Message from the Chair

Authors

  • Fritz Meyers The Ohio State University

Abstract

My thanks to our members and readers for letting me serve as chair over the millennium.  Reading through past issues of the Journal, listening to EDGD meetings and pondering history, I am struck with one word: "Change". Change is our universal constant and there is yet a constant within change.  The constant I note in change is the mind of man.  The thinking human being brings about the rapid changes we have seen and will see in our lives; thinking humans have brought us to where we are today.

 

The Engineering Design Graphics Division is about visual communication and it is about technology.  Fifty years ago I was a young engineer doing design "on the board" using the tools of the day: triangles, straight edge, dividers and compass to create drawings for the production of manufacturing equipment.  Today young engineers use computer programs to design, animate, test and present concepts for manufacture and production.  Five hundred years ago Leonardo da Vinci was making sketches (copies of which adorn my office wall) from which inventions could be built, and with technique which I could never hope to equal.  Three hundered years ago Venetian artists were creating architectural perspectives which rival the best our architects can produce today.  We have new tools but is our visualization, our imagery in the mind, any greater than that of daVinci or Canaletto?

 

The tools for presentation are changing at breakneck speed (for a teacher trying to stay current) but the mind must still envision the final product and know how to use the tool, be it a brush or an animation program or a virtual reality studio.  We in the EDGD welcome all who share the love of the exciting graphic media and the love of learning (and teaching).  What name we are called: engineering graphics, freshman design or computer graphics are not as significant as what we know, do, learn and teach.

 

Reading letters from past chairs the words vision, fiends, service and change clung to my memory.  These are what teaching technology and joining with others with like interest is all about.  Those of us active in EDGD have enjoyed all of these —

—the vision for the future of graphics presented in our meetings and publications,

—the friends we have made from all over the continent who share our passion for graphics,

—the service opportunities we find that broaden our perspective and give us a sense of worth,

—and the constant change we share which keeps us alert and alive.

Issue

Vol. 63 No. 3 (1999): Autumn

Section

Editorials & News
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