It had never occurred to me that teaching is in my DNA, until recently, now that I am retired, and have the time to think. I understand there were other distant relatives of mine involved in education, but my grandfather (1865–1963) was a headmaster; his brother a music professor at a Berlin conservatory. My father (1896–1963), when returning from active military service, after WW I, shifted focus from pedagogy to psychiatry, unable to cope with the laissez-fair behavior and disinterest of students and colleagues of that time. His brother was also a dedicated teacher.
It was never in my plans to become a design educator. But my experience at Simmons, especially the Valz Project, are very important in shaping my professional life. I have used it as gauge to measure many projects at other schools. After my design-training in Hamburg and several years of working as designer, I came to Boston, joining a group of associates and forming a graphic design studio on Boylston Street. I never thought that I would become a design instructor, ever; in neither near nor far futures. It seemed outside of my plan. Then, sometimes in the early sixties, I worked for the first time with Simmons College students. It was an amazing experience. I cherished my observations of the collaboration and commitment between teachers and learners. This experience provided the incentives, about a decade later, for me to become a design educator. I have been a practicing design educator since—for about thirty years. But it is at Simmons that I learned the true value of word-smithing because I started with a meager vocabulary reservoir of about three hundred words when I landed, which expanded slowly over time, but which was one of my greatest hurdles to clear. I still stumble lots of times.
Design students as well as typographers are notoriously short-changed by their programs when it comes to the elegant use of language and adherence to pragmatic language conventions and the proper use of grammar. They most often were and are still trained to erroneously believe that images or icons are superior and more efficient and therefore more important than text, as MIT’s György Kepes would often posture. Designers seem to think that editors are superfluous and in the way. Instead of fostering collaborations, they seem to be in a very unhealthy and a totally unnecessary competition. (A check of catalogues of most, even of the so called best schools, will show courses in “visual literacy” but a dearth of courses in “communication science or courses that provide knowledge on the translation of messages into actions by the reader.” That means that design students know a lot about constructing aesthetic images, but extremely little about eliminating barriers between message and audience.)
I must have had the same attitude, until I came across the discussions of the Simmons “Valz Project.” It is my belief that it was the most pragmatic and eye-opening learning experience in any undergraduate program of that era. It influenced my approach to teaching, and I gratefully must credit Professor Valz. Over the years I worked with many Simmons alumni and have always appreciated their contributions to the success of many publications and publishing efforts.
About the Project
In the early sixties, long before the dawn of digital imaging and production, before automated planning, estimation, and page-imposition, I was made aware of the “Valz Project” at Simmons College. Seniors, preparing to become editors, managing editors, or production managers in publishing had in their portfolios a report on their “Valz Project.” It was the result of a production-management course, created by Dino Gris Valz, who was lecturer on book and magazine publishing. After working almost twenty years with the Andover Press, Valz had joined a Boston advertising agency in 1943, where he became media director. He began teaching at Simmons about the same time. After he retired, the project was put into the hands of Professor Virginia Bratton and continued under the same title. Valz died September 14, 1991.
The gist of the projects was for students to prepare detailed and comprehensive production plans, with realistic timetables and cost estimates for book or journal publications, enabling management to weigh options and make informed decisions. The Valz Project included everything: determination of quantities, physical formats, comparative cost analyses, directives to authors in relationship to estimates of lengths of text matter ascertained from manuscripts in relationship to the number of pages allotted, as well as solicitions of competitive, not ball-park, realistic, and comprehensive production estimates from type houses, printers, and post print finishers, etc. The project was one of the major reasons that most graduates from this program found immediate employment.
I was impressed because most designers or typographers I have encountered rarely were able to match the skills of a Simmons undergraduate senior. Even today, at most design schools, formal editorial conventions and issues of production management are still being ignored. Over the years, I have worked not just with few with but quite a number of Simmons alumni, who always impressed me with their skills and concerns for quality; fidelity of editing and word-smithing, and their ability to control detail and enforce consistencies.
The Simmons experience was decisive for me to accept a full-time faculty appointment at SMU, Southeastern Massachusetts University, in 1973, which had been formed about a decade earlier and provided the opportunities that other established schools could not offer, namely to start more or less from scratch, plan and build in regard to contemporary means.