“Dear Schools…”

Some of you will have seen and possibly read my series of ‘Dear Undergraduates’ articles and maybe the ‘Dear University’ and ‘Dear Graduates’ ones too. They are written to provide some insight to those outside of the industry of what is often of importance or requires consideration to appeal or connect with those inside the industry. A little ‘lid lifting’ to help those on the wrong side of the lid.

In recent years, possibly heightened by being a father of kids going through significant subject and University choices, I’ve been asked on numerous occasions to offer advice or to discuss similar choices with students aged between 15 and 18. Kids who know they like drawing or creativity or making or inventing but whose schools or teachers are not informed enough to know how to advise them best. They know they like ‘DT’ but don’t know the first thing about ‘Design’.

Even within schools I’ve supported, I still have to remind careers advisors or ‘Post-18 pathway’ organisational groups that things like art foundation years exist or the fact that creative university applications are invariably based on an interview and a portfolio moreso than grades and a personal statement. The general level of awareness within many schools of the career opportunities available to ‘creative folk’ is woeful and doesn’t look to be improving anytime soon.

The problem with design is that – unlike fine art or music where there are centuries old established routes for people with such passion and abilities – it sits in the metaphorical sofa cushion crack between the sciences, humanities and art, and as such manages to go unseen and ill advised by many.

So this article is aimed to help the Mums, Dads and students who are sitting in a dark room, aimlessly stumbling towards any chink of informative light that may appear. It is a summary of the typical topics I discuss with families or pupils looking to hang their hats on. Much like searching for something in Google, if you don’t even know what it’s called, how can you even search. This hopefully gives you some of the search terms that will hopefully make your life a little easier.

So here’s a list of stuff, in no order of importance, that might prove useful…

1. New Designers & Degree Shows.

This is a massive exhibition of graduating students’ work, from a huge range of creative courses across many Universities and Art Colleges in the UK. It is held at The Design Business Centre in Islington every year around the end of June/early July (www.newdesigners.com) and is split into 2 parts.

Part 1 is 4 days of courses that specialise in fashion, textiles, surface pattern, jewellery, photography and ceramics. Part 2 is 4 days of courses that specialise in furniture, product and industrial design, graphics, animation, illustration, motion graphics and gaming. However, the predominant theme across Part 1 is fashion/textiles and the predominant theme across Part 2 is industrial/product/furniture. If you are interested in gaming, motion graphics, automotive or digital media then there are other more specialised exhibitions and degree shows you should probably seek out. These disciplines are treated a little more like fringe activities at New Designers if I’m honest (which is undeserving), so you can certainly get a flavour but don’t expect everything to be equally represented.

Unfortunately, New Designers have scheduled their shows to fit in with University diaries and schedules, but not with schools. Many schools are in the midst of ‘end of term’ activities or exams meaning that I often have to recommend a student ‘feels ill’ and throws a sickie to ensure they get a chance to see the show. Same goes for Mum or Dad!

I can’t stress enough how important it is for any student who might be interested in a career in design (of any shape or discipline) to visit this show, particularly those in Year 12 who will be starting to scope out the Universities they want to visit and apply to in the following January when UCAS submission dates roll around. The traditional University ‘fairs’ that schools schlep students to is about as useful as a fart in a thunderstorm to creative souls looking for evidence of design output and inspiration.

I would also urge students in Year 10 to do the same, as leaving it to Year 11 is too late if you are being expected to submit A-Level subject choices before the show has had a chance to inspire you. I’ve been taking my youngest daughter to Part 1 for the last 2 years (she is in Year 12 now) and will be taking her to Part 2 this year to better frame her decisions.

Like I said, the scheduling of the show is designed to help the graduates showcase their work, but not those looking to make key choices about their creative educational future.

If you can’t make it to New Designers, then make sure you do a bit of research on potential University courses that might interest you and try to visit their degree shows. Every year, the graduating year host an event over a number of days (usually 3 or 4) either at the University itself or at a suitable exhibition location, where all the final year students showcase their major projects. In the case of Industrial/Product Design these take the form of a working model or prototype alongside a series of printed information boards explaining the project, next to which you should find the student themselves. It’s a great way to see loads of interesting project work, get a sense of the type of work that each University course is producing and chat to the students themselves about the experience.

If you do a bit of digging around (as Universities often don’t make it particularly easy to find), you can also find the past years’ degree show catalogues online. Each Uni publishes an online (and sometimes printed) degree show book/catalogue that showcase each student who graduated. With a bit of effort, you can peruse thousands of past projects from different Uni courses and if you are feeling a bit more Sherlock Holmes, you can look up the more interesting design graduates on LinkedIn and see where they’ve ended up…

Which brings me neatly onto my next point.

2. Speak to people in the industry.

I appreciate that it’s hard to find people to speak to if you don’t know what the job you want to do is called yet, but a little bit of digging about on places like LinkedIn (this may be a job for Mum or Dad initially) is a good start. Titles change like the wind (see ‘follow the acronyms’ later in this article – Point 7) but the word ‘design’ is a pretty good bet.

Look for students doing courses that you might like the look of. Most savvy undergraduates are being told to create LinkedIn profiles and many of the best will be doing placement years in industry so will have a decent online presence. Look them up and send them a message asking to simply chat about why they chose that course, whether it lived up to their expectations, what support they’ve been given (or not as the case may be) and how has their opinion changed over the 3 or 4 year course duration? Most of them will have been in your position at some stage and will have little issue in having a chat about their experiences.

If you are a little reticent about actually speaking to someone, find out if these people have social media accounts (most will have some form of Instagram or Behance page) and message them through that with questions about their work.

For insight into job prospects and future career growth, try to find more senior folk. People with ‘Head of Design’ or ‘Design Director’ or ‘Lead’ or ‘Principal’ designer in their title. Don’t be afraid to reach out to them to ask direct questions that will help inform either your or your child’s decision making process. If you can get 30 minutes with them over a coffee or just over a Zoom call, it will help you no end.

3. Portfolios are key.

Unlike most University courses where grades are the primary criteria for selection, creative courses should always offer you a face to face interview (some are remote given COVID protocols and geography but try to do them F2F if you can) and an opportunity to discuss your work via a portfolio.

This is something most schools tend not to have any experience or knowledge of. How to prepare a portfolio of work that will support your application to the course of your choice. It used to be (and still can be) a physical folder of A3 or A2 pages that showcase a range of your project work to date, both from your school work and from any extra curricular activities you may have explored in parallel. Many courses now ask you to submit a digital portfolio which is effectively a more curated and online version of the same thing.

I’ve written a number of articles summarising my thoughts on portfolios and interviews in these other articles so have a read as much of it is as relevant to you as it is to graduating students (although the level of detail and finesse required of a school applicant is significantly less…don’t worry!).

Given that most A-Level (or GCSE) students studying DT, Textiles, Photography or Art prepare as much of their work digitally as physically (I appreciate there is huge variation here!), I tend to suggest that students pull together a digital portfolio (ideally at A3 or the 16:9 equivalent if you prefer) and then print it out properly (making sure that all imagery and content is of a high enough resolution to print out impactfully). That way you have a portfolio you can submit electronically as well as carry in your hands to an interview if needs be. Whilst it pains me to say this, you can easily pull a decent portfolio together in Microsoft Powerpoint (every designer is letting out a silent scream as they read this!) so you don’t need any special software to do a decent job.

Make sure you take lots of photos of your work as you develop your projects as tutors are as interested in the ‘process’ you went through as they are in the final outcome. In fact, the design industry is now more interested in ‘how you think’ and ‘what decisions you made’ along the way than they are they kick-ass final visual or model.

I could write 10,000 words on how to put together a portfolio (and probably have in my time) but in the interests of brevity I’ll stop there. If you are floundering and don’t know where to start, drop me a message!

4. It’s all about how you think.

I mentioned this in my last point, but it’s worth reiterating as it’s really, really important.

The design industry today – despite what you may see on Instagram or through design publications, blogs or on design business websites – is more interested in ‘how’ you think than ‘what’ you create. Please don’t be put off by your inability to sketch or your lack of knowledge in producing slick, polished visuals or your 3D CAD modelling abilities. These are all things you will invariably learn and get better at as you progress, but creative businesses want ‘thinkers’. I appreciate this may seem a long way off right now, but please consider it throughout.

People who can unpick a problem, work out what needs solving and suggest a solution. Use whatever tools make you most comfortable. If you can’t draw for toffee but love cutting up bits of cardboard to prove something out, be my guest. If you can’t use a drill but you can show me how something might work with amazing illustrations, then fine. Don’t feel pressured to conform to what you think a ‘designer’ ought to be able to do.

If you have curiosity, imagination, empathy, tenacity and are willing to try stuff that may well fail in order to learn and improve, then you have what it takes. Just capture that and present it in whatever way best represents how you do what you do.

Like my kids often tell me…”You do you!”

5. Courses & subject choices

Students (and parents) often worry about the need to have subjects like Maths and Physics as choices when they consider becoming a ‘designer’ (I’m referring to product and industrial designers here – we will come on to specific job titles soon enough). Whilst this was certainly the case, or at least preferable, when I was applying to University several decades ago, it is certainly not the case now.

For sure, there are a lot of courses where having Maths and Physics are preferable and knowledge of these subjects will certainly help you, but courses are more willing to accept students with a broader or more unique range of subjects, as long as you can demonstrate that you are a ‘thinker’ and can share your thinking and creative abilities in your portfolio (see above). Passion for the subject also goes a hell of a long way – much as it does in industry when you eventually get there!

The University landscape has widened significantly in recent years, in terms of the specific nature of the design discipline you wish to pursue or explore. Many first year modules aim to allow students to explore the different aspects of the design process to give you a flavour of the bits you might like more than others.

Similarly, where there were quite binary distinctions between design and engineering in the past, so there are now courses designed to overlap. Product Design Engineering is one such course. Yes, you will undoubtedly need Maths and Physics as it is still a science based discipline, but there is also an acknowledgement that there is a fuzzy overlap between the traditional homes of engineering and design that allows students to both calculate and empathise in equal measure.

Most courses nowadays don’t specify required subjects (other than possibly DT or a creative subject as one of your choices), as there is an understanding that creativity comes in many colours, shapes and sizes. Moreso, the challenges facing designers are not what they were. Some designers will specialise in service design and never sketch nor make anything whilst others will spend their entire working lives sat in front of 3D CAD and love every minute of it. Some will do better knowing English Literature and History whilst others will thrive with Psychology and Biology. There are no longer rules for this sort of stuff.

I’m cautious about giving advice to everyone in such a generic way, but I would always tend to defer to suggesting that you choose and study subjects that genuinely interest you and that you feel you can do well in. Don’t worry about the combination or what career’s advisors suggest.

6. Don’t forget about Art Foundation.

This one always gets my goat. Most schools don’t even acknowledge that this is even a viable route for many student post A-Levels, but it is actually a really useful and enriching thing to do. In fact, I regret not doing one myself before heading straight off to University after completing my A-Levels.

Art Foundation courses (typically run for a year) as well as Diplomas and Extended Diplomas which you can do in place of A-Levels, are excellent ways to explore your creativity in a way that schools can never provide. In essence they are an opportunity for students to ‘play’ in lots of different areas of creativity, be it ceramics, glassware, fine art, photography, 3D design, furniture, illustration, digital media…you name it. The idea being that you undertake smaller projects in each of a number of different areas run by specialists in those areas and you get a base level understanding of what it means to tackle a project and realise an artefact or outcome using those specific skills or techniques.

Where you may have been keen on textiles at school (because you had to choose), you can now explore many other creative disciplines and understand if your passions genuinely lie in textiles still or if you were actually a closet ceramicist waiting to explode!

Once you’ve completed the year, you have dipped your creative toes in many different creative ponds and can then make a more informed decision about your future educational route. Many Universities now run foundation year courses for that very reason, with opportunities to then leap off into any one of a number of different creative degree courses at the same University, but without the pressure to have decided in Year 12 what your future held. In fact, some Universities actually look more favourably on applicants with extended diplomas or art foundation years under their belt than A-Levels.

More importantly – and the thing I regretting personally – is that such a year allows you as a creative individual to really start to express and explore your creativity without the pressures of exams. I started University with a school mindset which meant that it took me longer to really understand and spread my creative ‘wings’ so to speak. I wished I’d taken that additional year to take the pressure off, unpick the school mentality and allow me to explore my creative brain a little more before starting University.

The other added benefit is that with often no exams and an open studio-esque approach to workload, it means that such a thing is a great gap year choice, as you can often schedule it with a bit of travel and earning some money – particularly when you attend an art college rather than a foundation feeder year at University. Either way, it’s something worth exploring and is invariably a huge benefit in your creative career journey.

7. Follow the acronyms.

I gave a ‘creative careers’ talk to a year group of Year 11 students last year and I presented a slide with 12 possible creative career choices written large. Depressingly, they were all acronyms.

Terms like UX, ID, XR, CMF, HF, UI, IxD, UR….and many more besides. Pulling this slide together, it made me realise that for a wider industry who want to make things simpler and more effective for human beings, we have done an amazing job of making it almost impossible for people on the ‘outside’ understand us at all! Ridiculous isn’t it?

To make things more complicated, I graduated from a course called Product Design BSc (Hons) from a notable University. This trained me to be a ‘Product Designer’ which when I graduated was seen as a slightly more fluffy version of an ‘Industrial Designer’ (there is much argument as to whether there is actually any difference whatsoever between PD and ID but I won’t bore you with that here!). On our course, where the Industrial Designers studied electronics or coding, we studied design history and ergonomics. We all studied a lot of the same core modules but you can see that the options were a little fluffier!

Anyway, Product Design was termed in the early 90’s after Industrial Design had had it’s own coming of age about half a century beforehand (again, there is plenty of debate on this but I’ve grossly simplified for the purposes of explanation). However, about a decade ago, the term ‘Product Designer’ started cropping up and being hijacked by people looking for digital designers. People who designed and developed the ’interactions’ of a digital product, typically websites and smartphone Apps. This has led to a slight crisis in identity for many Product Designers who – like me – described themselves as such but in the context of Industrial Design. Designers of physical objects for human use and mass production.

Now, if you search for ‘Product Design’ jobs on LinkedIn for instance, you will invariably find 95 digital ‘product’ design jobs to every 5 industrial ‘product’ design style jobs, much to every job hunter’s despair. So much so, that I now describe myself as an Industrial Designer as the term Product Design has been poached.

Now this might be OK, were it not for the fact that most Universities still call it ‘Product Design‘ when talking about becoming an ‘Industrial Designer’, so students looking for career inspiration are having to decipher a murky, complex and illogical landscape even to simply understand what they want to be and where to train to become one.

Acronyms and poached titles aside, the number of different job titles does actually indicate how varied the landscape is and how many options there are to students who wish to specialise or deviate from the centre ground if they so wish. There are so many more disciplines focussed on human interactions, how people use services, the analysis of human behaviour, design research or usability.

For those wanting a few helpful translations…

UX = User Experience Design (can be both digital and physical)

XR = Extended Reality Design (virtual reality)

IxD = Interaction Design (typically digital)

UI = User Interface Design (typically digital but can be physical)

CMF = Colour, Material & Finish Specialist (typically physical, often automotive)

HF = Human Factors Engineer/Specialist (typically service or physical products, often medical/healthcare)

ID = Industrial Design (typically physical but can be digital/experience)

You may also come across or be interested in investigating job titles such as ‘Brand Experience Design’, ‘Service Design’, ‘Design Research’, ‘Strategic Foresight’, ‘Spatial Interaction Design’ and many more besides.

Apologies to any practitioners of the above who may think I’m massively over simplifying things. My intention is merely to often somewhere for young creative minds to start searching.

8. Placement years.

One of the most important things to consider when choosing a University degree course, is whether to opt for a sandwich course, often known as a ‘year in industry’. Most University courses are 3 years of study, but sandwich courses slot in a 4th year where you do 2 years of academic study, a year out in ‘placement’ working for a business (sometimes only vaguely related to what you are studying, but hopefully directly linked to it), and then returning for the 4th year to complete a few modules but primarily to complete your ‘major project’ which you will invariably present at your end of year degree show (see last point) and if you are one of the lucky few, at New Designers in your graduating year.

Now it has become all too common in recent years (and not too recent years), for Universities to allow students to complete their 2nd year without having secured a placement. This typically results in students forgoing the placement year and simply going straight into their 3rd year of academic study. Whilst this has a marginal benefit in reduced student loans and fees, I can’t overstate how silly this decision is.

Placement years are possibly the best part of your whole course. Not necessarily from an enjoyment point of view (although some are ridiculously good), but from a learning and career relevance perspective. I absolutely guarantee that assuming you don’t get an absolute drop kick useless placement, you will earn more in that year than in the rest of the 3 years combined. It is partially why I think that degree apprenticeships or a version of them may prove to be a better educational route than a conventional degree (lots to discuss another time maybe!) in the future. Without fail, students leave Year 2 a relatively capable human being with some discernible design skills. However, when they return after their placement they have learned a raft of incredibly useful soft skills, professionalism, timekeeping, collaboration, interpersonal skills and independence to name a few. If the student is savvy, they will deploy these skills in their major project and their final year and resultant job hunting portfolio will be all the better for it.

So, whilst somewhat contentious, my policy when hiring graduates or young junior designers with a few years under their belt, was to initially filter all applicants by whether they have undertaken a placement year and to prioritise those for interview who have. I can’t stress how useful it is to a prospective employer to know that the graduate in front of you has had a year’s experience working in a creative team of some form or another. I won’t immediately discount a candidate purely because they have not done a placement year but it is evident immediately when comparing two candidates which one of them has done so. They are miles apart.

The other very good reason for doing a course with a placement year is to potentially secure a job before even leaving University. Most employers (myself included in previous roles) developed a placement ‘scheme’ within the creative team to effectively screen possible future hires. If you can find a decent undergraduate and test them out for a year in your team, you can then offer them a job prior to them graduating and secure yourself a safe hire that is already trained in the ways of your team and business. It’s a no-brainer!

My only caveat with placements is that most Universities have a terrible record of supporting students with securing placements (despite what they might tell you at open days or on the website). Never assume that the University will ‘get you a place’ as this will leave you horribly disappointed. It is down to you and your own initiative (see points 2, 3 and 4) to find a decent placement. You will need to build and grow your network during your 1st and 2nd years of study with a view to securing something by Feb/Mar of your second year.

9. Other interesting stuff.

I had planned to cap it at 8 points but decided to add this in at the end for good measure.

I referred to extra curricular activities and passion in some of my earlier points, particularly when communicating your work to possible University course tutors at interview. One thing that is incredibly prevalent in the creative industry is the use of different tools and technologies in the delivery or creation of creative exploits.

The rise of accessible, visual, 3D CAD software helped designers become more independent and in control of more of the design process. There was an explosion in the use of 3D printing in industrial design (at a cost effective level…it has been used at a professional level for decades). There was a massive increase in our abilities as designers to create realistic ‘renderings’ of our ideas at conceptual stages in projects using high-end but affordable rendering software, and there has been a surge in the interest of online AI tools to help generate and explore new ideas in the last year alone.

All of these are examples of tools and techniques that bolster and accelerate the creative process if you use them appropriately and with tactical aplomb. They are all incredibly exciting and can do amazing things never before thought possible – at the time. They have – in turn – become integral parts of subsequent University course modules as they become essential to industrial creative practices, but they all support rather than replace the design process.

I would urge you to experiment with new tools. You don’t need to become an expert. You just need to accept that they may be a part of your armoury of tools that you will adapt over time and with skill. Be aware of them. Don’t run away from them.

Be interested and have a play. Show interest. Be curious.

This has become a whopper. Apologies. As you can probably tell, I’ve had to stop myself on a number of occasions from going further on many of the above points. There are still lots of other topics and words of advice that I haven’t included but it may turn into a book if I’m not careful.

I hope the above at least gives young inquiring minds something to think about and somewhere to start when exploring possible future career paths, areas of interest or potential University courses. We ask far too much of our kids at such a tricky age – making key decisions about their possible future at a time when they are coming to terms with physical growth, social expectations, looming adulthood and all sorts of alluring substances!

Thankfully, there are plenty of opportunities to change course and direction in the modern age when considering a creative career, so don’t sweat it if your teacher or careers advisor suggests you may not have made the wisest choices. Just be keen, make sure you take lots of pictures of your work and stay creative!