Comments on: 138. Freeform

By: Graham Mccissac

Graham Mccissac — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:16:29 +0000

I was interested by your career advice in this weeks show. In defence of education, I personally would flatly not employ anyone in my studio who has not undertaken at least a design degree. Design is not about learning adobe applications, these are merely tools and can be learnt easily over the 3 years study. Design education will teach you visual language and so many cultural references that will place you well above anybody who has not studied. I have worked in the design industry for 15 years, 12 of which in interactive design and the most noticeable difference for me between web design and other design fields is the general lack of visual understanding.

By: Emile

Emile — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:01:56 +0000

I am with the University crowd, not just because i am currently persuing an advanced degree in Computer science, but because university is about learning how to learn (O'Rourke 2008). Any person capable of completing a university degree can acheive anything, not to say that those without degrees are useless,on the contrary, some of the best developers i know didn't even attend community college. But the environment, the stress, the people all these things teach you invaluable lessons that are appicable in any area you choose to work, be it web-design or masonary. Personally, i think its about the individual, univeristy or not, its about the persons willingness to learn and apply learnt knowledge.

By: Grant

Grant — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:34:41 +0000

I was interested in the comments about courses still teaching table based design. When I began my multimedia course in 2005, we were learning CSS based design only and that tables were not for layout . The college also taught a unit in development for mobile devices, and is teaching units on Flex and AIR development. They are certainly up with technology, and I hope that the places still teaching table design and other old fashioned ideas soon catch up. So this is my big plug for Qantm College in Brisbane, Australia (with campuses in Melbourne, Sydney, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Singapore, Vienna and Zurich) Check them out. :-)

By: Felicity

Felicity — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 11:51:47 +0000

A couple of points about why a degree of course is a good idea (I must justify that expense somehow!):
1. The environment: Whilst it’s true that almost everything can be learned from a book or a website some of us needed the added impetus of a due-date or mark to actually get on with the learning.
2. The people: Great introduction to a collaborative workplace.
3. Sometimes whilst the practices may be quickly out-dated the theory and foundation (especially with more technical degrees) is valuable to learn.

By: Marc

Marc — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:05:27 +0000

I liked the roundtable format. You should do it more often :)
With regards to going to university, it’s slightly different for me since I am a developer, but I can safely say I learnt lots on the planning/design and process side of things. Yes we were taught Pascal and Java, and in my job right now I don’t program any of these. I do however use the skills I learnt about how to plan and design reusable components, how to get good requirements down, and how to manage my time. Uni is more about equipping you for whatever you might face in your line of work, so you can pick up new skills easily, rather than teaching a specific set of skills that will be dated quickly.
I still prefer Java to as a language because I don’t just know how to code it, I know how it works on a low level. Stuff like that has stuck with me.

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By: Tom Bamford

Tom Bamford — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:01:11 +0000

I completely agree with Paul’s comment how Web Design courses at University are a waste of time. Most of short courses run by Universities, that are meant to be more advanced, are a joke.
However, if you want to do web design and study something relevant you can study a skill that will enhance your web design skills.
In my case I studied Graphic Design, as I wanted to build up those skills to improve the quality of my web designs. Otherwise you could do an IT course, chosing the more programming orientated modules as they are quite set. It’s just a question of doing web design projects on the side, and applying your course skills to that.

By: Boxcar Studio

Boxcar Studio — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:50:55 +0000

Going to college for a graphics design degree or computer science degree can be very beneficial for a job in web design. But like Robert said, if one is intelligent and interested enough, that person will be able to learn how to create websites as well, even if his/her major was in something like economics. There are so many websites out there where you can glean any information you might need, and definitely, if you were applied enough to building a website, it would get done.

By: Carl Franke

Carl Franke — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:09:01 +0000

This was an amazingly refreshing episode. Although the freeform format can be a meandering disaster, you (Paul) were a great moderator in keeping the ball bouncing equally between each person on your team. The answers that everyone gave were all equally revealing as well. It's nice to drop the instructionals and news, and to bring in simple discussion with your laptops, seemingly, aside.

By: Robert O'Rourke

Robert O'Rourke — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:10:35 +0000

School, College and Uni – whatever it is you study doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s what you end up doing. Education is about learning how to learn. My uni background is virology and immunology but by some cruel twist of fate I’m currently making websites.
If you’re intelligent enough and find something interesting you apply yourself to it and learn more about it, gain experience, ????, and finally profit.