I’ve been joking for weeks about shattering the hopes and dreams of aspiring young designers at the AIGA Portfolio review but actually I found the kids to be pretty talented, serious about the industry and very open to feedback. The day really re-ignited my desire to get into teaching. I was very impressed that so many kids had traveled in from Delaware and Salisbury on a Saturday morning, professionally dressed, to have their portfolios reviewed (by me of all people). On the flipside I didn’t get one student from MICA, which is directly across the street. Maybe they’re too cool to get feedback from somebody who didn’t go to MICA, or I’m too intimidating, or there were just not any assigned to me over the course of 4-5 hours, though that seems unlikely.
So with out further ado, the POSITIVES:
The State schools are getting better at cranking out workplace ready designers, the gap between them the private art school kids is continuing to shrink.
The program at Towson (where I earned my B.F.A.) looks to have greatly improved, apparently benefitting from some staff turn over. The students have a much stronger understanding of production than I had when I came out of there and the projects they were doing we much more complex.
INTERNSHIPS! Thanks to a down economy, cash strapped companies are more willing to give students a chance to work the for free. These kids definitely had more options available than I did. I wish a certain education company in Baltimore would be more open to internships – I could use some slave labor.
A lot of students are hungry for more and asked about Grad School. I did my best to talk several of them out of going directly from undergrad to a MFA program. Go out, get some real world experience make sure you love the job before you commit to getting another degree in it, you’ll get more value taking a web design class in 5 years when the technology has changed from what you learned in undergrad.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Can you call my dad and explain that to him for me?”
And the NEGATIVES:
Where is the web stuff? Too many students didn’t even have basic HTML skills, and even more disturbing many of them had no interest in the web at all. I find that hard to believe considering they mostly grew up with the Internet.
PRESENTATION!: A lot of work wasn’t mounted – when you have no experience the emphasis falls heavier on presentation. I hate doing it too, but coming out of school it’s not optional. No untrimmed 11x17’s in a manila folder folks.
Book Covers – this is just a pet peeve, but why does every design program have students go through pointless project? I almost NEVER comes up professionally and it’s in every portfolio. I’d rather see less exciting/more realistic project like a black and white print ad laid out in different size formats.
Where’s Bob? I figured I’d get at least 1 ‘Robert Gillespie’ type who’d argue with me when I told him something wasn’t working. Maybe it was just the format but none of kids seemed to know how to defend their work when it was attacked.
HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY
“Are you graduating this semester?” – question from a girl in her early 20’s who apparently thought I was student. SCORE!
WTF MOMENT OF THE DAY
University of Baltimore hosts a portfolio review, in the Art building, full of graduating designers all of which are asking about Grad schools and there was not a single piece of student work from the UB Pub Design program on display anywhere. It was a golden opportunity to promote the program and they missed it.
It certainly wouldn't have happened if I were teaching there :)
Great post Mark. Sorry I was out of town. I hope you encouraged the students to think about every aspect of their work and to have the confidence to defend their choices. Thanks for the shout out too.
ReplyDelete-bob
I agree with you 100% Mark about the lack of HTML and web skills schools are teaching. I went to SCAD and our web class relied on programs like Dreamweaver to produce HTML code. I was fortunate enough to have learned HTML coding in high school and refused to use Dreamweaver as a way to produce code.
ReplyDeleteAt SCAD we did not have a lot of web based classes to choose from and there was no emphasis on learning to code HTML, CSS or anything more advanced. With the way the industry is I hope that schools start evolving their programs to support the demand on web skills.
Great blog!
- Tina (former ISGer)
yes - the few that did have web stuff weren't sure if they used CSS or tables, some of them looked straight exported out of photoshop which could be confirmed if I was able to see their code vs. screencaps.
ReplyDeleteEither way, my expectations of student web work is low, just at least know how to edit an existing web page. It's the lack of interest in the web that bothered me. No one even asked about designed for apps/tablets