The Graphic Student

I always look forward to critiques, but usually by the fifth person in I’m looking a lot like the top right button up there. This adorable button set was designed by Alberto Rigau. I’m sure all students can relate (especially to the bottom left “what the fu…”).

Have any of you heard about this before? Hyper Island is a school (with probably the greatest name in history) in Stockholm and Karlskrona which was first conceived in 1995… that’s right, conceived. Not many schools that I know of start off because the creators have an exciting idea. The starters of Hyper Island wanted a different type of design school - one that involved “industry based learning”. What does that mean? Hyper Island’s students work closely and constantly with industry professionals (IKEA for example).

The tuition is not cheap, but I can only imagine this school is full of the creative, talented students. You can see some of their student work here and here and if you’re interested, a list of the students here. Their main page is setup in a blog fashion, which is how I came across the student profile shown below. But if you click on it, it will take you to Youtube where you can find a number of different student profiles from Hyper Island. To be honest, this school looks frighteningly good. 

(The student work at the top was done by Joakim Jansson of Hyper Island)

We want to find something out. With design schools being situated in all areas of the world - rural, urban, towns, suburbs (maybe?) - it would be very interesting to see what the average day of a design student looks like. How are we going to do this? If you’re a student, look at the form below and answer the eight questions in the comments section (or, for more anonymity, e-mail me directly at matthewaubie@gmail.com). This weekend, I will be graphing all the different times, averaging each one, and finally creating a timeline showing the average day of a design student.

Please take the 30 seconds to answer the questions - oh and remember to include the name of the school you attend.

Thank you - the results should be interesting!

There is an interesting project taking place over at Under Consideration’s Speak Up department. Here’s the jist (go to their site for all the details):

At Winthrop University, where I currently teach, a clear divide exists between the Department of Design and Fine Arts offices. It’s literally a dividing wall. But even as a freshman at the University of Arizona, I recall how technology, exhibitions, and even furniture signaled an entry to the design area.

Different colored walls. Designerly-looking work hung on walls. Doors locked to artists. Expensive Herman Miller furniture. This post is a call to students, faculty, staff, and designers, who have also observed these divides. For this first Hall of Design edition, our readers are encouraged to document academic design spaces, that separate themselves from other disciplines. On the other hand, they might completely blend into the fine arts, architectural, interior design, illustration, or interactive areas of study. In either case, document it with your camera and follow our submission directives. Universities, trade & technical schools, art schools, domestic, overseas, grammar schools, and high schools are all eligible.

Remember this is not a thegraphicstudent.com project - it is for Under Consideration. If you want to take part (which you should!), please go to their site.

One more post about Design Thinkers. I stumbled across this gem - a video blog done by students from the York Sheridan Design Program at Design Thinkers. I’m a little confused who they made it for (I know it said MagikCoffee at the end, but they link here in the info - check out both). Thanks for making this!

I mentioned in my last post that I was fortunate to visit Design Thinkers last week in Toronto. It was a great convention full of fantastic speakers and enthusiastic professionals and students (though not as many students as I was hoping for). You can visit the website to read about all the speakers - but what really stood out to me was the ending of the final day. A panel of five speakers sat on the stage for an improv Q&A after a scheduled speaker unexpectedly cancelled. All of a sudden I was facing Steff Geissbuhler, Massimo freaking Vignelli, Scott Stowell, Marc Alt, and Bettina Von Stamm, and they were about to tell me everything I needed to know about being a successful, happy graphic designer.

One of the audience members asked a question related to students - there were actually a couple questions referring to students, and Massimo Vignelli had the same answer for all them. It didn’t matter what the question, he insisted on one thing: Students need to study three things to be successful - theory, history, & criticism. 

Not software knowledge, not studio class, not beautiful websites (actually Marc Alt backed him up by telling us not to spend our tuition on software education). Vignelli said it’s important students know why they’re designing, not how. 

This struck me. In my program, we do not have theory class, or history class… Criticism comes naturally in any arts course I believe, but not the first two. I’m not going to say whether or not I agree with Vignelli (though I’m certainly not going to disagree with a legend), but my program seems to do well without out right teaching theory and history. We focus on studio, and it seems to work (and by that, I mean graduates gets jobs). I’ve spoken to a number of students from other schools who aren’t taught these two “subjects” either - all of them talk about it with some worry and uncertainty… what aren’t we learning?

But here’s where it changes. I’m not taught design history, and neither is anybody else in my course… but we were all excited to see Massimo Vignelli. We knew who he was without reading it from a textbook. I’m pretty sure most my classmates know Paul Rand and David Carson too. Even without being “taught” history, we still have pretty good knowledge of it. And even without being taught theory, we are able to have lively conversations about why certain layout elements are or aren’t working. We can have educated (wrong word?) conversations about typography and colour…how is this possible?

I can only accredit this phenomena to the idea that history and theory are built into graphic design - impossible to avoid. It is simply impossible to design an editorial spread without organically coming in contact with problems that force you to understand theory. It is impossible to use typography (well) without understanding where type came from and how it was used in the past (even if the past is a year ago).

I think the simple fact is that all design students are students of a lot more than we know. And really, that’s the reason graphic design is so exciting to me.

(the illustration shown above was done by the talented design student Maggie Martz at the Design Thinkers conference. For some photos of the conference, check out thegraphicstudent flickr page.)

Holy Space. I’m pretty sure if you asked any design student to quickly sketch the type of area they’d want to show their work, this is what they’d give you. Big, open, and full of work. The video above features the Rhode Island School of Design graduate thesis exhibition.

This exhibit really displays something I heard a lot about at Design Thinkers last week: collaboration. To have the opportunity to work with media designers, robotics students, graphic design students, is really a valuable opportunity. According to many of Design Thinkers’ speakers, learning to work with people of different design departments (and non-design areas as well) is as important as being good at your specific craft. RISD really seems to give their students this opportunity.

Oh, and as a little bonus, here’s a little video I found profiling RISD and one of its students, Cro. I found him a little arrogant (but aren’t we all?), but I did like how he said studio time creates discussions that are helpful to our work… I find the conversations that stem from student-to-student discussion are some of the most valuable in school:

I’m your admissions advisor at Academy of Art University and ordinarily I’d simply be writing to thank you for your interest in the university and offering my assistance with the entire admissions procedure. That’s all still true - you have my attention and you have my help.

But the economic news of the day is really what encourages this contact.  We all know what’s up - the market misbehaves and the banks need us to keep them afloat; housing starts are at a standstill and re-sales painfully slow; 401k’s are in jeopardy and unemployment is rising. Things can look way too bleak to do much else but look over our shoulders for someone to blame and hope that we’re not personally swept up in the mess. 

I say “no way!”  Douglas Krause, a labor economist at Rutgers University opines that “The fast-approaching Baby Boomer retirement wave will spawn millions of job openings.”  And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy is on track to generate 33.4 million replacement jobs and 17.4 million new jobs by 2016 - that’s more than 50 million job openings!!!  

For creatives like you and me, this economy can be spectacular.  Artists and designers are the culture’s problem solvers and we’re needed now more than ever!  We’re the guys that will lead the nation to live better with increased functionality and style; to conserve to improve our lifestyle; to appreciate and document our history; to learn more expansively; to communicate more effectively; to smile more and love more and be more to each other and the culture we are responsible for! 

I know that you’re considering starting at Academy of Art University in the near future and I personally want to know more about your interest in art and design and your career plans after completing one of our programs.  We are “the hands on” school stressing skills that assure success in lieu of lots of theory and concept.  Each semester we prove that when we provide the skills that industry is looking for, our graduates will contribute to the culture and find the personal and economic success they strive for.    

So, here’s my challenge to you.  Write me back and tell me you’re ready to build your creative capital - ready to be prepared to take a leadership role in the new economy of art and design.  Of course, you can write and say you’re not the least bit interested, but I’m hoping you’re ready to at least explore all your possibilities, define your purpose, and join with other artists and designers ready to work together to make a difference - or maybe as one designer recently suggested, mend the world.  You have the nation’s largest and most progressive art university on your side - we’re ready if you are!!! 

Looking forward to working with you,  

After spending time in New York City last weekend, I’ve realized one thing: design students living in NYC have no excuse for being uninspired.

The photo above is the thegraphicstudent.com poster hanging in Tisch. See the TGS flickr page for more photos from NY.

In my endless web/design surfing tonight, I stumbled across Pub, the official publication of the Calarts graphic design students. I can only find pics of the first issue, which was released in the fall 2007 - so I don’t know if this ever picked up or is still going on… but whether it is or it isn’t, the site has some free pics that give you a little look into Calarts! I think all art/design schools should have a publication.