Comments on: A call to design students and graduates

By: alisa like 'alice in wonderland'

alisa like 'alice in wonderland' — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:52:54 +0000

I’m currently a Graphic Design student from Austria/Tirol, and before i’d run a design course, i’d check if students are really intrested into (graphic, or another) design – i’d also check who they are, to know if my course is the right course for them (= at my academy i know/see a lot of people studying something they aren’t intrested into. and for me it’s not fine to work with them ;)). And after checking this point, i’d try to teach/coach every student individual, even if it needs a long time. So if we’d do a project, for instance, where the students have to do a CorporateDesign or a CI, i’d speak with everyone about his/her concept and help her/him to find a good concept.

All in all, “Individuality” would be the important part of my course, to let them know that nobody is or does the same thing, cause in my opinion “standart” or “normality” is your design-death. And it’s important to be and work individual from the first step of a design-career :)

By: John Loudon

John Loudon — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:06:27 +0000

Its funny you ask this, last year I thought, what would I do different?

One of the key things was:

I would let the students know how they can improve there chances of getting in, CV’s, portfolios and such like.

And also I would bring in an industry professional or two to talk with them.

Now when I was thinking this I was a commercial web designer working for a pretty large company so I volunteered to come along, and it went down very well, I think the students really got a feel for what I was saying.

On the back of this I was offered to come and teach industry standard web design, rather than having my students rely on Dreamweaver; I taught them how to hand code, and think their ideas out, I covered wire-framing, sketching, inspiration… to try and break them out of this stale pre-made course work that is 10 years out of date.

Can’t really explain the story in full but the long and the short of it was….

I taught them the standards way, the fun way, the way that they would do it in a work place… while keeping it in the here and now…

I still love teaching in my spare time :) This was all caused be me being a bit mad that I spent a year learning stuff like “director lingo” and then the industry just scoring it out.

Anyhow hang cool people :)

my site is Scottish media. feel freedrop me a line :)

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 07:22:53 +0000

I’m currently a senior graphic design student and I should say that our courses are pretty good, however I would change a couple of things. It would be nice to have had behind the scenes training. What I mean is getting a lesson behind the scenes or rather what happens after design leaves your hands like going to the printers. They’re spending too much time and effort in trying to change someone who has no sense of design into someone who has an intuition for design. You can’t learn intuition, but you can learn programs and the necessary means to carry out a design. They spend too much time on the beginning and not the end. Our web courses don’t even teach you how to interact with a server or maintain a website. They only teach you the code, but not how to use it all when you’re finished. :|

By: Jana

Jana — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:40:50 +0000

Training in presentation skills. What good is doing a great design if you can’t effectively pitch it to a client who bases everything on whether or not it suits his personal taste?

By: Danielle Jeffels

Danielle Jeffels — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:01:53 +0000

Im a student in my last year, im currently on a work placement and this had made me think that im not good enough for a graphic design job and i don’t have enough experience, brief at uni go on for ever and there so specific. On placement the brief were loose and the company spends most of there time pitching there ideas to clients and they turn out a lot of work and come up with ideas and have them made within hours. i feel that uni needs to have compulsory three month placement and have quicker briefs.

By: Stuart Dyckhoff

Stuart Dyckhoff — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 05:53:01 +0000

Oh wow … what wouldn’t I change.

Let me preface this by saying I’m not a designer. I’m a techie who loves and recognises good design when I see it and then realises just how poor my skills are. However I did my course because it touched on multimedia, film, editing and other aspects I have a deep interest in and because I wanted some formal training to back up my self-taught skills.

So… the tutors would need to be just that, TUTORS and not some failed (possibly not but it became my impression) designer wannabe. Don’t give me a quickly hacked together A4 sheet of step by step instructions on how to do something without explaining the why behind it. Especially when the s/w is as complicated as C4D.

What else – force the tutors to front up and actually give genuine feedback. I got a distinction for my C4D work but a fellow student who spent hours a day perfecting his use of it and was far better than I yet only got a merit.

Only the overall course tutor gave us feedback, yet we were told at the outset that all sections would have standard feedback forms filled out…! Yeah right.

Oh and make it relevant to us the students. Interesting to note that of the 5yrs the course has been running only 1 person has gone on to do anything in design of any sort so far. Not a good record I’d hazard and I know only a few were like me never intending to go into the ‘business’.

By: Miti

Miti — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:54:20 +0000

Last semester I completed this elective which was like an internship in a design studio except that all designers were students and the creative director was our actual tutor. So we had real clients, but our tutor made sure we did industry-standard work. I learnt so much more in the 7 weeks spent over there than in a year and a half at uni doing projects without clear directions.
I think that a subject based on the concept of apprenticeship has to be made compulsory in design course because it gives invaluable experience to the students.

By: Bree C.S

Bree C.S — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:03:15 +0000

I agree with Stephen, But this may be because I got into graphic design to cater to merchandising and the commercial world, I find a lot of people are the complete opposite – Artists first, designers second. I believe you can be a creative designer without a background in fine art.

I love my tutors at school, they are incredibly talented and wonderful people – however our course totally lacks any technical tuition! youtube is a huge help here.
So it’s a lot of teaching yourself but can get incredibly frustrating when you have this awesome design idea in your mind but you can’t poop it out.

If i ran a design course I would comprise business and technical tuition as well as the consistent need for innovation.

By: Chris Lee

Chris Lee — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 07:54:42 +0000

I had a design minor, but my experience seems to reflect everyone else’s.

Every design class I’ve ever been in has lacked a sense of purpose. It’s as if they were all traditional art classes. Every project was presented in a vacuum with a heavy emphasis on ambiguity and artistic vision rather than rationality or a basis in reality. Like “design a poster for an art exhibition.”

I feel that every design project should require a strong rationale paper following the actual final project. If your rationale is weak, then your design is weak.

I also think business classes should be a requirement because design serves business. Without an idea of how businesses operate, we designers are missing a huge part of what we are designing for.

We aren’t creating commissioned art pieces, we are creating design solutions.

By: Cameron

Cameron — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:26:48 +0000

David,

I am currently a design student at Portland State Univ in Portland, Oregon USA and what I am happy that is being taught at least to some degree is PRINT! I wish the course was more focused on how printing works etc from the time the design is approved from the client to the time it is delivered as a printed piece. Students in GD do not seem to grasp the knowledge of what is reality in the printing world (grant it a lot of things are now reality with new tech but still managing the budget of a project + fantasy don’t mix well.)

I would love to see more print shops being visited, mom and pop, large scale, all types from full four color offset to web to flexo to letterpress, designers need to know how things work so that as designers they can design for how it will be processed.

Just my thoughts! I bought your book a week ago from Borders online and am waiting for it to return! It suck’s that it cost more at Borders then Barnes and Nobel but I got a gift card to Borders so I had to use it. Keep up the good work, I love to see your work, and thoughts on many things. Maybe you can skype with our students at PSU some time we do a share and tell with designers who either come to the school and talk or skype in and talk to the students.

– Cameron