Finally Finished my Degree

The time has come. After 3 years of working hard and learning about design. I have finally finished my last course at the University of Newcastle, meaning I will have my Visual Communication degree at the beginning of next year.

It's been quite hard getting to this point. When I first journeyed to university, I knew a little bit about photoshop, but that was the extent of my design knowledge - if you'd call it that. Reflecting back on all the courses I took, I have actually picked up a fair bit of knowledge. Some of this was through just experiencing real design and being around other designers, some of it was from becoming part of the 'community' of design on the interweb and a small part was picked up from the lecturers themselves.

My Final Portfolio

For my final portfolio, we had to put together many short tasks, as well as assignments from one particular course. This meant that there was only a single website in my final portfolio. That doesn't say much for me as a web designer does it. They really should have let people work freely on their portfolio, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Exhibition Poster

Most of the work that was completed for the final course was rather unimpressive. That's not to say I didn't do a great job, but they subject isn't exactly interesting enough to put into a real portfolio. Here's the poster and concept for the Sixtyone Exhibition. This was one of the assignments.

This was probably my favourite design of the semester. It makes all the other work look mediocre in terms of subject and interest. One thing we did a lot of was redesigning logos of companies or creating new logos. We did a lot of logos.

Logos. So many logos.

This logo was probably one of my favourites. Nothing too spectacular, but it sure beats their current logo. Everything else really isn't cool enough to put up here, so we'll just leave that for now.

It doesn't really matter that most of my portfolio, which this course essentially helped me create, is full of crap. I'm never going to use it.

Time to Enjoy

Now that I've finished university, I'll be able to spend more time doing things I enjoy - like playing GH4 tomorrow. I'll probably even take the time to update the grid plugin, CSSExtra and the Espresso ExpressionEngine Sugar I'm working on. Good times.

The Importance of Design Education

I began wondering in my 2nd year what the point of design education actually was. The lecturers can't train you in design. They can't tell you how to make an image, or type or colour work well. Sure, you could just go out into the design world without a degree, thats fine, but I still think there is something valuable to be taken from design education. But it's not the degree which makes you a better designer, its the mentoring and experience. A young designer who finds a mentor and works in the field could pick up the same knowledge.

There's also something extremely valuable you're forgetting about design education - other students. Apart from the obvious fact you gain lots of friends and have a hell of a lot of fun during university, there's still the fact that there is an extremely strong sense of competition. Everyone wants to be the best designer, and the bar is continually raised. The success of a group of students is measured by the level of competition in the year. Or maybe thats just me.

There's also the experience of going through the same learning process with many other people at the same time. You can share ideas and comments and there is a definite sense of understanding. You not only see your own design mistakes, but you see the mistakes of others in the same task.

But in the end - the degree is meaningless as long as you're a good designer