This paper aims to highlight how the return to Basic Design, understood both as a theory and as a practice in the culture of design, can train new generations of designers, particularly in the field of visual communication, making them more aware of the fundamentals of design.

The need to establish a shared approach to inventing and organizing visual content is an issue that has its roots in the origins of modern graphic design. Already in the 1920s, institutions such as the Bauhaus in Germany began to explore design as a "language of vision," universal and based on perception. This concept has long influenced the training of designers all over the world.

However, the rapid development of new digital tools and technologies, if on the one hand has speeded up the creative process and increased the expressive potential, on the other has led to a gradual and significant loss of design value, relegating it increasingly to the expression of digital technologies.

Already in the 1990s, design teachers found themselves having to manage the pressure of teaching (and learning) the use of software, highlighting the need to balance technical skills with visual and critical thinking. Today, the era of artificial intelligence has further revolutionized design practice, redefining the very process through which a project is shaped.

If in the past, designers and students consulted monographs, catalogs, and other resources to draw methodological and aesthetic inspiration, today, instead, the use of social networks and the writing of “prompts” can represent a risk for the quality of design, as they often lead to a superficial combination of shapes, characters, and colors, and more generally, of visual artifacts.

In this context, both students and professionals who want to delve into visual language are confronted with an ecosystem in which objects progressively lose their identity as “artifacts”.

The aim of this contribution is therefore to demonstrate how the integration of Basic Design exercises within design training courses can be a strategic choice to educate new generations to design methodologies that have moved away from universal visual concepts. This approach aims to develop a greater awareness of the anthropological dimension of design, understood as a constantly evolving flow of cultural sensibilities.

In support of this thesis, a teaching experience conducted in the Fundamentals of Visual Communication laboratory held at the Department of Architecture and Industrial Design of the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli will be presented, finally illustrating the results that emerged from the laboratory.

Keywords: Basic Design, Visual Communication, Educational experience.