8 Things I Learned in Art School
While wandering around the internet, I found an insightful blog post of an art student on what he'd learned in school. After five years and 2.5 degrees, I'm going to tackle a list of my own.
At the Student Gov. closing dinner, each member of exec awarded every other member with a token to represent a memory or learned lesson in our year and a half journey together. My friend Anush looked across the table and told me, "You taught me that I don't need sleep. You're the hardest worker with the strongest will that I've ever met, and you accomplish more than two people on any given day." While the complements were sweet, I don't know how true they hold, but if art school has taught me one thing it's to pull all-nighters, rest in sleep cycles of 1.5 hours, and that when there's a will there's a way. Professor Spivey told our class in Typography 1 that if we weren't sick and sleep deprived by Christmas we weren't working hard enough. Obviously, health is important, and sleep helps you function, but 9 hours a night....psht. I'll sleep when I'm dead.
2. Your answer is always "yes."
Contrary to this statement is the invaluable lesson of learning to say no. I've always had a hard time with "No," being too nice or excited, overcommitting and then killing myself because I refuse to give anything less than 100%. But that's another lesson all together. I had an interesting design and architecture professor that taught me to actually, always say yes when asked if I could do any job. If a freelance client or my boss ever came to me asking if I could do something like set design that I had no idea in the slightest to do, to just happily accept. He then said it would be my duty to hit the books and teach myself or seek out experts for help on the subject, and try try again until I had a result that I was proud to present. If you choose this method, you will always be learning, growing and stretching your limits. With this changing world there is not always right or wrong method, many people are floundering: should I have a linkedin, should I blog, should I have a twitter, should I suck it up and get it all? Use this to your advantage and always say yes, then figure it out (because everyone else has to too)!
3. The world is a sphere, not a circle.
No this is not referring to modeling in my oil painting class, or learning 3d design. I had a photography professor that referencing the need for my cohort to find internships, told us that this world is a sphere, not a circle. Spheres go on and on forever with unlimited opportunities. Circles do not. Rather than being competitive and secretive about finding a job or internship, this professor taught us to go to bat for each other. There aren't a set limit of the jobs out there. If you don't like your job or get a job, then you can create your own. He encouraged us to become a network and if one of us passed up an opportunity, to pass it on to a fellow peer. Before this moment, I believe my cohort already had a special bond to it that can't be explained. We were tough in critiques and loved collaborations, cheered each other on, and were just the right balance of being competitive yet friendly, but after this day, I noticed we put into action what we were taught. Even after graduation we are a network passing around inspiration, handy tutorials and business opportunities to one another. Other cohorts have suffered from unhealthy competition, elitism and sneaky gossip. The environment that my cohort created in our workspace together during senior thesis semester is one that I now will expect in each of my work environments for the rest of my life. As far as the sphere, I was released to not only drive hard after my own dreams but to take stake in the dreams of those around me and celebrate in their successes too.
4. Take criticism, feedback is necessary.
After college, one of my friends who is the only designer in her office often brings print materials and sketches to lunches simply because she craves the criticism of a trained eye. In school, I remember those students who liked their particular style and would bull-headedly stand against the professor's criticism. Thank goodness for internships early on, because I learned that even the most beautiful designs will be scrapped instantaneously if the client doesn't like them. When you work as a photographer or designer, you work for the client, and you might be the expert but you're not always right. So in art school, as much as you don't like criticism, it's important to learn that no design is final or perfect, and to not be so attached to your work that you later lose a client because of stubbornness.
5. You can't shortcut process.
There are always those people that can slap together a trendy design quickly when they need to. But the best stuff is the design that is created on proper grids, painstakingly kerned, and perfectly pen-tooled. You can't fake good design, and you can't cut corners in your process. The creative brainstorming process of research, note-taking, sketching, mind-mapping, and collaborating can't be substituted. Printing swatches to check color, making sure size and each detail is perfect...nothing can beat craftsmanship, and even non-designers notice that.
6. Challenges produce results. Limitations produce creative solutions.
A little too late, post-graduation I discovered a secret about myself. When scanning my collegiate grade chart I started to notice some patterns between my A's and my A-/B's (insert F's or C's if you need to). The classes that I was absolutely terrified for, and therefore put forth more effort, stressed over, planned ahead for, and took more seriously were the ones that I got the highest marks. I thought I would fail econ, I got a 99%. I thought I would get a C in commlaw (we all had to have a C to graduate), and I got a 97%. It was the classes like Illustration that I thought silly and easy that I ended up getting lower grades in. Humans perform better when they're pushed. People excel when the standard is set high. I will carry this with me into the professional world both as I work for people and hopefully as people work for me. Part 2: Limitations produce creative solutions. It's the limitations that designers have to work within that shape the designs. If you are given unlimited resources, no rules, no target audience, etc. you won't have to be that creative to come up with something. Embrace the limitations, for they produce creativity.
7. You are not a designer, you're a problem solver.
So many people (and even some designers) believe that designers are made to create pretty things that make people happy. I suppose you can do that if you can find a way to survive off those profits, but chances are Pinterest will suck your work in and you won't ever see a penny. No, much more rewarding than that, designers are problem solvers. Strategists. Communicators. Good design is about the thinking behind it. The best result isn't always the most beautiful, it's the one that solves the problem the most effectively.
I've watched a lot of people graduate high school, undergraduate, graduate school thinking they know everything in the world. Overzealous know-it-alls crash and burn in the professional world. Just because I've completed a couple undergraduate degrees doesn't mean that I know everything. The hardest things to learn in life take experience, failure and heartache to learn. Each and every interview post-college has shown me more and more that i absolutely love learning and that I am eager to keep learning. One of the first questions I'd ask, "What do you do for your designers for continued learning?" Undergrad taught me how to design, right, think, learn, strategize and take photos, but now I need to know properly how to communicate effectively for specific clients, learn business vernacular, learn how businesses operate, learn the business of freelance, learn the antics to real world hierarchy, learn how to deal with a client, how to price, post production....the list is endless. Never stop learning.
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