Biography
Tom Ockerse educates (a word from the Latin root educare,
meaning “to draw out”) — as teacher, designer, artist, poet, theorist,
writer, publisher, (past) administrator, consultant, lecturer,
collaborator, parent, grandfather and other roles played so far in this
life. That’s all you need to know — but if you must, then please read
on . . .
Tom, as professor of graphic design, has taught at RISD since 1971. Born
Dutch (in Bandung, Indonesia) he and some of his family moved from the
Netherlands to the USA in 1957 (he was happy about that since he was
about to fail in school). With art and sports as two favorite interests
he went to Ohio State University via a full athletic scholarship
(recruited by the swim coach Mike Peppe) to study “commercial art.”
After receiving his BFA (1963) he continued studies in “graphic design”
at Yale University receiving his MFA in 1965. His design career began at
Fogelman Associates (Morristown, NJ) where he worked under the
direction of famed Jim Fogelman (considered by Philip B. Meggs the
originator of “corporate identity design” in America) on design accounts
for Ciba, Hoffman LaRoche, Interchem, Syntex and others. Although Tom
made a career shift into teaching in 1967, he has continued his design
practice (providing communication and design strategies) ever since for
clients like Houghton Mifflin, Indiana University, RISD, RIHT Financial,
Apple Computer, Aperture Magazine and World Magazine. Since 1990 Tom
chose to work primarily for non-profit organizations, such as the
design direction for Visible Language, and his partnership with Tony
Balis in The Humanity Initiative whose mission is “to encourage people to understand this planet as our common home.”
Tom’s involvement in graphic design education began at Indiana
University (1967-71) where he was involved as assistant professor with
undergraduate and graduate level students. This proved a transformative
period for him, especially due to his students who provoked him to
radically rethink education, the practice of design and the world of
art. He became thoroughly involved in the growing 1960s activities of
concrete poetry, Fluxus, mail art, happenings, book arts and other
“intermedia” (cf Dick Higgins) arts, all seeking to merge the arts and
erase conventional boundaries. This made him realize the importance of
the human factor at the very heart of design and that all design is
truly a matter of human “interface design” (a term the computing
industry hijacked), which means to design for the user experience as
something worth experiencing for both practical and inspirational needs.
In 1971 Tom came to RISD. There he instrumentally reshaped the graphic
design program as Head of the Graphic Design Department for twenty years
(1973-1993), counting among his accomplishments: a department growth
from 70 students to over 200 students in the 1970s; defining and
teaching, since the 1970s, core courses and subjects like Visible
Language (now called Making Meaning), Visual Systems, Strategic Design
(no longer offered) and electives Concrete Books (establishing bookwork
interests), Semiotics in Design; he initiated the Graduate Program of
Graphic Design in 1976, led a recent growth from 14 students to about
40 currently, was its Program Head until 2004, taught primarily the
introductory Graduate Studio I (Unfolding Meaning) and was a principle
thesis adviser; in 1986 he pioneered and directed for many years SIGDS
(the RISD Summer Institute for Graphic Design Studies) to reflect the
department’s curriculum for courses offered via Continuing Education. From 1978-1989 he also served as Chair (now called Dean) of the Division
of Design. He now continues the pleasure of teaching full-time without
any distractions of administrative duties in courses like Concrete
Books, Open Re/Search, TexTperiment/TexTperience, and Design as
Contemplative Practice. The latter course reflects his evolving
pedagogical and practical directions (to quote his 2006 lecture at Hong
Ik University, Korea):
“I view design not merely as ‘making’— rather, as ‘making appear.’ My
interests are in attending to a process that can generate visual design
required to help bring about relationships. This embraces the growing
paradigm shift from the reductive to the holistic. In this shift
relationships are contextually sensitive and able to integrate the
dynamic networks of mind, form, sensibility and spirit with life and
nature’s energies. Similarly, my quest in education seeks to offer what
will truly sustain students in life: processes to help cultivate their
intelligence so as to become truly integrated individuals in order to
deal with life as a whole. For design/art education this means a shift
from technical, skill-oriented, analytical (intellectual) tendencies
toward ways that deepen awareness for how user experiences can serve
practical needs but also draw out the poetry of life we are all so
intimately part of.”
Tom is known for bringing to light methods for perceiving the
mechanisms of meaning in visual communication design. This interest was
first stimulated by his experiments in concrete poetry with what he
called “word and image equations.” Then he was drawn into semiotics as
an intellectual theory that deals with questions concerning meaning,
cognition, reference, truth and reality, which he developed into a tool
based on the principles developed by logician C. S. Peirce. Eventually
these connected his interests with other fields for knowing which helped
him delve deeper into the subtle qualities reflected by mind and being —
keynotes to discovering the essential nature of objects and what lies
beneath the unfolding/enfolding experience of the design process. He
lectured on these interests and wrote articles such as Semiotics and
Design Education, (Visible Language, XIII, No.4), De-Sign/Super-Sign
(Semiotica, 52-3/4), and The Semiosis of Design (Zed 4, 1997),
Developing Design Educators (HearSay: 10 conversations on design, 2002),
Visualogue (Icograda, Nagoya, 2003), Design as Contemplative Practice,
United Designs, Hanyang University, 2005).
He lectured extensively on his work and on design education at many
institutions in the US, Europe and Asia. Recently Tom (with his wife
Susan) presented papers on this at the 2007 SVA Liberal Arts Conference:
Making in the Light of Being, and Understanding Being in the Light of
Making. He has also directed and taught many workshops on semiotics of
the visual and “Unfolding and Enfolding Meaning” for professional
designers and educators, at the RISD summer institute SIGDS, in Europe
and Asia (Musashino Art University, Japan; Hong Ik University, Seoul
national University). From 1993-1997 he was a regular adjunct faculty
member at the Jan van Eyck Akademie (Holland) for post-graduate studies
in Fine Arts, Design and Theory.
His theories are also present in his work with concrete poetry,
bookworks and other “experiments” that explore visual and visible
language systems. These art objects have won awards and international
recognition and were represented in numerous exhibitions and anthologies
(such as: Expo de Novisma Poesia, Buenos Aires; ?Konkrete Poesie,
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh; This
Book is a Movie, Dell Publishers; Breakthrough Fictioneers, Something
Else Press; American Typography Today, Reinhold); Experiment Design, ABC
Press Zurich). Published bookworks include: The A–Z Book, Time, TV
Documentracings, T.O.P., Space Window, and Chance/Choice. He directed,
partly designed and edited, and wrote for SPIRALS, a book published by
RISD’s Graphic Design Department to present the department’s pedagogy
and practice. A more recent project lives on the web at http://www.collectivewisdominitiative.org/maps.htm#RISD or http://www.gaidula.com/fetzer/archis_frame.html,
a collaborative project for the Fetzer Foundation and The Collective
Wisdom Initiative to help them map out and simulate the collective
wisdom field.
He has served as educational consultant to UCLA, Virginia Commonwealth
University, University of the Arts, Universidad de las Americas
(Mexico), Hull College and Sheffield Polytechnic (England), University
of Texas, and for Jan van Eyck’s graduate design program. In 1986 he was
the United Nations’ UNIDO consultant to the National Institute of
Design in Ahmedabad, India, to “acquaint visual communication faculty
and students with contemporary trends and technology in the field of
graphic design and to help the Institute in the planning of its
program.” From 1981-1985 he served as a Vice President of the AIGA
Board of Directors, and was responsible for establishing the AIGA
Education Committee as a standing committee, and for initiating the AIGA
publication Graphic Design Education that describes what a graphic
design education should encompass. He also served on the Board of the
Graphic Design Education Association. The American Center for Design
presented Ockerse with their 1991 Education Award.