ABSTRACT
Denman Waldo Ross was among the few to start a tradition of foundational design education in America at the time. Ross had a unique perspective into the teaching of art. He read art critics and historians such as James Jackson Jarves, John Ruskin, and Charles Eliot Norton, he inclined towards viewing art as a product of the mind and not just through its appeal to the senses. In examples that neglected any stylistic association, Ross referred to arrangements of nonrepresentational forms constructed of dots, lines, and colors as pure design. While endorsing a then revolutionary idea of "design as a science" in his writings, Ross was introducing a fresh approach to design education that primarily targeted the imposing aesthetic structures and timeless formalisms dominant in the field at the time. Ross's intention was to use pure design and form relations as tools to comprehend how the visual and other material qualities play into the design process of an individual.
