Bruce McIntosh: Demanding teacher of creativity on the go
by Kris Bergquist
inding Bruce McIntosh could be an all-day task.
He could be at home working on his art. He could be at the office talking to students, or he could be in design class, showing his students what works and what doesn't. Or he could be traveling across the United States making contacts for his
Bruce McIntosh, associate professor of design, is a busy man, and he loves it.
"How do you everything? Frantically."
McIntosh said, laughing. "I'm always doing things simultaneously. That's part of what is keeping me alive."
acmtohsa said that when the teaching and the work really came together, they
Besides teaching, 44-year-old McIntosh maintains his own design company, the McIntosh Company. He is also an associate at Altman and Manley, a Boston advertising and design firm. And he is an adviser at Charlestown High School in Charlestown, Mass., where he taught for six years in an innovative design curriculum for urban high schools, using computers as writing and drawing tools.
"To me, it's the accumulation and diversity that has been interesting, not really any specific thing. McIntosh said "I've been lucky enough to have been excited for it."
Melnitt said that one of the best things about his two years of teaching at the
University of Kansas was that the students took liberal arts classes in addition to art classes.
"It appeals to me, teaching at a university." McNishtah said. "There are students majoring in visual communication, and they take other coursey communications, and they take other broadened courses
"You need that. If you can't think intellectually and can't think of ideas, design is a tough field to be successful in." Even though he likes being a professor, McMtosh said he was not fond of the word "teaching."
"I'm a little skeptical about the notion that any of us can really teach somebody something," Meltosh said. "What I do when I need to help up situations where students can learn."
"I could tell kids how to do any of that stuff, but if somehow we can enable them to do that themselves, then they're set up," she said in good shape for as long as they live."
McIntosh majored in sociology at Brown University and graduated magna cum laureum in 1967. At the same time he took classes at the Ride Island School of Mathematics.
"In sociology, I got an understanding of the differences of people from different areas." McIntosh said. "I'm interested in how and why people do what they do, so I saw it as a good compliment to getting messages across through visual concepts.
While in college, McIntosh also was
working in the professional design field, working for companies and doing posters for anyone that needed help.
"For some reason, I never assumed college was the whole answer." McIntosh said. "I just assumed that it was only part of the picture. I would have to go to college, but there would be lots of experiences that I would add on.
"Sometimes it seems to me that students are feeling or saying. 'I supposed to get everything from classes in college.' I just don't think that's possible."
"No matter how good any course or any teacher or any college is, it's only one perspective. Each of us has to end up putting them together, sort of our perspectives."
Meltoh realizes that he is not everyone's favorite teacher.
"I will be honest with you," McNishtead said. "Some students say I'm too tough, too demanding, maybe too geared toward professional standards.
process.
"You don't do three sketches for me,
you do 50. Three isn't enough, and it won't
be enough for a company."
sarah Harken, Lawrence junior, said she had learned from her classes with McIntosh that the first design never was good enough.
"I reave things over and over and over and over and over for him." Harken said. "I know that's how it is in the world, and it helps a lot when you first start out.
"Either you hate Bruce, or you love Bruce. The main thing is that he's a teacher, and he's there to teach. That's the main thing, and he does it well."
Matthew Gaynor, assistant professor of design, agreed that McIntosh's demands on students might be hard for them at the moment, but it would help in the long run.
"Ideas don't come out of the sky," Gaynor says. "You have to work to generate ideas. While searching for many different solutions, the students think that kind of idea is important in a design program because students are challenged more."
In his career McIntosh has worked for three advertising agencies and a design agency; designed exhibits for a Harvard museum; taught at three schools; designed for Time magazine, Arby's Roast Beef and Harvard University; and worked as the art director for Horticulture magazine.
In his professional design experience, McIntosh found that one of the hardest things was suppressing his ego for the sake of getting the same problem in his students' work.
"I try real hard to let the problem tell me what to do." McIntosh said. "The tendency, I think, in creative endeavors is to show people I really designed that."
"I call it the Lone Ranger theory of design. If I can finish up and people say, 'Who was that masked man?' then I've
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