How To Get That Edge Over Your Classroom Competitors

Some good convo on here.

2 things that stick out to me on the latest posts, education style, and expectations.

I’m not an educator, but I don’t think the school should be a duplicate of the professional studio. The school by nature is an academic environment and there are some things better learned in that setting, protected from industry, where it is safe to explore and learn. As Emman said, UC has the unique alternating Co-op program which is a great balance. You get the benefits of apprenticeships alternating with academic periods where you can absorb and process… that said, the academic can’t ignore the professional world. It can be informed by it, respond to it, and hopefully help shape the direction of the professional world.

When I did teach, I always gave points for exceeding expectations, but it can be a double edge sword. If the assignment is to do 20 sketches, and you 25, but they all are terrible, it isn’t going to go well. One of the techniques that my professors used to do was assign 30 concepts, but only post up your top 5. That way if you did 30, 40, or 50, it din’t matter. the only thing that mattered was could you accurately judge and select your top 5… of course you could do 5 good ones and phone the rest in with crap… nothing is perfect I guess! The other 25 concepts would be in a pile and they would randomly count a few of the students, or flip through to see if they picked their best 5.

This going way OT, but some great convo. The last few conversations that have caught on remind me a bit more of the old days of deep and thoughtful discussion. I dig it.

I’ll have to disagree. The job of a good manager is to elevate an associate to the next level, making them more valuable to the organization. How is that different from what a professor does?

While a professor may start with something extremely raw, but as you mention it’s the work that matters and not the grade, ID can be done with an apprenticeship. No need for grades or school for that matter. How would a manager and a professor differ then?

Time is time. Some need more than others. Some will be more efficient and more profitable. And yes, more practice will make you better in most cases. Do the practice on your time, not mine. Yay capitalism.

An academic setting can allow concentration in a particular area of product development, work on color theory for the semester. A good manager can also manage associates to their strengths which may lead them to be a specialist in a particular area. I’ve got folks great at the front end and I’ve got folks great at the back end. Very similar to an academic setting with the only difference that a newb has no clue what and what not are their strengths.

iab, I do think that some things are better learned in an academic environment, but you could probably compress a lot of that into a shorter program. The class I had that I think benefited me in a pure academic setting were: art/architectural history, writing, presentation/public speaking (was an elective, but great for creative people to take), classical figure drawing, 2d theory, 3d theory. Pretty much everything after that could have been an apprenticeship, but rapid viz, model making, and CAD were nice to take as separate classes without the pressure of having to learn on a client. I don’t think most clients or corporations would want to pay to train their apprentices. Even if they were unpaid apprenticeships, they would be taking your senior designer and design manager’s time, during their hours.

I’d agree completely.

But my point is that there is little difference between a professor and a manager. Both do project and people management. Sure the structure of a project is different in academia than the professional world. You can have a CAD class, color theory class, a shop class, etc. That concentration of task is probably a better way to learn.

I didn’t bother with the OP’s video because I really don’t care as it likely has no pertinence to what I do. But as a manager, project and people, if I ask for 1 flower and you bring me a dozen, it smacks a brown-nosing and it will reflect poorly on you. Or worse, you didn’t do what I asked you to do. I may be mistaken but Sain may think that is a good thing. It isn’t.

When i was a adjunct i found many students poorly prepared to enter the “business” of design - no slight on the level of educators but some had been out of the work field for a long time or only had academic experience although they were and are very talented designers.

As a professor it ones job to help grow and prepare the students to enter the field in a somewhat protected and nurturing environment and to encourage not discourage. But applying real world expectations and criteria is important and they should be more enforced vi progression form 1st year to the 4th year.

I was amazed when I would have students not have work completed on the due date and the excuse would be “so and so teacher always gives us extensions so we figured you would” and they were not too happy to be informed

  1. They are automatically deducted 20%
  2. It is a insult to give them a extension when other completed the work on time
  3. IN real world this would happen once or twice and then they would be let go
  4. The fact none of them provided a heads up or reason that the work would be late was unacceptable.

Their response “that’s unfair” my response “did you not read the syllabus” – there are many more real world expectations that I taught as well and some students didn’t like it but grew to appreciate them (even to the point where they would thank me years later) and some thought I was simply a prick……

Thats the part I think is different for a professor and a manager. A professor shouldn’t care if you overdeliver. They are not managing a timeline or budget. They don’t know/care if that rendering took you 1 hour or 10. They just care that you have the rendering. I can’t imagine an art history professor asking you how many hours you spent writing your paper, an editor might care but not your professor. So why should your studio professor care how many hours each rendering took? (They shouldn’t because 19 year old Sain never took art classes in high school so it takes him 2 hours to draw a box in perspective. While Art prodigy super star student can speed paint a car concept in 30 minutes. In the end they both need to present whats required. )

Even in the real world people hardly ever ask for “10 concepts”. They ask for you to spend 40 hours to finish Round 1, that has 10 high fidelity photoshop concepts and all the required formatting, mood boards, etc. Designers are going to draw way more than just the 10 concepts, throw out bad ones, remix a few, and eventually narrow it down for the preso. But all within the allotted time/budget.

Over delivering to a client is a bad thing it sets prescient for work moving forward. This week you spent 80 hours on 40 hours of paid work. Next time you deliver 40 hours of work they’re going to expect work at the 80 level. (Unless your in an SF consultancy then its always expected :confused: )

But in college you get the assignment “Show up next class with 10 concepts” One student can show up with the first 10 concepts they did that took them a few hours. The other can show up with 10 concepts, that took them the same hours to do, but then they spent the next 5 hours drawing 10 more concepts, refining them, redrawing and getting the perspective perfect. You’ll present your 10 super concepts and have the rest in your sketch stack on your desk.

What I’m saying: In college the professor doesn’t care if you “over deliver” by spending all the time between classes working on the project (your classmates might). Be the person that spends the extra hours refining your concepts, it’ll pay dividends when you graduate.

Even in the real world people hardly ever ask for “10 concepts”. They ask for you to spend 40 hours to finish Round 1, that has 10 high fidelity photoshop concepts and all the required formatting, mood boards, etc. Designers are going to draw way more than just the 10 concepts, throw out bad ones, remix a few, and eventually narrow it down for the preso. But all within the allotted time/budget.

So…in the real world example above, you were asked for 10 concepts, as outlined in the Round 1 deliverables. Did I miss something?

Maybe what’s missing in this conversation is that the job of academia is to teach students how to think about and solve product problems, and that fancy renderings are but one tool in the toolkit. The thought process, however it is capped in the end (fancy renderings, models, a meeting, diagrams and workflows, whiteboard notes, whatever), needs to be fed with process work that shows the reasoning and proof.

As to overdelivering or pushing themselves beyond the limit, students are free to do that, but it’s going to cost them when they find themselves sick from stress, exhaustion, bad diet, and lack of sleep.

Nope you’re right, the real world is 10 concepts in X amount of hours. Academia it’s 10 concepts by this deadline. The shift in the way the work is framed allows students the opportunity to spend the extra time to get it right. (whether that means more time concepting, sketching, etc) So you have the opportunity to really push your designs and your skill set during this time.

I think that a competitive school environment where students are pushing themselves project after project to outperform themselves and classmates, leads to greater growth and produces stronger designers. Putting in the late night hours during school will pay dividends when your graduate and try to find a job. Going back to OPs original message, my thought is that the competition between students, pushes the entire class upwards.

There other side of the argument seems to be that, this produces diva designers and it enforces unhealthy habits. It also isn’t how real world projects work and school should potentially try and follow a structure closer to that. Example not over delivering, etc. In the real world your not competing with your fellow designers your collaborating. (paraphrasing a few others points)

Because they can evaluate where you are and determine if there is any gap to where you should be. That way they can manage your expectations and where you should concentrate efforts.

It’s called managing. It is helpful to those being managed.

So now you are a fifth year senior and it takes you 40 hours to make a single slide in the deck. Guess what, if your professor isn’t telling to you may not cut it, he/she is a fraud. Managing.

2 third year students have to make 10 concepts in a week. Student A does the 10, student B does 15. Both receive an A. Do you honestly think student B should get an AAAAA++++++? Managing.

Again, there is little, if any, difference between manager/professor. The manager’s/professor’s expectations of their associate/student should fit an experience level. If an employee hits that expectation, they get paid. If a student hits that expectation, they get their grade.

That works for people who are competitive. It does not for people who are not competitive.

Competitive people rarely understand that fact.

Quote of the day. Love it.

The business of competitive people versus noncompetitive people is interesting. I don’t compete with or care about competing with other designers because they aren’t the audience. It seems in real life, happy clients are often happy with a lot less in terms of sketch quality and “innovation” than competitive designers are, and they can’t necessarily tell the difference between a C+ and an A- sketch to begin with. Clients can’t draw a BOX most of the time, and they are thrilled by almost any level of sketch. Napkin sketches and diagrams often work. And if personal experience is any guide, clients’ actions say they are much more interested in incremental progress and maintenance than they are in innovation, which means it usually isn’t worth spending a lot of time on far-out ideas - most of the time. So those two arms-race areas that I think competitive people get all up in arms about - perfect images, newness/killerapps/innovation - and which can be a source of pointless endless endlessness for everyone else, are probably a lot less important than many people think they are.

This seems a little sad on one hand, on the other I get it, but careful the path to the jaded side. Personally, I do it because I enjoy pushing it as far as possible, for myself. I feel like I have a long long way to go to where I want to be. That underlying feeling keeps me coming at it. Of course the flip side to jaded is burned out, so you have to watch out for pushing too hard. When I first became a manager 10 years ago one of my designers asked me why my standards are so high, the exec team doesn’t care… I replied my standards were high for myself. As long as you understand that it is for your own satisfaction and enjoyment and you don’t do it for the proverbial pat on the back, I think its all good.

Ha.

The other day I was showing a “junior” how to vent a part. Made an underlay, then an overlay to clean it up a bit. Turned out to be a weird looking shape, the combo of the part, vent and sprue. Pretty basic though.

Couple three days later I take the underlay, flip it over to write some notes on the clean side of the sheet. Walk over to IT because the notes were about a bug in an app we developed. Standing there the director of IT saw the back of my notes from across the room and was most impressed with my chicken scratch sketch.

Go figure.

This seems a little sad on one hand, on the other I get it, but careful the path to the jaded side. Personally, I do it because I enjoy pushing it as far as possible, for myself. I feel like I have a long long way to go to where I want to be. That underlying feeling keeps me coming at it. Of course the flip side to jaded is burned out, so you have to watch out for pushing too hard. When I first became a manager 10 years ago one of my designers asked me why my standards are so high, the exec team doesn’t care… I replied my standards were high for myself. As long as you understand that it is for your own satisfaction and enjoyment and you don’t do it for the proverbial pat on the back, I think its all good.

It isn’t sad or particularly jaded. It’s me being pragmatic. Part of it is probably that I don’t view myself as an artist, but rather someone that figures stuff out. The other part is that I feel best when I get in 8-9 hours of sleep, cook my own meals, get my hour or two of strenuous activity in, and play with my kids and read the paper. If I don’t get that, I’m not a happy camper. At the end of the day, my job is not my life - it’s a means to an end, and while often stimulating, it is not a substitute for living.

Bringing it back to the main idea - competitive people versus noncompetitive people - I think the competitive people tend to be bad at making that distinction between work and life, or often grossly over-prioritize the centrality of their work to their persona. Which is fine, as long as those folks keep that to themselves and don’t let their personal need for uncompromising excellence prevent “good enough” work from going out the door the 90% of the time that “good enough” actually is “good enough.”

Some interesting commentary going on in here. Makes me think back to a design critique in college where I overheard one classmate ask another, “Are you trying to make us look bad?”

The person who was asked this looked totally bewildered since you could tell he was only motivated by passion/interest not by wanting to “one-up” someone.

I will admit there were times in school, especially after a rough critique that I thought to myself “You wait, next critique I’m coming back with a vengeance!” :smiling_imp:

Usually after getting some sleep and eating a burrito, my motivation would shift back to the joy of learning and improving, being able to say that I could see growth in my skills and abilities. Of course everyone is wired differently.

Jimmy, I think what might be throwing some people off is the clickbait-ish video title because it almost seems to suggest that the true satisfaction will come when you can claim to have that “edge” over others. Watching the video (which, to be honest, is a little generic in it’s advice) I realize your intent is for students to just get better, and that embracing a healthy amount of competitiveness is good (which I agree).

I wonder though if there is a better motivator? Something that’s more sustaining and could keep designers motivated even if they work in isolation?

Thanks for posting though, great discussion it’s generated and will be following your channel.

I don’t want to be prickly here, but I want to state my POV. I could never work for someone who felt this way nor could I ever have anyone on my team who ever said the words “good enough”… good enough never is. Sometimes you have to ship it, but nothing is ever good enough. You just run out of time.

I could never work for someone who felt this way nor could I ever have anyone on my team who ever said the words “good enough”… good enough never is. Sometimes you have to ship it, but nothing is ever good enough. You just run out of time.

I don’t know that I understand where you’re coming from. I mean, yeah, philosophically, constant improvement etc. If you haven’t fulfilled the design brief, though, it can’t be “good enough.” But once you have done that, you only eat into profitability or the time that would otherwise be spent on other projects (and thereby compromising those projects) by going beyond. Knowing to call a project finished - even when the idealistic part of you says more could be done - is an extremely important skill, without which budget and time management would be impossible. Furthermore, I really do believe that an experienced designer’s “good enough,” is roughly equivalent to a client’s “nice job.”

Maybe I’m just getting hung up on the semantics of it here.

Interesting discussion.

First off, in relation to the video. I’m not sure I like the angle as it seems click-baity and simplistic.

I think an interesting angle would be how to get the most out of your education. Don’t get me wrong, some friendly competition is certainly healthy. Getting kick in the pants to surpass yourself is great though collegiality is certainly something to start learning in school. Competition should only be a motivation to push you forward, don’t allow it to stop you from sharing and creating relationships with your peers.

What really is your goal in school? You’re dedicating 4 years to learn and probably putting yourself into debt doing so. You need to decide where you want to be when you’re finished and take the steps that will take you there. School isn’t Weight Watchers, success isn’t guarantied if you follow the outline. The curriculum and the teachers are there to share the knowledge and guide you along the way. It’s up to you to put the effort and decide where you want to put the effort.

Going back to the 20 sketch example. If you feel you need to improve your sketching abilities, what’s wrong with spending an extra day on it and end up with 30 sketches and coasting in some other class you already have some experience in? On the flip side, if you’re a strong sketcher and feel you need to concentrate your effort on a research assignment, go right ahead.

That was my biggest take away from University. The curriculum is a plan to get you to pass the classes and get the diploma. The diploma alone probably won’t get you going in the direction you want.