My thoughts on Wiredsussex’s Digital by Design event
12th November, 2009 by Alick
I’m writing this on the bus. I have to say I left the debate early and thought I’d post my opinion on it all here.
Digital by design was a sort of industry vs academia debate that focussed on the design needs of the industry and the contribution the unis make to generating talent.
It came at the end of a careers fair and portfolio clinic, something miggle.co.uk would have been keen to be involved with. When millions of UK web users engage with content we create every day, when staff of ours move on to the likes of Yahoo! or MSN as their next move, when what we specialise in leaves us fairly uniquely positioned in the town, notwithstanding my own experience in small business mentoring and having written one of the town’s leading colleges first web design course you’d think, from a strategic point of view, we’d be a good fit. But that’s clearly just one way thinking on my part. And it’s slightly unrelated, so rant over…
Anyway, the point I wanted to make was related to Andy Budd, Clearlefts’s Creative Director. He was talking about himself as an example of a generation of web practitioners, who were self-taught, starting as they did at a time when there were no web based courses. I’ve seen some of Andy’s first designs, and they’re a world apart from those churned out by the leading company he’s built up today, so he’s a clear example of someone who’d learnt well on the job. One key point he mentioned was a survey in which 75% of 19 year olds had said their education had been no help in them getting a job – and he was comparing this also with the lack of relevant skills he saw coming out of the unis. I’d be interested to see what the same 19 year olds say in 10 years time by the way.
As a largely self-taught practitioner myself I can definitely see a value in my education – but I think mine came at a time before unis were obsessed with churning out people with what it considered were vocational skills. My education I think was just about giving me a broad all round understanding and interest in the world around me. Those skills helped me to be a self starter and it’s actually those fundamental skills I find lacking in many people we interview. That’s not a fault that can be laid at the feet of the unis – its more the fault of a fundamental shift in what education, even from an early age, is all about.
At the end of the day, great designers will shine through somehow. If the unis can’t churn them out, they’ll find a route elsewhere. One academic guy mentioned that design based courses were hampered because they sat in humanities. If they sat in engineering he ventured it could all be different. That’s a fair point. We currently have an intern at miggle with an Astrophysics degree. He didn’t learn to be a web developer, but the thinking processes he can apply to online engineering are spot on. There are some things the unis will always be able to do better than others – science and engineering I think are good examples.
The biggest irony of the evening to me was that one of the design experts from the industry was talking all about the need for unis to focus students on details, not the big ideas, while sat next to another expert whose Flash based site didn’t work on an iPhone. But that’s just pedantic detail on my part, and I only make it because I see it as slightly ironic we missed out again to be able to make a contribution earlier in the day to the industry body we always do our best to support.
So, if there’s anyone reading this who was at the event who missed out an a portfolio review, please feel free to get in touch with me, I’d be happy to help out.
Based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.
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Tags: Brighton & Hove, jobs advice, website design, wiredsussex