Tips for the college design student:
Before and after college
by Matt Maldre
| DURING COLLEGE |
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.
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| AFTER COLLEGE |
Creative Resume
the thing that will make most of an impact when looking for a job. I cannot believe how many designers out there don't have a creative resume. Make your resume fun. Most other professions won't have a chance to do something spiffy with their resume, because the employer will think it's a gimmick. But with design (and some art fields) you are being hired to be creative, so show 'em that you are creative. The places you send it to will totally go ga-ga over it and circulate it around the office.
How to make it more creative: Give it a theme. Check out the resumes in the Career Center for examples. My resume has a map theme. It looks like a map. I've got headings like "Work Experience Avenue" and "Ocean of Skills." In one of my interviews, the interviewer said he received over 150 resumes from one want ad in the Chicago Tribune. He told me that mine stood out from all of them and that he just had to give me a call. So, spend the time on making it stand out, it will be worth it.
Send to places you think are freakin' cool*
Go ahead and go for it! Even if you don't know if a really cool
place is hiring, send 'em your resume anyway. You never know if they
might need some help. Plus, they will probably put your record on file.
Places to look for cool places: Look in design magazines for places
whose work looks like it's really your style. Communication Arts in
particular will have articles on individual design agencies.
Don't worry if you think you are a bad designer.
You will always improve. Continue looking in design magazines. Pick up trends. Read design books and learn good basic design. In college, design wasn't really my thing. Even though my concentration was in design, more of my time was spent making art. But once I got into the work field and doing full-time design, I think my designedness has gone much much better.
Check out the headhunters.
More about headhunters/placement agencies
Pigeon-holeing
Be careful not to pigeon-hole yourself. Although I'd like to say that your first job isn't all that important, you have to be careful not to get stuck in a job where you are doing the same type of boring thing that you don't like. Let's say you are designing classified ads that you don't like. If you stay there for a long time, and when you go to look for a new job, future prospective employers will say "Oh this person is a classified ads designer."
Want Ads
Check out this article on advice about using the want ads
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Also check out and join the
Chicago Design Network
at yahoo groups
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