For Design Students–The Myth of the Irrelevant GPA

     Good morning! So like I said, to keep my creative sanity, I’m going to post in this awesome blog, before I start work on my grad school assignments each week. So, as soon as I’m done with this post, I’ll spend the rest of my Friday, Saturday, and Sunday writing some ridiculous piece on Multidimensional Scaling as it relates to….ahh never mind—you really don’t care—nor do I.

     So, this post is really for design students of any field—really any discipline that requires some kind of portfolio of your accumulated talent and skill. I hope this doesn’t turn into a rant, but this issue has frustrated me for some time now.

    Before grad school, I attended design school and got a degree in Graphic Design, (this is where the planets aligned and I met Sydney and Nate—it was magical.) Anyways, I recall many times when my classmates, (not Syd or Nate), and even instructors would tell us that GPA really wasn’t that important, as employers and creative directors are mainly interested in your portfolio. This always bothered me—I was constantly challenged, stressed, and overwhelmed trying to maintain a competitive GPA with my portfolio, and here I had everyone telling me it was in vain—like the joke was on me, right. I was never really sure if they were right, or if this was just an excuse for lazy students and bitter instructors—I kind always felt like it was the latter—and I still do. I’ll tell you why…

     I was excited the other day, when one my design students brought up this very question in my Digital Layout class. She asked how important a GPA was, if you had  a really strong portfolio. So I answered her question with a question, “What questions does a strong portfolio answer for a potential employer?” Their answers: Skill set, knowledge of the fundamentals of design, software proficiencies, creative process, areas of focus such as photography, advertising, drawing, etc, and overall talent.

     Great, so a good portfolio essentially tells a creative director what kind tool they’re getting—ha ha tool—okay weapon…what kind of weapon they’re getting. From a portfolio, they can tell what potential projects or clients they can assign to that particular designer. So then I ask my students, “Well, what questions does a portfolio fail to answer?”—blank faces.  I reply, “How about deadlines…how about whether or not you can show up on time and everyday….how the ability to follow instructions and specifications…how about client relations and communications….how about humility and the ability to be taught…..”.

The blank faces change—some with a bit of a grin and others with the look of terror as they realize, the only way an employer will ever be able to answer these questions about a recent grad, is with their GPA. The GPA says all of those things.

     You may have an outstanding portfolio—so what—outstanding portfolios, especially in Seattle, are a dime a dozen. Recent grads need more than that to stand out. They need to be able to make those potential employers feel warm and cuddly inside, knowing that the grad they just hired—the weapon they just purchased—isn’t gonna be defective—it’s gonna work, every time they pull the trigger. (I just got a new gun last week—hence the cheesy metaphor).

     I’m a first hand witness to this. I interviewed 3 times for my last design job, (the one I had just before I began teaching.) In those series of interviews, I wasn’t asked to show my portfolio until the third meeting…and by then the interviewing pool had been narrowed down from almost a hundred to a mere 8—and still, not a single portfolio had been reviewed. I’m certain that my portfolio, resume’, and experience probably fell well below the 10 percentile of those 100 candidates, (give or take). About 80 extremely talented designers from that pool never got to show their portfolio, and never made it to a second interview.  I know this, because a after the first few weeks with this company, my director very frankly told me that my portfolio needed to be better and he divulged these interview stats with me. Naturally, I’m extremely grateful I did not follow the council of my former classmates and instructors.

     GPA MATTERS, PEOPLE! Who cares if you can draw? Who cares if you’re a walking Photoshop encyclopedia?  Flash wizard? So what. Final Cut all star? Ok, and what???

     Can you do all of this, plus do it on time, consistently, and they way your director wants? That’s what matters.

     Thanks for listening!

PS—My portfolio is much stronger now—my GPA got me in the door and has allowed to me replace theoretical academic portfolio projects with real industry completed projects.

Beags and his concerted effort…

First off, let me apologize for being dormant these last couple of months—I love this blog and am going to make a concerted effort to write in it more often. In fact, I think I think it may really me out in the long run. I’ve been attending grad school for the last 7 months now, (the reason for my dormancy), and I find myself academically writing nearly 5,000 words a week. Now, I enjoy writing….nay….I enjoyed writing, back when it is was fun and had no deadlines. Now I find myself droning on, page after page about accounting, statistics, business ethics, blah blah—you know, all the stuff the left brain has a tendency to vomit all over the right brain and completely ruin its day—yah that stuff. Why I chose to pursuit an MBA after 4 years of creative academics in design, I’ll never know. Maybe it’ll come in handy when we finally get our ‘co-op’ off the runway.

So anyways, I think I’m going to tastefully use Nampersands.com as tool to write in each week, before I start writing my grad school pieces—One, because it will help me keep my creative sanity and two, it’ll be good jumpstart to writing for each of my assignments.

50 Killer Black Metal Logos

Take all conventional logo ideals paint it in corpse paint then sacrifice it on a stone alter– it is time for some logos of black metal bands.

Here are 50 awesome Black Metal Logos– from the symmetric to the decorative, to the completely illegible– that are forging a path into a whole new realm of typographic design.

Will of the Anchients

Vulture

Verecundia

Vajrah

Vaettir

Torment

Saros

Rain Fall

Pcyst

Nether Bird

Nekrist

Negator

Mysteriarch

Morituri

Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra

Lupine Fall

Lochness

Kraden

Klanddestyn

Jewicide

Ixiol

Irrwisch

Inverted Savior

Horna

Haethen

Gutstump

Grimburg

Gorged

Gasoline Baptism

Fonops

Finntroll

Falling Moon

Etiketler

› Continue reading…

Tags: black, logo, metal, music, type

Great exercise for the mind

So, I think I’ve mentioned in one of my previous posts that I’ve begun teaching design at a local design school, since I graduated last Summer. The classes are 5 hours long, each. It’s been quite challenge filling these 5 hours and keeping my students busy the entire time. So, to to avoid them having to listen to me drone on and lecture for the entire 5 hours, I’ve incorporated 80 minute classroom projects as a means of ‘warming up’ our minds for the class…plus it eats up 80 minutes, right. Sometimes I’ll even participate in the exercise myself.

I try to tie in these projects to what the class’s topic or lecture will be on. For example, the first day of Typography I, while talking about the history of the alphabet, I gave the students 80 min to completely re-design the letter ‘M’ as if it had never exsisted. They had to devlop a symbol that would be consistent with the other 25 letters of the alphabet, and yet still capture the “mmm” sound of the ‘M’. Their greatest challenge was flushing out all previous images of the letter ‘M’ which had been engrained in their minds since Kindergarten

Yesterday, while sitting in traffic, and listening to music (where most of my ideas come), I realized that I had neglected to plan out the classroom exercise for the evening class that begun in 20 minutes. I panicked. But as I listened to the music on the radio, I realized that all of the fundamentals of design that we’ve been talking about the last few weeks, (these are intro to design courses), it struck me that all of these fundamentals, (balance, rhythm, line, movement, etc)–they can all be applied to music. In visual art and communications, the fundamentals of design should carefully, beautifully, and gracefully carry the audience from point A to B in the piece. Our designs should be not just an expression of who we are as designers, but an actual physical and emotional experience for our audience….I know, I know it’s really Dr. Phil-ish, But isn’t that the same objective of music–is not some kind of emotional A to B experience.

So as soon as I got onto to campus I burned off two audio CD’s–one with Beethoven’s Midnight Sonata, and the other with Bach’s The Joy of Man’s Desirings. (If you try this, you can pick your own music, though I recommend something with minimal tracks and no lyrics). I let the class vote on which one they would listening, with them still not knowing what the project would be. They chose Bach, so I’ll use Beethoven in tonight’s Typography class. Anyways, I then played the CD on repeat and gave them 80 minutes to create a visual composition of the piece. The objective was to extract the fundamentals of design from the music, (the rhythm, balance, symmetry, movement, etc) and transfer it onto paper, creating a visual composition of the music, a visual song if you will. Computer use was not allowed, though they were free to explore all forms of hand rendered media. The results were pretty awesome.

I also found that their minds were opened a bit more, and better prepared for the class…as if the atmosphere had completely changed. So next time you’re feeling uninspired, try visualizing and drawing music. Anyways..thats my tidbit for now. Later!

Beags

Tags: mind exercise, music, teaching

25 Inspirational Examples of Arabic Calligraphy

Although I am definitely a far cry from being any sort of expert on this topic, here are some beautiful examples of Arabic Calligraphy. Artist and Title information can be found by clicking on the thumbnail. If you know any additional information about any of the works contained in this post you should leave it in the comments.

 

Tags: Arabic, Calligraphy, Inspiration's Everywhere