Mark O’Dwyer: Designer, design educator, Irishman.
As seen in the corresponding information graphic, the biggest technical evolution within the context of design education has occurred during the past 15 years.
Mark O’Dwyer, an Irish interdisciplinary practitioner, has experienced this evolutionary change both as a designer and as a design educator.
Born in 1967, Mark’s career has been framed by ongoing response to change as the design profession has undergone positive disruption. As design student of the late 80s, Mark’s training in traditional, analogue techniques was quickly superseded within the first decade of his career. Like many other designers, the introduction of the Apple Macintosh and associated design software forced Mark to reskill on the job.
A career in corporate design and design communication allowed Mark to refine his capacity as cross-discipline designer, working on identity, corporate communications, advertising and financial projects, enhancing his design skills to create not just aesthetic solutions but strategic ones also.
Whilst adapting to the digital revolution, Mark’s career shifted to design education — and from 2006 it was here that he would experience greater amounts of change than that as a graduate two decades earlier.
The early years of Mark’s lecturing focused on pre-press and finished artwork. However, as the design industry evolved, so too has Mark’s teaching focus, with him leading the Design Faculty of Torrens University in the areas of User Experience and Industry Connectivity — A reflection on the subject matter interests formed while undertaking his Masters of Design at the University of Technology, Sydney.
As Mark’s discipline expertise evolved, so too did the learning environments and the technology used to teach it, with a rethink in how and where learning takes place. As Mark put it, “the classroom is no longer a room. Access to information and to global communities has been enabled by technology. The laptop is now the classroom…”
Mark continues to work as a design educator and during the past 12 months has applied this mindset in how he has approached designing the cross-discipline Work Integrated Learning components of an undergraduate design degree. The learning will take place through online collaboration and facilitation, with limited need for a classroom for the learning to take place.
Whilst Mark continues to create visual, corporate design outcomes,
he has adapted to incorporate experiential and user-focused outcomes.
DSGN6027 Design Contexts 