CANDIDATE CRITIQUE OF STUDENT WORK

Type of activity: Guest speaker

Points available: 5 points

Date: February 22, 2013

Location: Carnegie letterpress room, Drake University

Presenter: Matthew [last name withheld for confidentiality!]

Entry: This was an opportunity for faculty and students to watch Matthew critique existing Drake student work, to get an idea of his approach to critiques and observe how he handled the assessment of an assignment that he had no previous familiarity with. There were ten posters lined up on the wall, all responses to a recent assignment in one of the graphic design classes that involved an international poster competition based in Italy. Matthew had a chance to read the project brief, and then began the critique with an overview of his approach to poster design/assessment and a quick rundown of formal qualities he looks for. He then critiqued each poster individually, addressing in detail the two whose makers were present in the room. He made an effort to involve the audience in his critique as well, and fielded some questions from faculty members at the end.

Assessment: Again, this was included on the one-page survey documenting our impressions of the candidate and our assessment of his critiquing skills. Interestingly, this portion of his interaction with us involved him assessing us almost as much as we have been assessing him.

Conclusion: I found his critique to be pretty strong overall, considering he did not have any previous knowledge of the posters or their creators and considering the very limited time he had to work with. He was unafraid to be appropriately critical, but was constructive and thoughtful in his suggestions for improvement. He seems to have a good deal of background knowledge to draw from (for example, knowing the relative efficiency of nuclear vs. wind power) and had some good on-the-spot ideas for how certain posters might become more dynamic through scale shifts and hierarchy. Even though my work was not up for critique, I still found the session productive; I filed away a number of mental notes regarding future poster projects and overall I found much of his advice to be quite valuable--and as I mentioned in the presentation activity notes, it is always interesting to hear a fresh, outside perspective on our work from time to time.

Documentation: Again, see my notes from the presentation.