Kids learning web design
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- mg33
I hope this doesn't come off as some holier-than-thou rant, because that's not what I'm intending here. A name popped into my head recently for a child that belonged to friends of my parents. I'd not thought of them in at least 10 years or more.
Looked them up on the web and discovered they were learning web design at a tech school over the past few years. The sheer horror of the portfolio work and websites I found kind of made me sad in a way. It's 2013, and every bit of images, art, site design, functionality, etc. was reminiscent of what I remember seeing students create more than a decade ago when I was in school. Worse even, it was just devoid of quality control, self awareness, basic design principles, etc.
Yeah, we're all novices at one point, trying to balance talent with ideas and inspiration and skill development. But when I browsed this work, I really started to be upset about the fact that a school - even a modern tech school - would let a student be so seemingly behind the times in what they were creating. I was surprised these sites weren't all built out of tables. Shocked at all the bad image-based text buttons. Terrible gradients. Unaligned text. Beveled buttons. Six different fonts. Buttons that shift oddly when you hover. Total shambles of usability. Some stuff looked like they'd used Illustrator's pen tool while blindfolded - jagged points all over, non-straight lines, etc.
If people saw this portfolio, they would laugh. It would absolutely not get them a job, or work, from anyone with even a modicum of contemporary design intelligence.
So who is most responsible for this? Is it the school's fault for teaching poorly? For mentoring students poorly? For approving such poor work in a web design / multimedia curriculum? For teachers being way behind trends and design methods?
I keep thinking of this analogy: If someone went to culinary school, and graduated, and was making meals using spoiled food, smushed all over a plate, overcooked, over seasoned, etc. that would be a poor reflection of the school that let them get that far with such poor skills, right? But on the other hand, your passion for something should lead you to be current with your skills, have an understanding of contemporary and modern methods so you'd be aware enough to avoid a path down the wrong road.
I don't know... Sorry for the huge post. I just got really bummed out that someone I used to know went to school for something they obviously want to do for a living, and the outcome of that was just so bad. Fucking awful. I'm not going to post any of it, so don't ask me to. Just think of the worst web design you saw around 1999 and you'll have an idea.
- e-pill0
..your theme music sir
- scarabin0
i hope they get worse. then i can charge more
- pr20
"Worse even, it was just devoid of quality control, self awareness, basic design principles, etc."
You can apply this quote with slight modifications to ANYTHING today.
Remember that unlike us who grew up with some kind of role models and standards - the new generation is growing up with none of that. With all the positives that come from that set-up there is a crap load of negatives: one being they have absolutely no clue what's going on and why what they are doing is utterly worthless. And of course ultimately is it really? The new generation of customers grew up in similar circumstances so they themselves don't know distinction of good and bad. This in turn means that some other standards of quality emerge - the kind of standards we might not be aware of - the standards that might not actually be based on "quality" as that word means very little to those guys.
- they have Skrillex... no role models? pleasemonospaced
- saying they don't have roll models doesn't say much about us.moldero
- studderine0
Tl;dr?
- ohhhhhsnap0
FFS (< i learned this from monospaced)
Help him!
- if you don't he will end up here http://www.logoworks…ohhhhhsnap
- monNom0
Maybe this kid just doesn't have the proper foundation to succeed?
Did he demonstrate abilities in art? science? technology? mechanics?
You can't just drop someone who can't draw, has trouble with computers, and couldn't figure out a mechanical problem if their life depended on it into a course and make them a web designer. (though schools will totally sign them up!). Some people just aren't cut out for it, and those that are probably practiced like crazy their whole life 'cause that's what was fun for them.The sad thing is, schools take credit for all that prior learning of successful grads, and claim they can teach it to you in 2 years. But really, they've just got some textbooks and some people to ask questions to. If you don't know what's important, 'cause you've never seen ANY of it, you'll take away far less than the person who came in well primed. and can fit the more interesting stuff into a well-honed mental framework.
- cannonball19780
Honestly, design principles aren't something you just pick up. You refine them your entire life, grasshopper. I didn't learn how important they were for a long time, and certainly didn't in college when painting color wheels.
- PS, help him discover them. Grumpy old man designer advice didn't work when prescribed to me.cannonball1978
- agreed. teach him mg33, schools are mostly about that $$ anyway.ohhhhhsnap
- Irafis0
This "new" generation is made mostly of Photoshoppers, not designers.
- animatedgif0
It's not just design it's most universities.
Majority of them will let absolutely anyone on to any course as long as you can pay. The only difference with design is that you can decide if a student is terrible by glancing at their work for a second where most others would require you to read a few pages of a dissertation.
Although I think print design and illustration courses might be a bit more stricter than most web design courses as it's such an early medium that a lot of people teaching it don't know what the fuck they're doing.
"This "new" generation is made mostly of Photoshoppers, not designers."
The Photoshoppers are the ones who didn't even go to school for any sort of design and just learnt everything from tutorials/trends. Basically the entirety of Dribbble and anyone who has ever used the term "flat design" seriously.
- animatedgif0
e.g shit like this:
"Better put some circles on it and mention the Golden Ratio so people know it's legit and because I just read this article http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06… "
- golden ratio, dan brown, sigh ...Weyland
- all bullshitdoesnotexist
- it's not ALL bullshit, I like the ratio when dividing a page, but some people take it way too farmonospaced
- doesnotexist0
you probably notice it more because of the abyss of time that has passed since school.
- monospaced0
It's because no talent cunts are teaching instead of practicing.
- inteliboy0
We're hiring for a junior position at the moment and I've been blown away with how shit or average they all have been...
I seriously thought kids these days (and I'm talking early 20's kids), growing up with the internet, adobe suite installed, epic tutorials, countless hours on inspiration blogs.... NO. no. The amount of rubbish applicants is staggering.
You can't teach talent, and growing up with the tools certainly doesn't seem to be creating talent either. And there was a time I thought "shit son, all these kids are going to wipe us away and take our jobs"
- monospaced0
It's because their no talent cunt teachers couldn't hack it in the real world.
- pr20
This is the same conversation occurring on filmmaking forums - in the sea of mediocrity how do you discover quality? [remember, films are harder to judge - you can't just look at a few samples and know right away what is shit] How does the audience pick their viewing choices...? And the answer if frightening - in times when theirs is noone to tell them what to watch (the proverbial film critic is gone and film reviews no longer read) the general public goes after what's advertised the most. When you have access to any film (including the unique indie productions - and there are a few) the public goes for the most mediocre shit only because the company producing that shit has money for advertising.
- monospaced0
I think it depends on the school. I look back at my student work and I'm still proud (the later stuff at least). My classmates all had great work and are now in great positions. The other school in town, though, their work was shit, and most of them have shit jobs.
- your school was probably harder to get into... because they were selective.monNom
- moldero0
template editing masters
- mg330
Good responses guys, thanks. I need to find my old work from school. Probably on a ZIP disk somewhere. I remember though, being very thankful for the design foundation I got studying architecture for 2 1/2 years before I changed majors to Advertising. Countless hours of building models, drawing, sketching, understanding alignments and grids and proportion. It was a great base, I wouldn't change any of it.
I'm sure I'd laugh at some of the work I did in school from a style perspective, but I do remember being aware of design elements and techniques so that everything had its place, things were aligned correctly, etc. Thats the kind of thing I noticed about this kids "work" the lack of basic quality that a teacher should have corrected. Simple stuff like "if you're centering button text, why is that one button's text left aligned, and not on the same baseline?" "Why is the hover state text not aligned properly?" "Why the fuck are you using Comic Sans????!!!!!"
- comic sans? is it that bad :/ take him to a design outing (ADC?) with you. maybe mentor him on a gig?ohhhhhsnap
