The value of a degree.
At times I find myself at a crossroads, stuck in a quandary as to the validity of hanging a shingle from my desk bearing the title of “Graphic Designer.” Currently I have a degree, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting with Distinction, garnered after four and a half years at the Alberta College of Art and Design where I managed to cram in five and a half years worth of courses. The additional courses came about partway through my studies when the college was given “degree granting status” by whatever agency decides these things and I decided that the words “university degree” carried far more appeal than a certificate of fine art. That, and because of some of the degree requirements I had the opportunity to take other courses outside the old curriculum that have rounded out my academic experience. Additional courses such as Cultural Anthropology and a variety of English courses which have gone a long way towards my being able to write more better(sic).
def’n: sic
adv. Thus; so. Used to indicate that a quoted passage, especially one containing an error or unconventional spelling, has been retained in its original form or written intentionally.
Since leaving those hallowed halls I’ve continued my pursuits into the fray of graphic design and other areas as the need has arisen. Currently because of the expanding world of technology, and the demands of the market place we all find ourselves employed in, these areas cover everything from web design and marketing to programming. My, now diverse, bookshelves cover topics from design, typography, marketing, search engine optimization, ASP.NET, SQL, C#, and more. There isn’t a moment in the day where if I’m not actively creating something or learning about creating something. “Something” of course being the encompassing technical term for what my role as a designer has evolved into over the last twelve years.
This brings me to the crossroads I mentioned earlier on and the crossroads has taken on the countenance of a multi-tiered inner-city cloverleaf and leaves me wondering which path to take or whether it would be better just to carve my own route.
Part of this decision process also involves as it would those life experiences that color your life. Through the years I’ve had the benefit of working for a number of individuals some better than others. One of my favorites, an unusually soft-spoken man, who upon critiquing one of my pieces prior to presenting it to the client, would become passionate about describing the virtue of one font over the other in a given circumstance and from him I learned some of the more subtle nuances of kerning and the basics of widows and orphans. At the other end of the spectrum is an individual, who with their design diploma held high over my head, is hard pressed to define the difference between RGB and CMYK or the difference between leading and kerning. It was much the same range of experiences in university also; I worked for a digital print center during my education and also on occasion I would tutor students on the side in various software packages. There again I would see the gamut in design from the good to the bad. But both experiences have left this nagging gap much akin to that rotting corpse of an Albatross strung from the Mariner’s neck. Do I dare say I am a designer because I lack the “in Design” after my credentials and tuck my tail between my legs and slink away in humiliation or do I hold myself high knowing that I have at least twelve years of experience and self-education behind me in various areas of design. Based on my experiences and the range of other designers I’ve encountered through the years, it’s an area I find that I test myself on frequently.
The other aspect of the dilemma is the range of duties I find that I’m expected to fill as a designer. Prior to returning to school I had roles doing print design to 3D modeling and animation. And, currently my duties include print and web design, typesetting, marketing and branding, search engine optimization, programmer and hardware technician to name a few. This last decade has seen my stratified job role move from the comfort of a more or less defined position to some vague and nebulous entity that seems to have taken on a life of its own. The description of designer seems to have expanded into the realm of the designer as encyclopedia. Do I class myself as a graphic designer, a web designer, a database designer (who for the life of me still can’t make heads or tails out of inner and outer joins) or a programmer, or do I forgo the BFA after my name and replace it with “jack of all trades?”
At the end of it all, today, as I labor over a chunk of code that I wrote well over three years ago that reads a database and writes the HTML to display a web page interspersed with various graphics I’ve created, I don’t seem to be any further ahead in quantifying and qualifying my role either as designer, programmer or somewhere in between. The only sure thing I can say is that I seem to have more questions to answer than when I started writing this.
Just a short little note of thanks to William McBee, his last article “Does a degree really matter 10 years later?” provided the mental fodder to get this written.
I definitely have my thoughts on the current state of design education and how far behind some of our better design institutions have allowed them to fall but that's the topic for another entry and discussion.
To your question: does a degree still matter? I say it still does although I suspect that if history in this forum holds true, my opinion will be solidly in the minority in this forum.
People often confuse the questions "Does a degree matter" with "do you NEED a degree to practice design?".
A design degree may not matter 99% of the time but the 1% of the time it matters might be the most important time. In that regard, it's not unlike any other type of degree.
For all practical purposes, except in fields where advanced degrees and training is required by law and licensing (i.e. medicine, law, architecture, etc.), bachelors degrees have become almost a de facto screening parameter. You may not NEED on for most professional positions in corporate America but that doesn't stop most employers from requiring them. And while a great many jobs do not require degrees of any kind, a large chunk of the better-paying, plumb jobs which logically try to screen out as many applicants as possible do require degrees.
In this regard, the GD field is not so different than corporate America. Most of the higher-paying positions, particularly those in design firms, ad agencies and corporate in-house departments require a 4 year GD degree. While there are always exceptions to the rules, that is pretty much a fact of life.
A design degree still matters.
Now of course a person may decide they never wish to work for an agency or design firm and thus a degree does not matter for them. Maybe not but if one ever decides they wish to teach design part-time at the university level, as many older designers sometimes do, their lack of a desgin degree will preclude them from doing so.
To be sure, I was once denied -- after coming very close -- a web design curriculum consulting position with a design school because they required that the consultant hold a master's degree and I only hold a bachelor's. Regardless of how silly I or anyone else thinks that is, that's life and we have to live with it.
A design degree still matters.
Should every designer with a degree in another subject or who is self-taught now run out and enroll in the nearest design school or program at their local university? Not necessarily. That decision must be made and evaluated on a personal, case-by-case basis. Not having a design degree won't necessarily stop one from having a VERY successful and rewarding design career but depending on what one wants to do over the course of their 30 or 40 year career, it very well may matter when you least expect it to.
Thomas, your well-written, near-thesis made my rant look like "Animal House".
I do have to say though that a design degree really does still matter as well. I mean, it's the thing that will open a lot of doors, and it states that you're just not a flash in the pan. You took the time to get that degree. I have a BFA from Univ. of Colorado; unfortunately, my school is more known for being "that college that got on MTV for binge drinking" more than anything else.
But I digress. A degree will be the one thing that initially set you apart from others. Then comes ability. Sometimes. You bring up some valid points.
But as far as I'm concerned, I'd label you a graphic designer. Easily.
Very well written, Thomas. And thanks for the nod. Amazed that my crazy rants actually inspire anything other than hate mail ;)