You want to be a Designer? – Then Live it..

My brother in law, Mike is a dentist. He breathes, eats and if he could, sleeps dentistry. His dedication to his profession has often astounded me. I watched Mike transform from someone who didn’t know his teeth from his toes to now a highly trained and promising professional.

Even before Mike graduated he knew everything there was to know about teeth. In fact more than just teeth. Mike could tell you all about the types of mouth diseases, what products were the best to use and what foods to avoid. He dreamed about which practice he wanted to work with, the best in his city of course, everything. He read journals, talked to qualified dentists and always jumped at the opportunity to look inside anyone’s mouth that would let him to have a look.

So what, so he should be dedicated, after all he is a dentist. Surely being responsible for the wellbeing of ones teeth is important and there is no room for cock-ups, so Mike should know everything before he starts. You are about to become a professional Designer, there is no different between Mike and you in regards to being ready at the time of graduating.

Most graduating Designers think “I’m a new designer, I can learn on the job? ..and I promise I will get interested when I’m sitting behind that Mac in the studio as a newly employed junior, its all good.”

 Wake up!! Maybe 20 years ago you could have thought this way – when there wasn’t as much interest in Graphic Design as a career, once you had graduated you could just show up and have jobs thrown at you. Not anymore. Only the best will make it in today’s job climate. Only Designers who know what they want, know the industry and know the size of A4 paper have a chance. Yes, it’s true. I once asked a new class of my second and third year designers “what is the dimensions of an A4 sheet?”. To my amazement only a few out a class of 24 could tell me, even then the few that had a go didn’t really get it right. It is like asking Mike the Dentist to give us the proper name of our two front teeth and his reply is “hmmm, the front ones?”

Maybe the course had failed at this point to inform these students of this simple yet vital piece of knowledge. Even so you are a designer or you soon will be you need to know these things. I fact if you are reading this now and have no idea what A4 is go find out, while you are there look up A5 and A3. I made it my mission with that class to drum it into them. Every week I’d start the class with a barrage of questions followed by an unsynchronised chant “210 by 2….9….7mm”

Knowing A4 is only the beginning, it can’t stop there. It’s time for a complete drenching, you must emerge yourself into the design industry.  What all the main paper sizes are… how you can possibly start your first day without knowing that. Find out who the top five offset printers are in your city. Go to apple.com, ADGA.com.au and adobe.com every week; find out what’s new and what old. A week after Adobe announced that famous takeover with Macromedia, no one in my class knew. The industry’s top software company has just brought out its lesser rival and not one student knew.

Buy magazines such as Desktop and Design Graphics, they are overflowing with Australian and International news, software reviews, interviews with successful Designers and Art Directors, sample work and hardware. There is much information to be absorbed about our industry.