Tips for the College Design Student
Internship
This will greatly help you when searching for a job. An employer will be much more willing to hire a student out of college if they have worked at a "real" place.
If you can, find design classes outside of college
You can never learn enough.
Subscribe to design magazines
Print, Communication Arts. If you can't afford it, go to a library that has them. This is a very important thing to me. When I was a student, most of the other students never looked at design magazines. And their work suffered. It was like they were trying to reinvent the wheel. They felt that they were cheating if they looked design magazines for ideas. They felt the need to prove themselves as designers on their own. I say, "ppppph! hogwash!" Go ahead, check out other's designs, take some funky ideas and mold them to your situation.
Get the programs
Find a friend who has the design programs and steal them from this person. (Okay, maybe scratch this idea. this is wrong and illegal.)
Join the school newspaper.
By joining either the yearbook or the newspaper, you gain valuable knowledge! Like what's a pica, a column inch, a dummy, leading, tracking, kerning, etc. Plus you can see what it's like to work in a fast-paced environment with real deadlines
Do other design stuff for your school
7a) Organized events
there is a plethora of opportunities to design stuff...tshirts, posters, handouts, flyers, even websites
7b) Sports groups
You can even develop logos for the different sports groups or organizations. (along with the other stuff mentioned in 7a)
7c) Once word gets out that you can do this stuff, people will be knocking down your door for your services. Then develop your own little design company.
Get great designers to come to your college and talk about design
You'd be surprised how many designers are willing to at least show designers around their office. It makes working designers feel important. hehe.
Join:
Students In Design, http://www.ac4d.org
Form a design club in college.
Learn to type
Oh man, typing without looking at the keys is essential.
Web resources for school newspaper
News Design for Students
http://www.ndfs.org/
Visual Newspaper Directory
http://www.ndfs.org/directory/visual/default.htm
Society for News Design
http://www.snd.org/
Society of Publication Designers
http://www.spd.org
Answers to questions that beginning designers have:
http://www.careerconnex.com.my/career/cpath/guidance/art&desi.html
http://www.robinsdesign.com/b_starting_out.html (EXCELLENT PAGE!)
Go to http://www.spudart.org
haha, just kidding. that's my website.
You don't have to anal and over-worked
When i was a student i heard alot of working designers say, "you have to anal, you must have attention to detail, you will be over-worked." While for some designers this may be true, but for me this is totally not true. I don't get over-worked. (well, i was over-worked at my previous job, but not ALL designers are overworked). I am not anal. I'm not the greatest proofreader. But what I do have is passion. That's the key. See next point.
Passion
I have found passion makes a great difference in design. If you really like what you're doing, you'll totally succeed. NOW this passion may not be apparent right away. When I first started design, I didn't really like it. In college, I blew off my design classes to focus on my art. Therefore, I was a crappy designer. Starting out in design can be tricky because there is so much to learn. It can be intimidating. But if you stick with it, the tools will become a part of you. And if you look at enough good design, you'll learn the visual/design tricks to make something ultra-funky-cool. And then the passion kicks in.
Have fun
Just have fun with your design stuff. You've got plenty of time to learn at this age.
