The first 2-3 years of ID school I was really stubborn. My life was to come into school at 8 AM and leave at 2AM, I was eating Subway 1-2 times a day, and pulling all-nighters at-least 1-2 times a week. I was (and still am to a point) very competitive, I came into school with no artistic or design background and felt that the only way I could catch up to my peers and the level of work expected for new graduates was to work harder than all of them. I had mentors pull me aside from Pensole and Under Armour and tell me I needed to relax, and shared their stories of burnout, and how overworking lead them to ill health, unhappiness and affected their families.
I didn’t finally understand how to balance my work and life until I had a teacher from Samsung come in to teach a sketching class. I was pulling all-nighters every week for his class and working my butt off. There were weeks where I tried to over-deliver in both his class and my studio class and fell flat on my face. The first time I took his class he lectured me weekly about how I was working to my own detriment, he gave so many tips on how to handle his assignments and work smart but I refused them and kept going at my pace. That semester I didn’t finish my final project for my studio and his final assignment for the class, it was a kick in the face. Somehow I didn’t fail either class, but that’s a whole other discussion.
My favorite quote from this instructor was about his role being a manager, and how as a professional we have to work smart. In his workplace he wanted to eliminate the mentality that people who work long hours should be praised. He said something along the lines of “Why would I want my designers to stay late? Now their wive’s and kids are upset with me and now it’s my problem…”
But there came a point where my foundation skills got up to par and my lack of design knowledge and aesthetic sense poked through everything. There was no way I could design great looking things because for the past 2-3 years I was sitting in a concrete building with no windows 16-18 hours a day. I had no inspiration.
Work hard, yes, but there comes a point where one needs to live life, and have life experiences to design great things.
I agree, but there’s also something to be said for each school’s reputation in the eyes of employers as well. I never got the stories of design students concealing their work and hiding their techniques, just tells me they can’t simply come up with new ideas. As a manager I want all of the designers to be sharing techniques and ideas, it makes our team stronger, our work better, and brings in new business. As that correlates to a design school, when students work together, share ideas, and focus on pushing each other to improve then the reputation of the school can elevate as employers are happy to have hired designers who get the value in working together and pushing their peers, but also happen to be talented designers. Maybe it’s just me, but I think I learned more from my peers than my profs.
Back to the original OP question/comment.
Did you guys see the other youtube videos on the series?
He has one where he talks about how to improve your sketching skills BUT only talks about it.? I think the videos are kind of superficial. There’s probably more useful info from everybody’s responses than the actual video. I would rather have visuals than somebody just talking; specially when it relates to design.
My 2 cents
I agree with most here and think the advice given in the video series is a little generic but it’s true, we did get a really great discussion out of this post.
Love that quote and I fully agree with this.
To me this begs the question, what makes a good designer?
Is it really those extra 10 sketches over the required 15? Or is it all the experiences and analytical thinking that went into the required 15 that show a number of different approaches?
It urked me in school when quantity was praised over quality.
Of course, you need to put in the quantity in order to reach a certain level of quality but success is not just about polishing the core skills.
For me, the person who gets “the edge” is the one who presents innovative, new insights in a compelling way.
Most of the time it was the person who connected their experiences and references the best and was able to see the bigger picture and then had the adequate skills to turn these insights and conclusions into an attractive solution.
From my experience, it was rarely the person who put all his time staring into a computer screen or sketch pad.
Trying to ‘get the edge’ over your classmates is fleeting at best. In the end, each design student’s main competition is with themselves. Design is not track level F1 racing. There are designers on the F1 team of course, but if you’re trying to apply downstream racing tactics at the upstream project level, crashing and burning are an inevitability.
The smart students are the ones who enjoy themselves, learn how to give and receive feedback from all different manner of sources and take risks in order to explore and learn new things. Anyone can pour their energy into preening their work and its presentation. The studio reality is that some crits and presentations are better than others. If you focus too much on the other guy and his work, you will fail to advance your own development as a designer. Do not let others work irritate you. Do not let others work force you to project your own insecurities. A good prof who knows his/her students can pick up on this and apply course changes accordingly.
Learn to appreciate the efforts of others. Learn to appreciate talent and ability when you see it. As a designer it is imperative to continually absorb the ideas, techniques and skills of others. Doing so will get you far further and leave you time to explore the next horizon that leads to the next inspiration. Inspiration is something that designers can never get enough of, and as they age, if they have learned to appreciate the talents and abilities of others in their career, you will not have to worry about keeping your edge sharp and inspiration will always be there when needed to energize the creative process.
A good designer makes it look effortless…Letting them see you sweat detracts from your design’s value.
In my opinion, the first thing you have to do is matriculate in courses that you like. Do what you like, and do it better than everyone else. If you really like it, investing time in it wont bother you. Of course benchmarking is healthy, but it is just that; a point of comparison. Only by defining your goals and objectives you can surpass yourselves. Everyone has a different approach on life created by the environment they where born into and the genetics they carry. So if it is haunting whether your classmate is better than you or not, always remember: He is different than you. Strength and weakness, gospel of our beloved Sun-Tzu.