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I’m Mitch Goldstein, and I teach art and design at Rochester Institute of Technology in Upstate New York.

About This Site

This small website is based on this thread of tweets about critique in design school. Rather than letting this information get lost in the ephemera of social media, I created this site to act as a resource for art and design students (and their teachers).

Critique is a complex, abstract, and challenging process that is quite difficult to do well. My hope is that this site acts as a resource for those learning how to give and receive critique on creative work (like students at art and design schools.) This site is by no means the end-all and be-all of how to crit, it is just a place to get started.

If you have any questions or comments, please or reach out to me on Twitter at @mgoldst.

Links of Interest

Here are a few additional resources on critique that are worth reading:

An excellent essay about “Giving and Taking Criticism” by Chappell Ellison.
Alexandra Lange’s essay “Criticism = Love” is a valuable perspective about where criticism comes from.
“Why is so much of design school a waste of time?” is an essay about the value of critique at design school, by Juliette Cezzar.
An amusing essay about nightmare art school crits by Jori Finkel: “Tales From the Crit.”
Liz Lerman’s “Critical Response Process” is a system of critique for works in progress. (PDF via the Brooklyn Arts Council.)
Great conversation on the Design Review podcast about critiques in commerical practice, but with lots of relevant points for students: “Stop Having Bad Critiques.”
Jeffrey Bardzell posted an excellent and detailed handout about How To Do Design Critique.
Alexis Lloyd wrote a great post about Four Methods for Good Critique.
The Room of Silence is an important video about critique and intersectionality (via Briar Levit).

A Note of Thanks

Thank you to these fine people for their help and feedback: Libby Clarke, Max Hathaway, Nikolas Klein, Chris Liu, Chris St.Cyr, Stuart, and Erin Weigel.