Design education has been a hot topic lately with debate over the minumum requirements for GDC student qualification. Currently the GDC requires student members to be enrolled in a 2-year length design program at a minimum. What are your thoughts on this hot topic?

1. Sigrid Albert Says:
   February 13th, 2006 at 3:21 pm

   This will be our forum to discuss education-related issues.

   Here’s one that I’d like input on as your BC Education person: The GDC grants student memberships only to students in 2-year or longer design programs. I’d like to see that changed, but feel free to disagree with me. What do you think? My point is that the GDC grants professional memberships (MGDC) to anybody as long as they have 5 years of work experience and pass a portfolio review - regardless of whether the person went to ANY design school. And indeed there are amazing designers out there who never went to any school.

   On the other hand, I do value schooling. I believe that there is a greater likelihood that a 4-year program gives you a better design education than a 1-year program. But since the GDC is not a licencing organization, we are not accredited, we do not have the staff and resources to adequately review curriculums, the guidelines for curriculums are vague and touchy-feely only - so we can not in good conscience refuse membership to ANY student. Until one day, when we may become a licensing organization. That involves setting educational standards and curriculum reviews and curriculum input with design colleges who want to become accredited.

   In the meantime, opening up student membership to anyone, would open things up for more diversity, equal opportunity, non-traditional programs, more members, more dialogue, and you know what? more FUN!

   The idea of being a little enclave of only print designers with 4-year degrees (yes, I have one) is a bit depressing to me. More of me? Nah.

   — I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.
   Groucho Marx

2. Jason Says:
   February 20th, 2006 at 5:20 pm

   I totally agree Sigrid.

   Until we have the ability to audit all courses we cannot in all conscience discriminate against any and the same style of education does not suit all people, particularly in the creative arts.

   As a self-governing association we get to set our own agenda and in so doing help to direct public discourse on design. It is up to us to decide whether we want that discourse to be about the joy and power of design or a fixation with the ‘right’ way to go about it. Design methodology (and educational methodology) is up for debate- lets debate it rather than perpatuating a blinkered, singular viewpoint.

3. Peter Says:
   February 22nd, 2006 at 11:06 am

   Sigrid makes some good points. The fact that the GDC is not a licensing organization certainly puts their membership requirements into question. However, the benefits of limiting membership is that the GDC can narrow their focus and develop resources specifically for those that treat design as a profession.

   Check out the post “The erosion of design education” over at our blog ideasonideas.com for further discussion in a similar vein.

4. cameron Says:
   February 22nd, 2006 at 6:30 pm

   We have two stakeholders we need to adequately address - schools, and students. Currently we don’t have the resources to assess schools thoroughly and objectively, so is it fair to exclude a school based on our current length of program criteria. Not really. At the same time, is it responsible to afford a student membership (condoning the education by association) to students that take programs that offer them little hope in the marketplace. Not really.

   The argument that design doesn’t need an education (all the famous self-trained individuals), so educational standards for students is irrelevant is a moot one. In fact, the argument speaks more to the idea that student memberships are unnecessary, except as discounts for low income years. Design schools are taking students money and time in exchange for expectations. So these individuals have chosen a path, which includes education. The person who arrives at the profession and does well with no school is very different than students.

   How do we support an education that ushers its graduates into the profession?

   The vast majority of designers that respond to the Annual RGD salary survey are well educated - although a thorough sampling (which it isn’t) would be really valuable.

   Of course, if you do get a student from a 6-month program, you can educate him or her that more education is required to really make it. But that’s kind of demoralizing - and if they’re smart (although obviously bad at research), they’ll realise its a squared circle, because you accepted they join something that they can’t really be part of yet.

   Its more complicated even than this, but ulimately, I have to side with the ethics of not misleading people over unfairly excluding a capable short program.

   What we really need are decent stats of the professional design community in Canada and the percentages of short program members and long program members compared to numbers graduated from each type of program. Set a threshold for the range in discrepancy, and see what happens. This will likely be hard to do - but I’ll work on it.

5. Don Eglinski Says:
   March 15th, 2006 at 11:41 am

   Just my 2¢, but I fall into the Japanese school of thought on the conceptual seperation between form and function. The opinion is that there should be none.

   With too many designers graduating with little to no wisdom (defined as knowledge + experience) of the arts, they lack a spiritual aptitude when it comes to their work. Much of what I’ve seen is rehashes of rehashes, thus the technical design is working out okay, but the communication becomes watered down as what is unique is perpetually homogenised by designers. The design has no soul.

   Perhaps too abstract for some to embrace, but I think it’s necessary to point out. Another example, from Design Observer:

   I think there’s something magnificent about Google’s lack of design. There’s something defiant, almost obtuse about its reluctance to indulge in the sort of oleaginous branding and design that is now the corporate norm. We’ve reached a point, in the homogenized West, where good graphic design is everywhere. The battle has been won: every business knows it needs good design —you don’t have to tell them anymore. It’s enshrined in the business schools, established in the corporate HQs. Even small businesses understand that good design is good for business. It’s a universal truth, like “customer service” and “value for money,” and all the other boardroom nostrums that drive modern commerce.

   But the consequence of all this feel-good business is that design has become, more often than not, a badge of mediocrity. The old Modernist dream of good design standing for rationality and human values has been flipped. Today, good design is little more than a cosmetic agent, an obscuring agent. When I see my favorite sandwich bar introduce a slick new fascia and smart window decals, a little wave of disappointment runs through me. You don’t see the work of sign writers any more; it’s hard to find handmade signs and ramshackle window displays. The urban environment is now over-designed. It’s all too branded, too inhuman.

6. Peggy Cady Says:
   October 31st, 2006 at 8:16 pm

   The exam is the equalizer in the education/experience debate.

7. Melinda S Says:
   November 2nd, 2006 at 9:22 am

   All comments are great points taken. Education has been a great debate in any profession over the years. All great scholars end up self educating themselves, once the basics have been learned in schools. It is the passion and the drive that makes them great. So Education may be a base 2 year program or 6 months whatever the choice of the individual after that it should boil down to experience in the feild. I could take my argument further in stating we are all students still, but perhaps according to the GDC the cut-off for being a student is the 2-4 year combined period of education and experience?

8. Michael Says:
   November 5th, 2006 at 4:27 pm

   Nice…

   0 and 1. Now what could be so hard about that?
   …

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