Month: February 2021

There’s been much talk lately about whether or not a practicing designer needs formal education. So is formal design education a must or a derelict?

Are the existing formal design courses up-to-date and is it at all possible to keep pace with the rapidly developing trends? Are there any alternatives to the expensive design education? With all the design books, conferences, and distance-learning websites that offer virtual educational opportunities, is it possible to compile your portfolio and ‘sell’ it to potential employers without a degree?

The opinion that before you step into profession you have to forget everything you learned in school is not new. Douglas Davis, a former adjunct professor at New York University in the M.S. in Integrated Marketing program, current HOW Design university contributor, is sure that perpetually shifting landscape in the field of design makes it impossible to teach everything in school because ‘as soon as one convergence starts, the search for the next competitive edge begins’. Recognizing new trends in the industry, writing a new course, getting it department approved, sending it to a university senate curriculum committee, making changes, having it approved, and then offering that course can take up to a year or more. Further still, the change happens much faster than the time it takes to go from freshman to first day.

No doubt, today’s computer programs will soon be outdated and familiar design processes will be reimagined, so it is only natural that one is skeptical about universities claiming their graduating students will be fully prepared to work on a professional design. That is why, advocates of formal education point out, you can never underestimate the value of learning how to learn. The well-known author and the co-chair of the MFA Design program at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York Steven Heller believes, ‘formal education teaches one to learn, and only a few privileged self-starters can achieve this, be it from books or osmosis, without guidance’. Design schools provide a place to learn how to observe, think critically, and solve problems creatively. New York City College of Technology graduate, Kate Ling offers her view that, ‘School’s job here is to teach the constant and then prep the student to have the changes.’

There are many practicing designers who believe your design education begins the day you start a job.  Practice is the key. It is obvious that in the field of design, your portfolio is everything. No matter if you have got a degree or not, it is the best way to access your creativity. If you are able to build a portfolio that shows your abilities and makes you stand out enough on your own, independent of college courses, it  works fine for many clients who look for real-world experience.

However, working on your design portfolio may be more efficient in design school where you
focus solely on soaking in design skills and techniques without having to accommodate to real-world restrictions such as the stress of clients’ concerns and the pressures of work deadlines and budgets.

Jordan DeVos, designer and strategist who used to work in Central Saint Martins – University of the Arts London, is certain that a foundation to a designer’s mindset shouldn’t begin with restrictions, design school being a time and space where client whims don’t derail ideas and budgets don’t hinder creativity.

Design school also lets you work with a broader spectrum of styles and, what is especially important, the portfolio will be critiqued and discussed under the tutelage of professional designers who set briefs for students, visit as guest lecturers, and teach as professors. This is another advantage of formal education: professional mentorship and creative community are a generous resource that isn’t instantly available to a new designer in the industry. ‘Nothing can really take the place of immersion in an educational environment which is then combined with experience in the workplace,’ says Heller.

There are also certain practical benefits about the formal education that can boost your career. During the years of study it gives you access to some resources, such as letterpress facilities, computer programs, visiting lecturers, and photography studios, which might be expensive to obtain otherwise and which are certainly crucial when creating a professional portfolio. After graduation, design education might be a competitive edge as it might assure future employers that the candidate is experienced in working with teams, in mastering skills, in meeting deadlines, and accomplishing goals, which in its turn might influence their hiring decision or help remove the glass ceiling.

This is not always the case, so these benefits might not compensate the high tuition costs, with yearly expenditures being higher than what a designer can make two years after graduation.

The final product – the design work itself – is the ultimate credential, and degree is not essential for that. There is an opposite opinion, however, not only among design educators but among the so-called self-taught designers as well.

Steven Heller, who never graduated with a design degree, admits that though he used to think design education was a colossal waste of time, he has come to the conclusion that good instincts and talent are not enough in the profession. Not enough basic knowledge can result in reinventing a wheel over and over, and even constant practice in the workplace might be insufficient if you practice all wrong. ‘Passion is useful, but justifying decisions to others solely on the basis of ‘It feels good’ extends only so far before one is labelled a dithering nabob of emotional excess’, says Heller.

‘Formal education does not, however, replace instinct and passion with rote and reflexive methods,’ he goes on. ‘What it does is provide tools for harnessing those enigmatic traits. Formal education imparts standards of competency’.

Matteo Bologna, the founding partner and creative director of Mucca Design and former board member of AIGA/NY, says: ‘I didn’t go to design school but wish I had. Making a success of yourself is very tough without having someone to teach you how not to make mistakes’.

So the question is: are there any alternatives to formal education that can provide its benefits, such as professional mentorship and creative community, as well as offer real-world experience, without draining one’s budget?

The radical solution by British design graduate Stacie Woolsey has proved it is possible. Priced out of further education, she approached practicing designers she admired, asked each of them to set her design briefs – an idea she describes as “freelance learning” – and completed all four briefs over 18 months of self-directed study. Woolsey didn’t feel that she could burden the designers with every question, so she started approaching industry professionals her age across a variety of fields and asked them to be mentors, thus building her own network of peers – one of the benefits of attending an established institution – turning to them for project-related advice and support. “Whenever I was taking a portfolio around, no one asked what qualification I got or what grade I got. It was all about the work,” Woolsey sums up. Now she plans to replicate her model for a group of students who similarly cannot afford formal education.

Nevertheless, given all the above, it is difficult not to agree with Ellen Shapiro, principal of Visual Language LLC in Irvington, NY, who justly remarks, if the need to go to work and earn money weren’t an issue, if tuition fees had been magically paid, wouldn’t many self-taught designers have jumped at the chance to spend time in classes with great teachers and immerse themselves in art and culture, form and structure?

Talks and disputes about the quality of modern architecture education have been going on for a couple of years already.

A large section of the profession thinks that educators are failing at our sole task: to train students for practice. Patrik Schumacher, Zaha Hadid Architects principal and a guest professor at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard as well as the head of the Architectural Association’s Design Research Laboratory, criticized the existing approach to architecture schooling in his Facebook post entitled “13 theses on the crisis of architectural academia”.

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