Netherlands v/s Belgium
Out of context: Reply #37
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- ximeraLabs0
I totally agree with RGB. Its very obvious that "design" is a lot more ciltivated in The Netherlands than it is in Belgium. One of the reasons for that has to do with politics and general culture: In Belgium, design (or graphic design) isn't really considered as "art" or as an important part of creative culture, whereas it is in The Netherlands. The best example to illustrate that is The Modenatie in Antwerp (http://www.modenatie.com/), which is (or was) basically the fashion department of the Royal Academy for Fine Arts. Because fashion is regarded as an important artform, and an important carrier of Belgian creative culture, they get an enormous amount of funding, both from the state and private investors; while for example the graphic design dept. (where myself, my brother, Stoav, and crapmeister studied - and where tank is graduating from this year) still has to struggle to get a decent infrastructre for lets say a computer farm. This also has to do with the fact that the graphic design dept. is part of a classic ART academy, so we were (and are) somewhat dangling at the end and not really fitting in with the more "art" courses like sculpting, painting, photography, etc,... .
Also, the teachers at the fashion department are all celebrated designers, who are still very active in their field, and basically pushed for their own institute, and more recognition and funding towards education. Our teachers (in the graphic design dept.) are 9and i'm sorry to say this) very narrowminded and somewhat "stuck" in their views of graphic design (best examples here: http://www.academieantwerpen.be/…
and here: http://home.tiscali.be/wol-jeanc…) and don't progress or even stay in touch with "current trends" - this also feeds back into the course itself, and on top of that we never had any proper classes on design history, typography, etc,...To make a long story short: you can track this all back to a general shortage of understanding of what graphic design really is and how it is culturally relevant. Something the Dutch damn well know.