In The inbox!

Like a lot of people I look at a lot of different websites for information and forget how many I sign up to for regular updates and newsletters. This morning however I had to do a double take. I found the British Design Innovation website through a re-direct from another one and signed up for more information. An interesting article that I felt needed posting on here!

Balancing design graduates' skills and creativity for industry

06 March 2012

Balancing design graduates' skills and creativity for industry

Barbara Ridley is the MA Creative Futures award leader at Staffordshire University, a member of BDI's University Design Industry Partnership (UDIP). In this BDI Opinion piece, she discusses why it is so important for the higher education sector to work with the design industry in nurturing skills and creativity – for the benefit of graduates, their employment prospects and the future of design industry.

BALANCING DESIGN GRADUATES’ SKILLS AND CREATIVITY FOR INDUSTRY

Last November, BDI published a conversation about design graduates with their design consultancy member Rob Dolton on nurturing design graduate employees, so I thought you might like to hear the case from the higher education standpoint.

All designers have to start somewhere, and for most that start is at university. The role lecturers play in shaping future design graduates is fundamental to their success and thus, by definition, to the future of the industry. But entering the workplace has always been a battleground: competition for those oh-so-important paid positions is high and the struggle to reach the top involves frequent rebuffs. Yet even obtaining a degree is increasingly being seen as not enough. How well the university experience is exploited by students is what will really define their futures.

At Staffordshire University the idea of industry is embedded in our students from the moment they first walk through the door, to ensure they don’t just start thinking about it in their final year when it is too late. It is a fundamental principle with us that the staff discuss industry contact and best practice in our course modules so that it becomes utterly familiar to students.

Elements of our degrees include work placements and field trips to design consultancies in London, Manchester and local regions. In addition, industry professionals discuss case studies and use live briefs to illustrate the reality of working in the design industry – and what will hopefully become the students’ career. These constant practical references and examples underscore the point that carving out a career in the design industry is not some distant dream for our graduates, but eminently achievable.

It is also important that students understand how important communication and diverse team-working skills are, if they wish to succeed in obtaining a good degree and enter a rewarding career. They may have the most marvellous design portfolio in the world, but if they are unable to work and get on with others there’s a problem. Managing team dynamics is a critical skill to obtain, so we often include cross-course teamwork on our modules to ensure engagement between students across various design disciplines.

The reality is that there’s a big difference between a 12-week project at university and having a 24-hour deadline in industry, so we work to arm our students with the ability to think quickly, make successful decisions and manage their time effectively. Similarly, all design graduates have to develop concise but effective presentational skills, and the ability to pitch ideas in a professional manner, throughout their degree course: these are also vital in convincing potential employers in an increasingly-competitive industry that they are worth employing.

Internships can send out the wrong signal. The reality is that our students will be taking on internships even if they also have to do other work in order to pay the rent, and this is something else we have to prepare them for. Overall an internship does work out for our graduates and they will eventually obtain a position through the network and work profile they have created for themselves, but it would be good to see more graduates being given a chance to convert their work experience into paid employment rather than simply being paid expenses.

It is also important that the industry realises just what these young students are facing today – to get to know what academia is like, the types of projects being undertaken, and to recognise the value of a degree. The experience of studying for a degree enables students to contextualise design through practical work as the basis of their portfolio, to be sure, but without relevant input by design professionals it is difficult for students to produce high quality work.

Degrees offer students the chance to be innovative, generate new ideas, and push boundaries and experiment. We have to get the balance right between creativity and the right skills so that more students gain employment and bring their innovation to the design industry.

The design and education sectors are not mutually exclusive: successfully training design graduates across a wide spectrum of skill-sets is a constant balancing act for them both. But by working together, design and education can help create ideal learning and working environments – which in turn should breed innovative and successful designers who will not only boost the UK design industry but make it stronger than ever.

Staffordshire University sounds like a nice place, I might check it out sometimes!