St Bride Library Conference

Derek Yates, Course Leader of the FdA in Graphic Design has been asked to talk at ‘Critical Tensions’, the 10th Annual St Bride Library conference on the 10 &11th November 2011. ‘Embracing history, education and design practice, this two-day event provides a space for meeting and voicing concerns, for collectively exploring ideas, sharing strategies, consolidating knowledge, and for challenging and reaffirming values.’

Other speakers at the event include Phil Baines, Jonathan Barnbrook, Zoë Bather, Amelia Gregory, Alan Kitching , Gerry Leonidas, Vaughan Oliver, Paul Rennie, Lucienne Roberts, Jack Schulze, Steve Watson, Rebecca Wright.

Derek Yates represents Camberwell at the D&AD Graduate Academy

Recently, Derek Yates, Course Leader of the FdA in Graphic Design, was asked to contribute to the D&AD Graduate Academy. From the 22nd to the 26th of August, eighty students took part in a ‘Graduate Boot Camp’ at the Rochelle School in Shoreditch designed to to bring their education-based skills into a work setting. Working with Sophie Walter from onedotzero and Kevin Palmer from Kin Derek wrote and presented a mini ‘Cascade’ brief and chaired discussion seminars with Sanky, the President of the D&ad. Responses to the brief were presented to a panel of leading practitioners from agencies such as Mother, AMV, Dave, Iris and the Partners at the studios of Iris Nation on the South Bank. Derek and Sophie then helped select 50 students for placements at some of the UK’s leading creative companies.

Conversation with Russell Holmes. 22/01/2010

At that time of this conversation Russell was Creative Director of Dave, the brand consultancy (Part of the Engine group). He is now Design Director at Ico Design. Russell has delivered workshops to FdA students and through conversations such as this one has made a significant contribution to the development of the FdA.

Here is how Dave describe themselves:

'Dave is built on a fundamental conviction that the old way in brand consultancy isn't working. It is slow, arrogant, full of pseudo-science and, worst of all, it isn't making an impact. In 2003 we set out to do things differently.

We believe that successful brands act as an organizing principle. They deliver a compelling promise to customers that they can easily identify and buy into, and create a powerful internal culture where employees are energized and focused on common goals.

We work closely with our clients to not just set these goals, but also help to achieve them. Developing robust strategies that are obsessively focused on measurable results, we create brands that cut through the clutter, drive performance and transform organisations from the inside out.

We have clients of all sizes in every industry sector, but they all have one thing in common: they're going through change. They want to launch new products, break into new markets, integrate an acquisition, or completely turn around a failing business.'

Derek and Russell began by talking about why it is beneficial for industry work with interns:

RH: This is a young industry and ideas move so quickly that somebody at college could provide a really useful insight into things like social media and be much more web savvy than a 40 year old like myself. Young people provide insight into new ideas and new ways of thinking.

DY. Why would Dave want this?

RH. This is true across the industry. Young people have grown up with digital media and use things like Facebook, Youtube, Vimeo and Flicker every day. Now the web is not just another medium, it is THE medium. Their are new ways of communicating that an agency like this just has to be in the loop with.

DY. Are their forms of work based learning that you would be interested in working with other than placements?

RH. Absolutely, we would be interested in coming in to set projects, not just to sap students ideas but in all honesty, it is just really useful for us to get a direct tap into how people under 20 think. In return we could run workshops and portfolio surgeries. Even a tour of this building would be useful for students to get them used to a design studio environment. A really important thing with placements is that they adapt quickly and feel comfortable in an environment like this. They also have to be very proactive and understand how to get the most out of the people that they work with. Its really important that they are not intimidated by how cool or not cool it is here.

We really need people that can work with other people. A student needs to take a brief away and produce a piece of work that’s appropriate with somebody looking over their shoulder. This is something that students sometimes find difficult as at college they are often working on their own or on their Mac in their bedroom.

2 things that really shock student s are the speed that work needs to be produced at and the level at which work is criticized/ They really need to learn when and how to fight battles for their ideas - its a democratic process so you need to understand when not to criticize and when to criticize. You cannot work in isolation. Only about 2% of designers can ever take a piece of work away and just do it in their style. You really need to deal with the fact that the person who approves you work will be wrong. You know they’re wrong, everybody on the job knows they’re wrong, but you all have to deal with their decision. It might be quite interesting to set up this scenario in a college environment. ie get students to crit and make corrections to each others work and give these recommendations to another student to put into action.

DY. Some people have argued that college should be a sanctified environment where students are given total freedom. They argue that too many limitations restrict creativity. What do you think?

RH. I think this is possible but you need a balance because when it comes to producing real work you need a knowledge of what works in context.

“A really successful placement happens when you get somebody who is really creative and pushing the boundaries, who realizes that this happens at college and puts it in its place while realizing the advantages of the freedom he is getting”.

“A good placement should prepare a student for the real world without beating their interest in design out of them”.

DY. What do you think of students attitudes to things like branding? Some talk about it as if its a dirty word.

RH. I think students need to understand that we are all part of an economic system. Graphic designers, home-spun illustrators and even public sector workers like yourself are all indirectly paid by things like branding. Even fine artists work is bought by people who have made their millions in things like branding and advertising.

DY. Do you think its possible for students to have an experience on a placement that will enable them to avoid the bottle-necks we have at certain ends of this industry?

RH. A majority of students still come out of college with similar portfolios. ie. some typography, a bit of layout and some logo design........ is that what the industry want to see? No. We want to see somebody who can have an idea, implement that idea, but also to be able to explain why that idea works and why they made the critical decisions that shaped that idea. Graphic designers love doing logos and layout, that’s a give, but there are many more roles that somebody needs to fulfill in a studio. We need somebody who is much more rounded. People that can do moving image, copy writing, create ideas and think through creative strategies.

DY. Yeah but would you really employ somebody who was rounded?

RH. Absolutely. James is a furniture designer. He had no design work in his portfolio but had loads of great ideas. The business model that we employ uses lots of senior creatives. There is a model that uses lots of art workers and a couple of creative directors. This is very financially efficient but quite bottom heavy and as a result, quite slow moving. At Dave, our designers have a real range of skills and abilities and this enables them to work on a far greater range of projects. We obviously have particular gaps that come up and would first and foremost look to employ people to fill these gaps but we would then give priority to somebody who could offer us other options. Somebody who could grow into lots of different roles. The senior middle-weight junior model isn’t useful for a company like Dave. We don’t really have a hierarchy.

DY. Is this something that is changing across the communication design business?

RH. Yes. There aren’t that many juniors. Middle weights and seniors enable a fast moving, agile business that can turn work around quickly. Projects get handed around the studio so that we can use the skill sets that we have. We, like most design businesses do not have the luxury of big budgets and so can’t afford to foster specialists. So, to function in our studio, a junior or a placement would have to interpret the needs of different jobs and adapt quickly. For example, it might be that when they are asked to go away and put down some ideas this might mean some pencil sketches or more elaborate worked up computer renders. The student would need to be able to make that judgment. Students need to learn very quickly what they job they are doing is for. They need to understand what their position is in the chain. In the time since we left college we have seen the advent of the Mac, the digital camera and color inkjet printing. Students can now, in their bedroom, produce something that looks as finished as something produced by a really expensive repro house in our day. This is very seductive, they can style something up really quickly, and maybe because of this they don’t think enough about what it is for. They also don’t think enough about what it is meant to be saying and as a result, find it difficult to make a decision. They can just make another and each version looks professional so it doesn’t matter that it isn’t saying anything.

“You can get locked into the gloss but at the core of everything we strive to have a really good idea because ideas are the things that capture peoples attention”.

Agencies like North, Farrow and Cartlidge Levine produce beautiful work that is governed by a visual dogma and they do it really, really, really well. But these agencies are few and far between and if a student is seduced by the production of a beautiful visual gloss, they better make sure that they are the best at it. At Dave lots of our business is about strategy. Every visual decision needs to be justified through a piece of research. Some brands are intentionally ugly and shouty. Look at Go Compare or Confused.com. They look like this because this is right for their audience and right for the sector of the market that they inhabit. A strategists makes this decision for these brands. Strategy is actually a really good option for graphic designers. A totally different route that involves wearing a suit and presenting to the board but a majority of strategists have got graphic design degrees.

DY. This is interesting because with the amount of students coming out of college, graduate need to know their options. Not everyone is going to do layout, design logos and create posters.

RH. Very few, in fact. Graphic design at its heart is a very good training for lots of things. Its not just a cool job, it can be the best and worst job in the world. It would be really interesting to trace what people do 10 years after they leave college and see if there are any trends. At its best, graphic design education teaches you how to think about the world, structure information and solve problems. You can take something very complex, take it apart and present it in a way that people can understand and to do this you learn to summarize, edit and simplify. This is useful across a range of fields.

DY. Absolutely. For example Graphic designers make excellent educators.

RH. Graphic designers also can shape the profitability of a business. The presentation can be the business. Look at comparethemarket.com. I went to the zoo recently and stood next to the mere cat enclosure as one by one children and adults shouted “compare the mere cat .com” in a russian accent. That’s the power of branding, and that’s the power of graphic designers - not doing pretty layout and designing a nice poster.

Conversation with Matt Wade. Partner: Kin. 15/01/10

In 2007, while still at Moving Brands, Matt worked with the FdA at Camberwell on a project that involved student groups working with designers at Moving Brands. He has since left Moving Brands to start his own studio, Kin, with partner Kevin Palmer formerly of Imagination. Kin are at the forefront of new developments in interactivity and environment design.

Here is what they say about themselves

We are kin, a research led, Interaction Design studio.

We study, we design, we share, we make. We are fascinated by the relationships we create with each other, with the things around us and the spaces we inhabit. We were established in April 2008 and over the last 3 years have delivered over 170 projects. We work for a diverse range of clients from electronics giants, to fashion labels, to charities.

Here is Derek’s account of his conversation with Matt:

Kin’s studio in Farrington has been set up to take full advantage of the potential multidisciplinary collaboration. Situated on the top two floors of a building opposite the tube, it consists of a loft space where up to 10 designers can work at two tables and the next floor a workshop with pegboards, pliers, screwdrivers for practical experiments and prototyping. Next to this workshop there is a recording studio belonging to sound designer Tim Burns who is a regular Kin collaborator. Matt & Kevin make up Kin’s creative core, but they have the potential to become a much larger team capable of working on projects that involve sound, environment design, motion graphics, film, and digital or physical interaction through the contribution of regular collaborators, such as arduino board expert John Nussey.

When interviewed Matt talked about being interested in working with graduates who were equally open such a flexible, multi disciplinary approach. One such graduate is Jamie Thompson who graduated from BA Graphic Design at Camberwell in 2009. After doing a placement with Moving Brands Jamie spent a majority of his final year at Camberwell working with Kin. Students like Jamie sometimes persue their professional work at the expense of their academic study. It would seem logical that education should support and nurture this sort of professional activity and provide a mechanism for reviewing and evaluating these experiences.

Kin’s website has a section devoted to education and Matt talked of being interested in developing relationships with educational institutions. The FdA project that Matt ran while at Moving Brands provided a valuable live experience for the students at Camberwell, but also provided a staff development exercise for Moving Brands and we talked about the need for collaborations between industry and education to be mutually beneficial. He now runs a regular project with Goldsmith’s college, that is similarly structured and has provided a number of future graduate collaborators. The real benefit of such projects for industry is this ‘heads up’ on future talent and for this reason Kin are committed to developing more projects like this in the future.

Another way Kin assess new talent is by providing regular placements. Matt talked about the importance of working with graduates and final year students and providing them with an opportunity to work on real projects. Like Matt Rice he recognises the potential for using placements to take part in R&D projects. To enable this to happen, he welcomed the idea of giving a student desk space and helping them work on a mutually beneficial project set by their course, in return for the ability to bring them in on projects as and when they were needed. For a small studio flexibility is extremely important.

Matt was at pains to point out that it is huge benefits for Kin to be involved in education; not just to check out new talent and be exposed to new ideas but also to provide them with exposure that will build their profile. Every time a student googles kin or posts something they have done on a blog it increases their online profile. When students like Jamie Thompson win awards and mention Kin in an interview it increases their profile and this is vital for a small studio.

Conversation with Matt Rice Director: Sennep. 15/01/10

Here is how Sennep describe themselves.

Sennep is a London-based design studio specialising in creating digital experiences for online and physical environments. Since our inception in 2003 our passion has always been to create appropriate, functional and beautifully crafted designs. With every brief we aim to expand upon our clients' vision and create something we can be truly proud of.

We don't believe in growth for the sake of it and feel that our team of eleven enthusiastic full-timers is a great size. It means we can provide a range of specialist skills whilst maintaining a 'boutique' service.

You can visit Sennep's website or view their work on Flickr and Vimeo.

Matt Rice has run workshops for the FdA at Camberwell and through these sorts of conversations has made a major contribution to the development of the course.

Here is Derek’s account of his conversation with Matt:

Initially the conversation revolved around how an interactive agency like Sennep would look to recruit a junior. What skills they would be looking for and logistically how they might go about finding someone who had that skill set.

Matt talked about needing a combination of creative and technical skills, but more important to him seemed the ability to fit into the studio. In a small studio an individual can have a massive effect on the group dynamic and as a result somebody who was self motivated, proactive, flexible and gregarious but sensitive to the needs of others would be preferred to a technical whizz kid or creative genius. These sorts of skills are very difficult to assess at an interview and whether a personality is a good fit obviously takes a little time to assess.

Sennep require their designers to embrace play and discovery. They approach each project as an opportunity to do work that is not like work they have done before. They attempt to give clients something they didn’t realise that they wanted and try to explore different processes and skills on each job they tackle. They require an intern or junior to have the same curiosity and open mind. As a result they value these qualities above technical wizardry or the ability to create a slick aesthetic.

A placement would provide time necessary to develop a relationship that would allow a judgement to be made as to whether someone would be right for the studio or not.

A majority of creative studios are small so employing anyone is a massive financial risk so they need to make sure that they get any decision on new staff right.

The discussion then moved onto how placements could be structured and what they might involve.

The placements that Sennep have given in the past have been largely hit & miss affairs, where the interns contribution evolved according to the work that was available. Interns applied for placements independently as a result in a majority of placements there was no third party involvement. We talked about the benefits an organised placement that taken as part of a larger educational experience. Matt talked of the benefits colleges organising a structure for the placement and the need for there to be some sort of checklist for what a placement might involve.

Sennep have also taken placements from Hyper Island who employ a vetting procedure for placement providers along with lots of guidance for how the internship might work. HI also run placements for 7 months and this length of time provides for the development of a relationship with the intern. This approach obviously works for the studios involved and we talked about the potential of setting up a relationship where a trusted institution could pre-select students in order to fit them to the requirements of different employers.

The 7 months of the Hyper Island placement gave Sennep a chance to build the confidence necessary for the intern to become involved in real work and actually start to become involved in the day to functioning of the studio. (One of the problems with placements is finding them something to do!) They really needed to be self sufficient and proactive for the placement to work as often in a small studio without a full time studio manager people were too busy to plan the interns time for them.

There are several possible solutions to this problem and something that Matt found really interesting was giving the intern an R&D role. Projects like the Dandelion installation that was recently exhibited at the V&A are great promotional pieces for Sennep and enable them to move their work into new areas, but they are rarely funded and so happen between time spent on commercial work. An intern could be used to carry out the research necessary to move these projects forward. This would give the intern an opportunity to build new skills and the studio a chance to do valuable R&D.

We then talked about the potential problem of interns and placements being used as cheap labour that could undermine payment structures within the creative industries. Live projects are also particularly problematic in this respect, as often students will be taking work away from professional creatives. Matt took this point on board and stressed the need for people in education and industry to work together to ensure that this didn’t happen. He also pointed out that any project was most valuable to a student for the experience it indicated. Some studios made students sign away their rights to any work produced on a placement and did not allow them to use it in their portfolio and Matt stressed that an intern should be allowed to use any project they worked on in their portfolio as this would benefit the development of their future career.

Conversation with Roberto D’Andria. Partner: Bear: 15/01/10

Roberto is the Creative Director and a partner at Bear, a creative agency working across branding, advertising, design and communication. Bear was founded in 2000 and over the last ten years they have worked for clients including 888, Foxtons, MTV and Nickelodeon, MBNA, Honda & the Lawn Tennis Association. Roberto has over 20 years experience in the creative industries and before founding Bear, he was Design Director at Identica Tango and Senior Designer at SAS.

Roberto has made a massive contribution to the development of the FdA in Graphic Design at Camberwell.

Here is Derek’s account of his conversation with Roberto:

'We started off by talking about what might constitute a successful placement for both intern and placement provider. Rob pointed out that it is really difficult for a small agency like Bear to find the time to nurture and support designers who are straight out of college. Even placements need to provide some benefits to the business and an few employers can afford to spend time managing an interns experience.

The placements that Roberto provided for the FdA were all year 1 students and he now realises that for a placement to work for both parties it would need to take place in the second or third year.

He also suggested that it would be beneficial for the colleges to package the experience in some way so that employers knew what they were getting. If colleges could provide a suggested structure for the placement and/or a set of tasks that needed to be completed this would alleviate employers’ fears bout constantly having to think of something for the intern to do. This could be agreed at the beginning of the placement and possibly form a checklist that the student might work their way through.

The dynamic of a placement should be about a conversation between two professional bodies that provides a beneficial experience for all concerned.

Roberto suggested that we should try to define what a placement should be and use use this to provide the criteria for an offer. With his branding head on he talked about the packaging of this offer so that it is credible within the commercial world. For example ‘10 ways to a successful placement’, ‘A Rough Guide for Interns’, ‘A placement Toolkit’.

He also suggested that colleges spend some time outlining the full range of benefits of providing placements. These are more than just getting the tea made and the photocopying done. They include the potential for staff development, R&D, a review of studio PR, increased brand awareness and a heads up on emerging talent.

We then talked about other forms of work-based learning and the possibility of Bear being involved in some sort of mentorship scheme. Rob welcomed the opportunity of having time to work 1:1 with students and the idea of setting an afternoon or morning aside for them to come to the studio. There would need to be some financial incentive for a studio to do this but there seems no reason why colleges wouldn’t be able to find a way to make it happen.

The conversation then developed into a wider discussion about the nature of the contemporary creative industries and how the amount of small start-ups are destabilising the business financially. He talked about how the competitiveness of the industry has led to a culture of free pitching that is undermining the credibility of the profession.

Rob pointed out that students need to have an awareness of how what they do fits into the ‘value chain’ and that they need to be aware that a piece of design never exists in isolation. The creative aspect of a job always exists in relation to consultancy, production and delivery and unfortunately it is not always the most valuable.

Industry experience can ensure that new designers have a bit more business savvy and do not undermine the industry by being too desperate to secure work.

He stressed the importance of a graduate being able to work out their place within an increasingly complex business in order to provide competitiveness across the profession. Graphic designers today need to do much, much more than design logos and lay out type.

This brought us to a discussion about what qualities a successful graduate needs and as Rob pointed out this is changing all the time:

There is a definite tension between creativity and professional awareness. An awareness of what the industry requires can limit the creativity and curiosity of a graduate; but a graduate who is highly creative but cannot relate their ideas to a practical application is almost unusable. Maybe a good graduate has a balance of these qualities.

Similar is true of skills. Graduates need practical skills in order to realise their ideas, but an over reliance on software or process generates work that becomes generic or derivative.

A good graduate needs to be constantly developing all of these qualities to be really successful.

According to Rob students need to be aware of commercial constraints but see this as something that will lead creativity rather than limit it. Commercial constraints are often used as an excuse for a poor creative, when the reality is that at good agencies (BBH was given as an example) the tighter the commercial constraints the more creative the response.

Sometimes this lesson is lost in education as we worry about limiting our student’s creativity and maybe pander to our students’ natural reluctance to work on assignments that have too many restrictions.'

Conversation with the creative team at Glue: 02/09/2009

What Glue say about themselves:

We are: A modern communications agency, as at home in the digital world as in traditional media. With 11 years experience in digital, we marry the best traditional agency skills with the most innovative digital talent, to create smart, provocative and irresistible creative work. Our team of 150 talented people is hard at work across an enviable client list including Nokia, Toyota, RBS, and Kellogg's

What we do: We bring people and brands together, like never before. We reconnect brands with their fans and customers. We create irresistible ideas that combine creative, planning, technology and data. Ideas that demand a response, that invite a next step, take on a life of their own, become self-financing, self-perpetuating, get picked up, passed on. Ideas that make it inevitable people will choose to get involved.

As well as their website Glue are on Flickr and Youtube

Derek spoke to: Jo Hagger; Dan Griffiths; Simon Cam (Scam) and Dominik

We began with a discussion about the sorts of things students need to be doing to improve their employability. Scam/ Dan & Dominik talked about the use of online communities: creative cow/ video co pilot etc.. should exploit links/ motion script.com/ google for techniques/ for Flash ‘fullasagoog’

DY: is it educations role to develop these technical skills

Glue: It’s not possible for a university lecturer to do this – they would have to be working in industry everyday.

Scam: “the educators role is to provide the other side to all of this which is the creative & philosophical core of what they are doing and give them the skills to take on a brief and understand it properly, to work with other people and all of those softer skills that go around the main hands on practical, technical doing skills.” Although some students will naturally gravitate to the technical side of things.

DY: If a student doesn’t naturally gravitate towards the technical end, should they enter that (digital media) part of the industry or can we guide them? Help them get started?

Glue: Education should make them see why they need to develop these skills, i.e here is what you can do/ achieve if you learn them. “(education) Should aim to create problem solvers less than creating technicians. The approach should be I wanna find out how to do that, I’ll then go and find out how to do that, because you don’t need to know every part of the application to actually get quite specific. It’s about having that inherent interest in the field…even if you are an art director, you need to know how things are made in order to push them forward” To be able to guide and direct, you need to know how something is made and understand it’s mechanics, this is the way things have always been. It’s really important to understand what a team will enable. At Glue to create any piece of work there is a whole range of people involved and without all these different people any project would not be possible. It’s a mixture of creatives and technicians that make a project happen.

Scam: “certainly one thing that I’d say to my old lecturers is – get bigger groups of people working together. Get a photographer working with someone who is just a creative and loves drawing on paper. Get someone who loves to have lots of ideas working with someone who is really into actions scripting.”

You need to identify where your specialisms are, but you also have to keep yourself fairly broad. (to DY) How is the course set up in terms of time? at college we learnt how to think creatively and then went away and taught ourselves how to execute our ideas, but the management of time is equally important. In the last year we had one project for the whole of a term, which is a big ask. At college there is lots of lost time.

Scam “One of the biggest steps from university into work is getting into a routine of working 9.30 til 6.30 everyday and beyond to actually achieve what you want to achieve”. Students need to learn to use all the time they have got available to them because they are not going to achieve anything by working 10 hours a week.

DY: How do you engender teamworking? How do you get students to work together with other students when todays Higher Educational model is largely get a brief and go off on your own?

Glue: Well that was actually beneficial to a lot of us because the equipment we needed wasn’t available at college. We needed to use IT equipment and the colleges couldn’t provide that and they shouldn’t really have tried.

DY: but If there is no technical equipment in the studio. What makes a student come in and use the studio? Why not work from home? and if working from home is so good why do design companies spend so much on studio space?

Glue: Because in a design company you need to work in a team.

Jo Hagger: Maybe we should separate out some of the themes that you deal with everyday here. What are the core disciplines that students have to learn. Tools to explore techniques – these can be accessed individually (open source etc..) and their approach to learning….“this absolutely has to be, from a commercial point of view, the critical balance between being able to solve problems on your own, knowing that if you do have to solve a problem within 8 hours you actually get to a solution, vs the fact that you have to able to talk to other people about what you are doing as well. You can’t just work in a silo, because … there are very few interactive projects that one person can do on their own, in a commercial sense it involves a team of people.”

“individual problem solving, group problem solving, time specific problem solving all of these are real world perameters and the best students we see all come pretty well equipped with these skills”

Glue: Different types of disciplines require different types of learning. But it’s about being clear about the up front stuff that they absolutely need to learn and covering that in a controlled setting. You have to learn it before you go off and experiment, because this will give you the core that you need to get started. The next layer is opening their mind to the possibilities that exist, via mentors, via best practice, via other things that exist in the world then starting to implement that creativity and play around. Then there is a semi controlled bit which is saying here is how we are going to suggest you are going to work which is a mixture of independent activity balanced with times when they have to come into the studio, discuss work, take part in seminars.

Dominik: the discussion activity doesn’t always have to be about discussing projects, it could be just about discussing things that they have found interesting, exhibitions, stuff they have found on the net.

DY: the studio needs to be of use to the students and if they see activities as useful then they will take part in them you have to set up different types of activity to enable that. What you say about promoting cross disciplinary activities and discussion is interesting, I wonder what you think about how courses are currently set up in different subject areas?

Dominik: people definitely pick the wrong courses and would benefit from being able to change later in the course.

“I wonder if there is scope for a degree of fluidity where you do keep some core outlines for different areas of study that you think you’re going to dip in and out of but there is some fluidity there and if you realize that you are studying the wrong thing after year one then you can change?”

Dan: There needs to be scope to extend the foundation ethos and enable to students to work across different areas and share ideas with students and staff from these areas.

Dominik: I studied town planning!

Scam: says it all really, if you want to do something you can learn it. It’s about an approach rather than the subject.

Dominik: it’s the spark of curiosity and hunger that’s important. But how you develop that?

DY: yeah there is a problem with the prescription of vocational education. It kills the curiosity. How can you create savvy students, who are still curious. Students are motivated by goals like getting a job rather than hunger to learn. Is the principle of that type of learning anti curiosity>

Jo: certainly it’s a problem “one of the difficulties faced by education is that it used to deal with something that used to be linear and easy to package and fitted categorization pretty easily and now it’s faced with something much bigger, cross disciplined, much broader and much more complex and multi faceted. But the same is true of industry. It all boils down to problems with categorization that is making something that shouldn’t be that deep, deep. So you get categories that don’t quite fit, when what is really interesting is the skills, the methods and approaches that are universal.”

DY: How do you recruit graduates?

Dominik: go round degree shows and look at work.

Dan: But it is difficult in the design department, Without practical skills you sit around a bit lost, but you don’t want someone with practical skills but no ability to develop into other areas.. You need someone who can add value creatively and without this you can get stuck doing menial tasks. So employing a creative represents a huge investment.

Glue: Placements and internships are difficult because of the time they take up and are not always economic as a result. But if you can get someone for a period of time and build a relationship it can be very useful. The real value is a student who does a placement goes back to college and comes back when they graduate.

Dominik: it’s really beneficial to build a relationship through which the student can learn to work with us. A 3 month placement is good, but more beneficial if they came back.

Scam: Hyper Island do it really well with a 7 month placement at the end of the course.

DY: so what is the best time for a placement?

Dan: I quite like the idea of 6 weeks in the second year, turning into 3 months in their third year just before they graduate and if they are good they get employed.

DY: We’ve found that there can be a negative aspect to this, sometimes students return very disillusioned because of a negative placement. But when it is good the student has built a relationship and gained a set of experiences that will help enrich their college experience and inform their work.

Jo: so that depends on the right company with the right people. The pay off for the company is first pick at the right people.

DY: Can education do more to make it beneficial for industry? For example, we did a project with Moving Brands project that was used to help middle-weight designers to gain people management and creative leadership skills.

Dan: One of the most difficult things about placements is managing the students time, so what would be really good is for the student to come to us with a piece of work, a goal, something they want to achieve and the student could work on that for 50% of their time and people across the different teams could get involved in. For the other 50% of the time they could be brought into Glue projects or the many things around the agency that get lost and aren’t picked up on and taken advantage of. We were talking today about Glue’s brand presence and this is something a placement could look at. It needs people involved in it constantly

Scam: it kind of needs to be flexible, because the truth is that you are never sure if there is going to be stuff for them to do.

DY: is it helpful for us to help out with the organization. Also is working on a job always beneficial for a student, sometimes it means being cheap labour.

Scam: Sure. It’s really true, placements need to be managed and sometimes doing rotascoping is useful for us but not them.

Dan: the practicalities are important. We need to get diaries set up upfront and put key dates and times in so there is a structure to the placement. At the moment it’s down to the student and it works if the student is proactive but doesn’t if they are not.

DY: could the college put that structure into place.

Dan: Absolutely, but it’s also about getting traffic involved and making sure they plug the placement into that system.

DY: a member of staff at the college could work with you on this but at the moment that isn’t practical. Although long term maybe someone could be given the job of managing placements.

Dan: Not sure it even needs to be a member of staff. Could we put into place a structure, which makes it clear that it’s the students responsibility to work their way through a set list of tasks.

DY: staff could meet upfront and negotiate a project that would be appropriate. There could even be R&D projects.

JO: A generic list of milestones, that would provide a formal structure, could be generic enough to be suitable to a range of placements.

DY: We could work together to create this and develop something that both Glue and the UAL could use. We have a handbook in place but it needs a clearer structure.

Jo: Well that would be useful for us as would some investigation into other placement models and a look at how education can help with things like staff development.

Futurefit

Futurefit is a report produced by the CBi that examines how Universities can build employability skills in their graduates. The full document can be downloaded here:

Here are some ideas that ‘Futurefit’ proposes to improve students employability:

> Building employability skills into the curriculum through work-related learning – for example, using case study examples linking the subject knowledge to its application in the outside world.

> Adapting the way the curriculum is taught and assessed – for instance, ensuring students have the opportunity to give presentations or work in a team, and rewarding the demonstration of employability skills

> Offering compulsory – usually accredited – modules designed to help students acquire employability skills

> Making paid work placements of up to a year a key part of the university experience, often with a network of contacts with employers at departmental or faculty level and/or centrally.

Creative Review

Creative Review’s question of the week on 11th August 2009 was ‘How do you organize placements?’ and the posts soon began to discuss the wider issue of whether education was preparing students correctly for the world of work. The full discussion can be found here, but what follows are some of the more relevant posts.

One of the key messages to come out of the report (referring to ‘FUTUREFIT’ which we discuss later) was the need for universities and businesses to ‘up their game’ in the development of employability skills in students – both in terms of the number of placements on offer and in terms of course content. Both universities and students need to recognise that employability skills should not be treated as an ‘add on’ but as an essential part of the university curriculum. Geoff Gradwell 2009-08-11 17:13:19

I’ve given this a lot of thought and I think the problem stems from degree courses. The sad truth is that half the people—while maybe having a good student portfolio—do not possess the skills required to do the job. Many do of course, but it’s always a gamble. If people are not taught key industry skills on their degree, how else are they going to learn until they are equipped enough to become a junior designer? James 2009-08-12 16:41:06

PS - I agree with James that university’s and colleges leave their students woefully under prepared for the real working world. Trevor Collins 2009-08-12 17:12:57

“My suggestion is that universities run a module through which a placement is arranged by each student for themselves, and is carried out in term time. For a university to actively encourage students to go on a placement would surely be a good alternative to simply telling them about ‘professional practice’ in a classroom. This way the students have the guidance of tutors if needed, and could work for free as they still have the money from student loans for life’s costs.” Matt 2009-08-11 17:17:53

Michael Johnson

This passage from the Michael Johnson ‘Thought for the Week’ blog describing the current problems with the RCA provides an interesting take on the relationship between industry and education.

'The key issue that has distracted the course for decades has been ‘art'. Communications graduates have been at pains to present their work within the context of white walled galleries, not grubby old commerce. Work has often been presented as ‘work in progress', never finished. The ‘process' has become the king, not the problem to be solved.

With the movement of the ‘real art' departments to the Battersea site, this art-lite stance will become even harder to maintain, and feels increasingly at odds with the other design departments which view their industries as essential and valued partners, not hated adversaries.

The roots of this was the self-immersion/self expression phase of British design prevalent in the nineties, fuelled by then-zeitgeist collective Tomato. This found an eager audience in South Kensington. Rightly or wrongly, a collection of part-time tutors were gathered to support the course with performance, video art, experimental film and art specialisms. Coupled with the merger of the traditional disciplines, the ground was laid for a new generation of crossover graphic artists to bloom.

But they haven't. By all accounts the department is just as silo-ridden as it ever was. If you don't believe there's an art bias, just a brief interrogation of the department's website reveals that of the dozen or so current MPhil and PhD students, the vast majority describe themselves as artists (and only two as graphic designers).

In the meantime, the better undergraduate courses like Glasgow, Kingston and St Martins* (in the UK) have successfully incorporated these ‘conceptual' leanings into their courses, whilst still producing graduates capable of the basics of craft and typography. Students from these courses may not glean much more from two more years at college, apart from more room to experiment, and have often chosen simply to start work and get on with their lives.'

The full post can be found here:

Vocational Education?

To view vocational education as prescriptive and overly focused on process is to view commerce through a twentieth century lens. It cannot be a prescriptive experience that promotes a passive response. Twenty first century industry requires creative, flexible and dynamic thinkers and any educational experience designed to serve these industries would prioritize and nurture these attributes.

“Creativity - the base for innovation - has never been more important. For business, it holds the key not just to success, but to survival. And for society it is the key to solving the major problems that have to be addressed, whether these be in healthcare, urban planning, transportation, education or a sustainable way of life.”

Sir George Cox, former Chairman of the Design Council. On the Role Of Creativity.

Design Industry Insights 2010

' 55,310 undergraduate Design students in the UK 2010 and yet only 51% of practising designers have a degree!!?'

'87% of Design businesses employ less than 10 people and 60% employ fewer than 5.'

Design Industry Insights 2010. The Design Council

CLTAD Funded Research

In spring 2010, Course Leader, Derek Yates, embarked on a CLTAD funded secondment in order to identify innovative best practice in terms of work based and work related learning within Higher Education.

This research involved:
> Going through Governmental research reports in reports such as ‘Future fit. Preparing graduates for the world of work. Produced by the CBI; The Future Face of Enterprise. Demos; The Cox Review. Sir George Cox.; the QAA Code of Practice for Work- Based & Placement Learning; Skillset. Guidelines for Employers offering Work Placement Schemes in the Creative Industries

> Tracking blogs, websites and publications produced by people like Creative Review, Design Week, the Design Council and Eye.

> Attending and talking at conferences like CCW Work Based Learning Conference and the ‘Design & the Creative Industries Conference: Working Together with Universities’ at Brighton University.

> Interviewing leading practitioners from across the creative industries such as the design team at Glue London (a digital agency); Steve Dunn, Creative Director at the Assembly (an advertising agency); Davide, Creative Director of Quayola (motion graphics/ interactive director); Matt Wade, partner Kin (an interaction & environment design agency); Russell Holmes, then Creative Director at Dave (the branding consultancy); Matt Rice, partner at Sennep (Web design agency); Roberto D’Andria, partner Bear (graphic design & branding agency) and Luise Vormitagg, partner at Container Plus (an Illustration Collective)

> Drawing together material gathered during previous collaborations with agencies such as: Moving Brands, Bibliotheque, the V&A, 300 Million, Kino and Onedotzero.

Key Ideas: Word

‘Key Ideas: Word’ took place on 12th May 2010 and was again organized with the help of Eye Magazine. It took the spring issue of Eye (Eye 75), which featured interviews with Anthony Burrill and Fraser Muggeridge, as its starting point. The day started with a series of 30-minute provocations delivered by Burrill and Muggeridge as well as Marcus Leis Allion and Camberwell Course Directors David Coventon and Derek Yates. The provocations attempted to assess how the trend that seemed evident in ‘Typography Now’ has developed. Staff and students were then given an opportunity to respond to these provocations through discussion and the production of a series of large-scale hand-drawn typographic sheets. This then formed the content for a publication that was designed by a student team led by FdA student, Astrid Joublanc.