Hey all thanks for reading, im fresh and dont know where to start
Well Im currently a junior in high school, class of 2006. Im living in Hawaii but want to leave for college and become an industrial designer.
I am taking courses like mechanical drawing and about to start a course in introduction to 3d graphic with Maya (if i get in the class). I dont have the best grades, currently about a 3.0gpa
I found out i want to be an industrial designer recently, i hope its not to late. I need to know what else i can do to prepare my self. I dont know where to start. its over whelming.
Should I take a junior college to get rid of core classes and raise my grades? What college should i start with if im going straight into the feild. Do i need to create a portfolio with drawing and creative ideas? Im really panicing. Is a 3.0 grade point average good enough to get in a college for industrial desgin?
Please offer advice on anything i can do, to get to become an industrial designer. It would also be helpful if you tell me your experiences of getting to college, becoming an industrial designer and your background-like how you started from high school and got to where you are.
HELP!!
Thank you.
i really dont know where to start. -except i know i really want to be an industrial designer.
You’re starting early and that is great. I found out about ID at about the same time as you. Most people don’t hear about it untill they are older.
A lot of schools that offer ID require or recomend a general art portfolio. I still have mine. Pretty funny now but it did the job and got me in. Apply to a few schools and visit as many as you can. I think I applied to Pratt, RISD, Art Center, Mass Art and Saracuse, I visited all of them as well as RIT. Imediately you get a feel for where you want to be. In general, the name on the diploma matters little, what matters is being in a place you feel that you can learn. When you leave school your skills will be what gets you that first job, not where you studied.
That said, a few schools I like to recomend:
Art Center College of Design.
University of Cinncinati
College for Creative Studies
Cleveland Institute of Art
i really agree with Yo. im going to Pratt and i love it there, yet the most important thing is find out what knid of environment you perform the best in. do you like the city? or you prefer the suburb because there are much less distractions? yes the school matters so much more than its location but i hope this helps.
I discovered ID when I was a Jr. also… Before that I thought I wanted to be an architect. Glad I dodged that bullet.
Best of luck in choosing a school. One of the biggest questions to answer: would you benefit more from an art-school or a traditional liberal-arts college? (I went the art-school route and wouldn’t trade it for the world.)
Regarding location: pick a school with good graduates working in the field, and close connections to local design firms or manufacturers.
Learning Maya is nice–but that’s not for ID. Go get the “Studio Tools” personal learning edition and learn all about surface modeling instead. It’ll be the best $20 you spend in your entire ID education. (Damn, and I remember forking over like $300 for markers and ellipse templates when I was a student!)
Personally, I wouldn’t trade the art school background for anything either. I draw so much upon what I learned in the basic form, composition, and color classes. Plus the added art history, while a bit of a drudge at the time, is invaluable now. It’s good to learn the languages of business and engineering, but don’t forget our mother tounge, creativity.
Aye to that, I went the art school route, and now I’m at a very technical school (i’m off to NASA next october)…both have advantages, but aside from all the massive computer programs and stuff we use…it’s all about the sketching! My sketching has gone to shit from all the CAD stuff, don’t let it happen to you!
