Serious Cartoons

It was inevitable...and necessary--a class in Serious Design has a responsibility to discuss and study the situation surrounding the global reaction to the so-called Muhammed drawings. We pondered the facts, we weighed the values, we engaged the world-views (to the degree possible) of the cultures that are deeply involved in the clash heard round the world. We studied. That is our job, as students, as teachers, as designers of our own lives. We did not answer our own questions, much less those of the world...questions that are bearing down on Denmark, and other countries, with increasingly violent forms of asking. Let me retract that. Violence is not a question. It is the end of questioning. THAT is also something we must study. Design as communication must wrestle with the nature of art, the divide between form and content, the role of designer, the question of living with one another and enhancing social conditions through design. Serious goals for serious design.

This course, taught by a member of IT University's Research in Innovative Communication group, is poised auspiciously on the cusp of this global crisis. We will handle our study responsibly. We will study our responsibility vigilantly. But we will not be design vigilantes.