‘The expectations that we put on students carry over into the workplace. Before long, many designers burn out by promising unrealistic turnaround on projects, working at levels that don’t accommodate a balanced life, and closing down any time for reflection on the work they’re doing and on the world around them.’
Just in the nick of time comes this magnificent Design Observer article from Meredith Davis. This is an absolute must read, for every designer who remembers the pressure of being a design student, and ultimately how that pressure has affected their professional career.
I believe as educators, we need to consider how we introduce students to reflective practice. How we actually slow down and pace the physical execution of work in order to design smart. How we teach students to find the intellectual challenge within the assignment that will sustain them when, as professionals, they think they just can’t face one more 4 x 9 brochure. How we teach them and their clients to value the research component of a project just as they do the billable hours in form-making on the computer. How we ask them to connect what they’re doing in design to things people really care about.
Albeit I agree Design Education should embed a reality about it’s industry into the curriculum, “the industry” has its equal part to play, on this quest for the perfect student-designer transition.
Over the past 2 months, I have awoken to many emails from one of the most creative design talents I have come across in the past 4 years. Her email’s are not that of an excited graduate however, but that of a crushed one; the pressure taken to achieve (at speed) and compete (against the competition) have completely destroyed her belief in design. As a “Design Thinker”, she feels at bottom of the pile and shoved in the corner, made to feel a “failure” for not being (or wanting to be) another Mac Wizz-Kid. This upsets me further, as it seems ever consistent with many young creatives I speak with.
Whilst studying, we stay up all night (all week in many cases), to achieve the best idea(s); why? because that is what we are taught to do. We are educated that design solutions come from thorough research and plenty of reflective time and patience, and are ultimately taught to be idea centric. The problem top graduates have then when they hit the industry, is finding out the industry is looking for plenty of technical operators.
‘We have to teach smart. We have to look at trends whose trajectories are likely to define practice for students across a fifty-year career. We have to challenge traditional paradigms of design education and invent new ones. We have to integrate content across courses and scaffold experiences so that students don’t start over with every project or every course. Not all new content requires its own turf.’
If we continue to teach our students that perfectionism is the only solution, we are quite simply looking toward a future design industry – entirely created by technology and not by imagination.
Read the full article: Meredith Davis: The Cult of ASAP.
Filed under: On Graphic Design , design education, design observer, graduate, meredith davis, On Education, profession, student
