Matt Ward
Processed: An Introduction (1/2)

A multiplicity of meanings can be drawn from the name and theme of this year’s degree show that exemplify the graduate experience.
It is at this point that our students are looking for the official ‘stamp’ of approval: YOU ARE A DESIGNER! It is at this point that students become aware that they are part of a bigger educational machine, they have been through the mill, they are now processed.

The feeling of being a piece of educational SPAM is partly due the acknowledgement of other graduates across the country, the Free Range festival is a wake-up call – it is a time when our students compare themselves to others and start to articulate their unique selling points. So what makes the Goldsmiths Design Graduate different, what makes design at Goldsmiths different? Firstly, it is the critical, conceptual and ethical approach to design that sets us apart; at the centre of our practice is the acknowledgment that design is shaped by its social and cultural context, but whilst being shaped, it also shapes – design has the potential to act as the agent of change, design has the potential to change the world!

Secondly, it is the development of a rich and rigorous design process, one that allows the designer to develop a ‘critical practice’ that can be applied to many different problems and situations. The processes that our students engage with and learn throughout their three-year experience are intellectual, conceptual and material activities that arm them with unique thinking and making ‘tools’. They are now armed and dangerous; they know how to design and they are willing to do it!

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