The earth tipped slightly on its axis earlier this month after Design Academy Eindhoven announced Justin McGuirk’s appointment as head of its new design writing program. Scientists believe it was the collective waving of fists by student writers worldwide exclaiming, “Told you there was job in this, Mom!” that momentarily knocked our planet out of its usual alignment.
The academy is addressing what it identifies as an urgent need for a critical discourse that keeps up with changes in the discipline. By staying connected to rapid developments in cultural, social, political, and technological domains over the past decade, design has grown increasingly more relevant—but no one’s going to know about it without skilled writers to put them words together and make thoughts read good.
Truly clever writers could go through Design Academy Eindhoven’s announcement and substitute the word “jewelry” for “design,” and truly clever readers would see that it’s the exact same story. Of course, Art Jewelry Forum readers—the cleverest of clever readers—are already aware of the large pool of emerging jewelry writers AJF supports and publishes. With the design world stepping forward to validate the importance of the relationship between writers and practitioners in the field, the jewelry world is training its loupes on the next generation of jewelry writers that will knock the world off its axis.
