Yet once Graphic Design is introduced in the classroom, how do educational offerings differ? Herewith — and in the spirit of “la rentrée” — is an extremely random sampling.

Wanting to be taken seriously, designers yearn to be respected for their minds. Yet they take their real gifts — a miraculous fluency with beauty, an ability to manipulate form in a way that can touch people’s hearts — for granted.

Today, the comparatively prehistoric graphic vocabulary of the early web has either been forgotten, or is simply regarded with the facile mockery that comes of 20/20 hindsight. Instead, they are an important part of internet history, and have, intended or not, a strange beauty.