
EACH TIME, THE TECHNOLOGY TAKES OVER MORE OF THE PRODUCTION. EACH TIME, THE FIELD GETS BIGGER.
Now
Workhorse

AI is taking over design production. What it leaves to you is deciding which problem to solve, for whom, and why.

AI is best at what designers thought only they could do: making a finished-looking thing, fast.
This course spends its time on the part that is left to you.
Design Thinking
YOU HAVE HEARD THE PHRASE. HERE IS WHAT IT MEANS. Workhorse
"If creative people are included at the table contemplating strategy from the outset, the more likely that strategy is to be realized when they execute."
Creative Strategy and the Business of Design, chapter 1.
DDDouglas DavisCreative director and teacher. Wrote the course's main book.
This is the seat at the table designers spent the 2000s arguing for. Design thinking is the work you do once you're sitting in it. Relegating creativity to execution, he says, is "an unfortunate misstep."
Design Thinking
Workhorse

The way designers work on problems spread to business, and then to everyone.

Herbert Simon, 1969 · design is changing existing situations into preferred ones.
IDEO and David Kelley, 1991 · carry it into business.
The Stanford d.school, 2005 · teaches it to everyone else.
Douglas Davis, 2016 · brings it back to designers from the business side, in the book this course reads.
"Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones."
The Sciences of the Artificial, 1969. The book
HSHerbert Simon1916 to 2001American economist and computer scientist. Nobel Prize in economics, 1978.
Notice that the definition never mentions a made object.
The claim
Workhorse

What design thinking actually claims.

The frame is a choice

The way you state the problem determines which answers you can reach. Choosing the frame is design work.

People first

Understand what people actually do before generating ideas about what to make for them.

Diverge on purpose

Hold many options open longer than feels comfortable. The first good idea is rarely the best one.

Prototype to learn

Make the cheap version early. It is far cheaper to be wrong in a prototype than in the shipped thing.

Your reading
Workhorse

You've already read this. Davis just never says "design thinking."

Maslow's pyramid

People first, drawn as a diagram. Know which need the work speaks to before you decide what to make.

Insight

Observation plus the conclusion you draw from it.

Segmentation

"For whom is this a problem?" Choosing the audience is choosing the frame.

The grandfather

"I want to know what they think." The whole first diamond in seven words.

"The process of developing an insight is a difficult two-part procedure that requires first the observation of an existing truth and then the crafting of the conclusion or conclusions that follow."
Douglas Davis, Creative Strategy and the Business of Design, chapter 1.
Discover is the observation. Define is the conclusion.
Insight, worked
01

Observation

Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master something.
What it isA fact you can point to.
02

Insight

From a beginning writer's perspective, that means insecurity, a mountain of rewrites, and the temptation to quit.
What it isThe conclusion he drew from it, from the writer's side.
03

Concept

Behind every great speech, book, or script is a pile of revisions. New writers know the finished version, not the process.
What it isThe idea the insight makes possible.
04

Execution

Show the phases famous lines went through to get to what we recognize.
What it isThe thing you make. It comes last.
INFORMATION COLLECTED + DATA INTERPRETED = INSIGHTS THAT INSPIRE CONCEPTS THAT INSPIRE EXECUTIONS. DAVIS, CH. 1. HIS EXAMPLE, GOTHAM WRITERS WORKSHOP. Workhorse
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Self-actualizationBecoming who you could be
EsteemStatus, respect, confidence
Love and belongingBeing part of something
SafetySecurity, stability, health
PhysiologicalAir, food, water, sleep
"The person buying the whitening toothpaste may really be out to brush away self-consciousness."
Davis, ch. 1 · Maslow, "A Theory of Human Motivation," 1943
The product promises a whiter smile. The need underneath is what the work has to speak to.

Two questions for your project: which need is your audience at, and which one is the product talking to right now?
MASLOW, "A THEORY OF HUMAN MOTIVATION," 1943. DAVIS USES IT TO FIND WHAT A PURCHASE IS ACTUALLY FOR. Workhorse
The double diamond
01

Discover

Diverge. Learn everything about the situation before deciding what it is.
This courseThe research weeks
Starts Wednesday
02

Define

Converge. Frame the problem. The move most people skip entirely.
This courseThe audience · Sep 9
Problem statement · Sep 14
03

Develop

Diverge again. Many answers, explored on purpose.
This courseExplorations · Oct
The brand · Nov 4
04

Deliver

Converge. Ship the answer.
This courseThe brand book
The landing page · Dec 2
NOBODY BUILDS THE PRODUCT. YOU BUILD THE ARGUMENT THAT COULD SELL IT. Workhorse
Workhorse

"How do we build a better alarm clock?" already names the answer. "Why do people wake up badly?" asks about the problem.

Changing how you state a problem is cheap. Changing a product after it ships is expensive.
If you have an hour, spend most of it on the problem.
A warning
Workhorse

Run as a one-day workshop with sticky notes, design thinking earned a bad name.

This course spends its time on the part you can't skip: stating the problem. You start that on Wednesday.
Workhorse

Your first audience does not have to be right. It has to be one you can argue for.

You will argue three audiences before you commit to one.
Changing your mind after research is progress, and your saved versions show it.
Made with AI, in the open: the prompts and versions are kept, and the judgment calls are yours.
Before you leave
Workhorse

The work between now and Wednesday.

Today, before the door

Your statement is turned in on Blackboard. Check that it went through before you leave. Then finish Davis chapter 1, Segmentation to the end, 12 pages.

Wednesday · Sep 2

Discovery Workshop. Read Brown, "Discovery Defined," 16 pages. Bring your personal statement: the research starts from the worlds it names.

Sep 9, then Sep 14

The audience first: three audiences, a paragraph each. What problem it solves, what they use today, what that costs them, which one you lean to. The problem statement follows on Sep 14.

Sep 21

The pitch, recorded: your problem, your audience, and your ideas for the brand.

Close

Before you design anything, find out what the people you are designing for think.See you Wednesday.