Typophile - Best School for Graphic Design in New York? - Comments

JackieT, I come from a

terminaldesign — Sun, 18 May 2008 04:24:10 -0700

JackieT,

I come from a family of Guidance Counselors, Teachers, Principals and School Administrators. My first job out of college was that of a public school teacher. I think GCs do a wonderful job in the early middle school grades, and may be even of some help in guiding students to more traditional fields, but anyone who falls out of the standard mold, like having an interest in design, will receive very little help.

But then modern secondary education, at least in America, was designed to prepare rural farm kids to work in factories. It is completely ill equipped to offer any preparation to a student entering the modern global economy. American drop out rates and high school graduation rates point to its failure.

James

terminaldesign You were

Jackie T — Sun, 18 May 2008 03:26:47 -0700

terminaldesign You were expecting a high school Guidance Counselor to actually offer you some useful advice on a career path?

I am sorry you didn’t have a good guidance counselor. Come to think of it, I couldn’t find one in my NYHS - we had 7,000 kids going through — and not many teachers... but... in today’s schools I am amazed at the guidance counselors - and not only do some give good advice, some actual have “connections.” I’ve learned that in NY they just don’t slap a label on a whatever as a guidance counselor, there is now a curriculum they must get through - with a certificate and all at the end of it! Hopefully that can help some that may not have had the opportunity for help before. (College was a different story - amazing, the advice a College Guidance Counselor was allowed to give out - women, did you know you were there to find your spouse? I didn’t.)

aaronpinero and innovati — I just want to say to both of you — very well said!

Well, I don’t know what it

innovati — Sat, 17 May 2008 21:05:41 -0700

Well, I don’t know what it would cost you as an international student to study in Canada, but as a canadian I payed 3,500 per year, and the program I took is 3 years long. It covers typography, design history, art history, drawing, life drawing, design illustration, layout, branding, colour theory & perception, motion graphics, as well as tutorial classes for every piece of software we use.

It’s worth a shot, but some of the other people here have nailed it almost dead on. Education helps you lay out a framework for personal study, but design education doesn’t make you anywhere near ready for design. I’m going to say 70+% of design is learned outside of a classroom, and while I don’t advocate forgoing education altogether, I don’t depend on education alone to prepare me.

If it’s your passion; if you truly live and breathe design, you can thrive in any environment.

Since evilfans (the original

BrooklynRob — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:34:09 -0700

Since evilfans (the original poster) is asking about NYC, here is a possible course of action:
Get a 2-year undergraduate / liberal arts degree somewhere else, then move to NY and take all the continuing education design classes you can at SVA. Most of them are taught by the same instructors, follow similar curriculae, but cost a small fraction of actually being enrolled for a degree. I’m surprised more people don’t do this, it seems like a great deal. You could work at the same time and go at your own pace (none of this 6-classes-at-a-time nonsense.)

Having said that, I will sort of disagree with myself with the following: I think the above posters who are minimizing the value of a design degree are probably right in regard to designers who are going to work on their own from the beginning. But IMO, to get a job, you need a degree. To get a good job, you need a degree from a good school. There’s just too much competition.

I graduated from Pratt a few years ago and the students in my program were almost all employed in design jobs before school even ended. Plus, if you love design, you’ll love design school. It’s a great way to spend a few years. I’ll be paying off my loans for years, but I have a job I love going to every day — it’s a fair trade.

You were expecting a high

terminaldesign — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:48:32 -0700

You were expecting a high school Guidance Counselor to actually offer you some useful advice on a career path?

“Hey, kid, I don’t know what you expect me to do for you, if you can’t get at least 1590 on your SATs what do you think I am a magician”? “Have you thought much about community college?” “I hear they have a good food service program, and they are hiring at the IHOP.”

I think we have all been disappointed by that group.

My dislike for educations

James Puckett — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:57:07 -0700

My dislike for educations that lean toward broadness is that I know a hell of a lot of people who went to school, learned a lot of little bits about this and that, and forgot it all, myself included. We have our entire lives to do that—at least those of us who actually try to learn things and don’t just get off work and watch TV. But for many people, those undergraduate years are the only time in their lives that they’ll have to put aside the distractions and really focus on something. That’s a great opportunity, and it would be a shame to miss it just for four years of dabbling about in a liberal arts program.

My design program was not a liberal arts program; it was a very focused design program. And it was great to be in a school where almost everyone wanted to be there, and really cared about the subject at hand. The first time I went to school I was focusing on a much broader program (liberal arts with a focus on anthropology), and about half the people in every class were only taking it because it was a required elective for whatever they were doing. That meant we got a lot of dumbed down curriculum, tedious discussions, and is why I dropped out to focus on work until my mid-twenties.

A broad education may be a great thing for people who just don’t know where they want to go. But for someone like me, it’s like having teeth pulled. When I was in high school I never even knew what a design school was. If my asshole teachers and advisors had stopped their demagoguery about broad-mindedness for the ten minutes it would have taken to discuss art schools with the kid who was nearly failing classes for sitting around drawing custom letters all day I’d be ten years into a design career, instead of having to figure it all out myself at twenty nine.

Peter: A bit of

JCSalomon — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:29:27 -0700

Peter:
A bit of correction: Cooper Union is free to any resident of the U.S.A. It’s just that non-locals will have to find housing, which isn’t cheap anywhere in N.Y.C.
—Joel

I just finished at Pratt. I

aaronpinero — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:02:51 -0700

I just finished at Pratt. I almost certainly spent more money than was probably necessary, but the experience, IMHO, was totally worth it. It is true that you can gain a wealth of skill “on the job”, as has been suggested. I’ve been working as a interactive design swiss army knife for the last 10 years, and I was way ahead of the curve compared to many of the students. But for all that on the job learning, there was still something I was lacking, and that’s why I went back to school after so many years.

Aside from the contacts, which may ultimately be as valuable as my school debt, design education is about the problem solving process – about how to think about and create design. Anyone can operate a microscope, but it takes some learning to master microbiology. Poor analogy, maybe. But being able to stop traffic with Illustrator skill does not make you a good designer. Learning the process, learning how to address a design problem and apply my acquired skill (and practicing this process over and over) was very helpful to me. I also got work on the kind of projects that are rare in my day job, which was nice.

If I could offer 2 suggestions, they would be:

(1) Check out FIT. I’ve heard lots of good things about it.

(2) You will get out of it what you put into it. You have to believe that it’s worth it and work to get your money’s worth from the experience.

A wank? Really? I’d

clashmore — Wed, 14 May 2008 12:53:24 -0700

A wank? Really?

I’d suggest getting your BA (or BFA), dabbling in other areas of academia that appeal to you, and designing as much as possible outside of the classroom.

It works for me.

in today’s global economy

archaica — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:46:31 -0700

in today’s global economy smart educated people have become a dime a dozen.

That’s because people have redefined “educated” to the point of meaninglessness. Plenty of people are smart, but very few are adequately educated, especially in the United States. This is in part because large sectors of American society have become so narrow-minded and anti-intellectual that people actually think that learning things that aren’t related to a specific trade is “wank”.

terminaldesign, I think you

FeeltheKern — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:08:23 -0700

terminaldesign, I think you should send that one to http://adverbatims.blogspot.com/

From the designers I’ve seen who get what you might call a “liberal arts design degree” (something like 2/3 liberal arts classes and 1/3 design), typically labeled as a BA, they don’t exit with much of anything — they need more time to develop their design skills & thinking, and they’ve taken a bunch of 100 level courses in anything and everything. I think getting a BFA (usually 2/3 art/design classes and 1/3 liberal arts) is much more successful at preparing you to be a professional designer, just because there’s so much that has to be crammed into four years.

That said, I don’t think everyone majoring in design is necessarily looking to work as a designer. It can be just another form of majoring in Spanish or International Studies — something you’re interested in when you’re 20, and a stop along your path to getting a real estate license. I don’t find anything wrong with this. Design is a great tool for self-discovery.

I find it hard to believe designers will ever be business leaders, just because there’s a certain type of person who’s typically attracted to design, and they’re not the Donald Trumps of the world. There’s a certain type of person attracted to teaching, and a certain type attracted to the military, and they develop their own sort of culture, with rules and codes and self-imposed limitations. If design schools want to break free from this, they need to start requiring more business and marketing classes for their undergraduates.

Wow James, you are awfully

pattyfab — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:54:44 -0700

Wow James, you are awfully cranky lately! Final exams? Spring allergies? From whence stems your pronouncements on liberal arts educations - aren’t you in design school?

Any education necessarily depends on the quality of the teaching and the initiative of the student. A motivated student can get a great education at a crappy school, a lame student can graduate from Yale (c.f. George W) with a degree in partying his ass off. Another factor is the general quality of the student body. My university had a reputation for having a great art department. By and large that wasn’t exactly true but it attracted very talented students and the dialogue was really interesting.

The debate on whether to get a design degree will no doubt rage on here at Typophile, but it is probably useful for an aspiring designer to learn what path other successful designers have taken and what they thought of their education.

Somewhere or other I

terminaldesign — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:44:30 -0700

Somewhere or other I recently heard some business types pointing out that in today’s global economy smart educated people have become a dime a dozen. Real value is now in creative minds, and the men and women adept at thinking of new solutions to new problems will be the next generation of business leaders.

Business Week ran a story last year touting that the MFA is the new MBA. (another excuse for designer graduates to put off the hard work of making a living)

I went to a seminar on the subject, sponsored by the magazine, and while several of the speakers were entertaining, it was still the standard “Business Speak” with a few design terms thrown in. The one almost everyone was enthralled with was “Innovation”. Innovate here, Innovate there. Team Innovation, Facilitating Innovation. Fostering Innovation, Rewarding Innovation.

It all reminded me of a advertising design director who commented on some test words that I sent him for a new font proposal for his latest campaign.

“I like it”, he said. “But I was hoping for something more optimistic.”

“Optimistic,” I asked.

“Yes you know, like forward leaning.”

“An Italic?”

“Yes like and Italic, or maybe we could put some lines in to connote speed. What I’m saying to all the people working on this campaign, is that the solution should be musical, so why don’t you do another round and this time listen to some good music while you are drawing the test word.”

>Well-rounded liberal arts

William Berkson — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:17:45 -0700

>Well-rounded liberal arts educations are a wank. It’s just like high-school except that instead of learning lots of irrelevant factoids and taking an exam, one learns lots of irrelevant factoids and writes a term paper before taking an exam.

James, I think you are off the mark here. If the liberal arts education is good, it doesn’t just give factoids. It teaches you critical thinking and gives you a framework and understanding to analyze problems in many fields.

I have noticed on Typophile that in the field of type design many of the best designers have wide ranging knowledge and interests, and have something to say of interest in many subject areas. How much they are self-taught and what role formal education played I can’t say, but their discussions do reflect a liberal education.

The best way to learn design

Chardin — Wed, 14 May 2008 07:20:14 -0700

The best way to learn design skills is in a vocational school taught by professionals. The best way to get an appropiate education for a designer to put it all in contest is in culture & communication courses at university. I would say that hoolia_d has the right idea. That being said, pgariepy and dezcom make the best point; you get out of it what you put in.

Best School for Graphic Design in New York?

evilfansanfran — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:22:19 -0700

It seems like Cooper Union is best for fine arts in many ways, and Parsons is up there for fashion.

But what is the best school for Graphic Design? Pratt? SVA?