Yes, it’s June, and that can only mean one thing: college graduation. Last weekend we were out and about at Brick Lane and decided to hop in and see some graduation projects on display at the annual Free Range exhibit at the Truman Brewery, anticipating to see some interesting work from this year’s fresh batch of designers unleashed into the wild.
My wife Liz almost immediately commented how depressing the atmosphere was and I had to agree… The floor space was pretty much abandoned in places (maybe because everyone was outside soaking up the sun) and overall the work was pretty average. My immediate reaction was that I could only see maybe half of the people getting a job, if even that. I don’t want to sound overly pessimistic, but out of all the work there were maybe 1 or 2 people that impressed me enough to inspect their work up close. Maybe I was expecting too much and maybe I’d forgotten what it was like when it was my work on show – and I remembered what a thankless effort these graduation shows are. You have your allocated space, and try your best with the limited means available to present your work in an interesting way. You have your business cards next to your work and then for the next 2 weeks or so you hope that someone that is in any position to maybe give you a job might pop in to look at the fruit of your labour.
And do they? I’ve always found that these shows are meant to be the topping on the cake – and your calling card to the sometimes cut-throat world of design (“Sorry we’re looking for someone with at least 2 years of experience”) – but as far as I know, the only people that actually visit these shows are your family, friends, and the occasional member of the public. Not Mr./Mrs. Creative Director looking to strengthen the design team (and if I’m wrong, please feel free to comment below). It isn’t helped by the fact that most stands are void of the actual designer being present. Well, I can understand why. They’re either doing more useful things like putting together a portfolio, or celebrating the end of one life and the beginning of the next.
On to the work then. I’m fully aware that one of the things that make college so important, is that you can learn by experimenting.
You can be as conceptual, artistic and abstract as you want during your course. And therein also lies the problem. How do you show you’re a competent problem solver, a pretty important part in (graphic) design, if all you have to show is an experimental video installation or a personal exploration made out of repurposed media material? It becomes more concept art than design – and while I have no problem with that, I find it lacking, especially for an applied design course. Speaking from experience I’ve seen people like that struggle to get a foot in the door at design agencies, for the obvious reasons.
On the other hand then, there’s the traditional college design projects, infused with the sort of imaginary brief to give students a taste of ‘the real world’: the mock ad campaign, the editorial design project, the typography tasks (ranging from ‘design your own typeface’ to ‘use typefaces X, Y, Z to create a poster’), and the dreaded corporate identity project. They’re all valid exercises mind you, but I felt the execution and ideas on show overall weak for one reason: I’d seen it all before. Online. I could almost pull apart the influences in some of the work. In other cases you could see the attempt being made to ‘look like this’ and falling short, and the individual voice of a designer getting lost in the myriad of outside stimuli condensed in a poster. OK, maybe I’m getting too harsh here, at that point in your design career you’re still looking for your own voice (I know I was!), but then I think it should be up to the tutors to spot those things and guide the students in another direction. And then there were those projects on show that made me question why they graduated in the first place.
Am I too harsh? Maybe. I went in expecting to be blown away by some fresh work – and in a couple of cases I was, and could see some rough diamonds on their way to a flourishing career in design. But mostly I saw work that was of an average quality. Probably what people said when they saw my graduation project.
June 15th, 2008
ah,
just wait untill you see the academy graduation projects,
a new level of bad will be introduced.
June 15th, 2008
btw,
your graduation project, johnny mnemoc
is why i want to the academy…
;)
June 16th, 2008
Our Uni showed at Freerange a couple of weeks ago and I certainly agree about wondering who actually visits the shows, they were generally empty during the week and packed during the weekend but I got the impression the ratio of public to industry was heavily skewed towards the public. Some students did get offered work though, and some got interviews so I guess some do visit.
June 16th, 2008
Thanks for chiming in Tony! Yeah, I’m not saying it never happens (and if it happens its usually – in my experience – on opening night or if agencies have received invited to come and have a look), but like you say the balance of public Vs. industry is very uneven.
June 16th, 2008
500+ of my postcards went over the course of the show but I already assumed they were decorating fridges rather than the desks of art directors!
June 19th, 2008
What stands out most for me at degree shows is the lack of subject matter. Seems when you give free reign to a student to create essentially whatever they want they end up falling back on either cataloguing their life (the design equivalent of a toddler drawing a picture of “me and my mum”) or creating preachy environmental/political posters. This common practice in particular is a personal pet hate of mine, as it would seem to me a graphic design solution to the problem of, for instance, unnecessary plastic bags wouldn’t be to make a poster about it, but to decide as a designer not to design bags for a shop or choose to have them made from a reusable material etc. Anyway, I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent here…
July 3rd, 2008
You see Tom and with respect to your position and many others, it’s great that you point these important things out but then you leave us dumbfounded by what should be done. The inevitability is that within one year group of design I think do not hold the same level of regard or interest. We can be all pedantic about good design but the fact is half of them will want to do their own thing. So you end up getting different designers the provider or one that provides a service or one that is a designer.
I think the ones that do really well are gunning for working at a good studio or with good people. The best thing I have heard is it’s not about how good you are it’s about how good you want to be. I.e. how much you want to push yourself so it may mean you falter somewhat over technical issues but your reaching what kind of standard as a designer. Plus, as I have discovered a cohort – half of them could just as well be part-time designers. Meaning whatever they did at college was just really being forcefed homework like at school and you have to finish it. I’ve seen alot of fellow students (that i dont know at all), come to college for the work but design is not something they think about at all outside and at home.
Could quality of work also be subjected by which school? I know CSM and LCC and Camberwell students do good work.
I think to make one point for students is that the industry shouldnt be crictisting us harshly although most of the time its important, that we don’t have mentors to look up to or people who just know they shit. I don’t need some recent grad tutoring me or telling what to do because as for as I am concerned, your own personal objections and lack of experience in your own right will not help me. Someone that has had direct years and years of front direct design experience. Like your fav. history teacher.
July 4th, 2008
Hey Mike – Thanks for replying.
I understand your point… and yes, I haven’t given a solution to “the problem”… I’m speaking based on my own graduation experience and from what I saw that day at Free Range and its just that. I’m fully aware that there are students/graduates out there who do consistently good work – and yes, I think the school and form of education plays a big role in the quality of work.
Meaning whatever they did at college was just really being forcefed homework like at school and you have to finish it.
Yes, but a lot of times you’re faced with the same situation in your professional carreer – and that’s no excuse to underperform or disregard that work thinking better stuff will come along. Like they say, you’re only as good as your last piece of work.
July 22nd, 2008
I agree but my general outlook was more not that we shouldn’t disregard the work for example you saw but more on a student level. Where I was coming from was more than I think students would all really like to work in a like minded environment rather than be involved in a saturation of bad design. Sometimes I’m profound that we should expect all to be great work but than the reality is as you discovered a handful were good. I think it had to do with the Free Range thing. Though I’m not too sure if you know, if its entirely students fault for not sort of living up to good standards when they are all still very inexperienced…