Channel 4 - www.ideasfactory.com - 2003
Back to the Drawing Board - V. Verdi

Lawrence Zeegen, Deputy Head of the Design Faculty at Brighton University, has strong views about the skills design students need to cope with the commercial world. V.Verdi finds out there's more to design than Quark shortcuts.

The stakes are high. There are more design students, from all disciplines, knocking around the UK than the population of grey squirrels. Well, it seems like that. The job market is saturated and competition is rife.

It's the ten-million-dollar question - how to assemble the perfect portfolio to hook your first design job? But before you get to that stage it's important to step back and consider where your work was devised. For many it would have been at art college. So what you were taught at art college may help or hinder your prospects.

Ideas versus the hard-sell

Lawrence Zeegen, Deputy Head of School of Arts and Communication at Brighton University has controversial views about the state of design education. He believes that education should concentrate on creative thinking rather than solely getting to grips with the hard sell of the commercial world. This may sound like he is shooting himself in the foot - where's the sense in churning out students full of wacky ideas who have no understanding of commercial working methods? Lawrence counters that the design industry needs an injection of ideas if it is to revive itself from its comatose outlook, where everyone hankers after a double-spread feature in Creative Review.

He argues, "The commercial world has a very fixed view of what they need. They don't look longer term. At Brighton we aren't just training someone to use Quark in order to get that first job. Those things are important, but I think that if anyone is going to survive, they need far greater skills. You can learn to use software or how to lay something out in a certain way, but there are skills you need to know that are more in tune with creative thinking. If you couple analytical problem solving with theories of design and communication and strong typographic and illustration skills, then you get the beginnings of a great graduate. If you've got those things and the ability to design, you're off the starting blocks. I think the industry doesn't want high-flying creative thinkers. They just want people that can get on with the project and get it to the client."

Rock the boat

Lawrence emphasises that the design course at Brighton aims to, "rock the boat, rather than row it. Students have to have something to say about their work." He continues, "The courses are about having an opinion and producing the kind of work that will stand the test of time. It's a fact of life that students, when they graduate, will have to pay off their debts and fit into the commercial world. But if they're going to make their work original, they need to be creative. Design is about being creative but industry will never see that. In the greater scheme of things you want people who've got the ability to think."

Winners

The curriculum's concentration on conceptualisation has paid off, with some of Lawrence's students scooping a gold and silver D&AD award for student TV advertising. Lawrence remarks, "The best design communication says something. There's a message in there: there's thinking and ideas. My job in education is to instil enthusiasm and confidence in people to do what they think is right. Not try and be a Tomato or an Attik. It's about finding their own voice."

Not Popstars, it's graphic design

His tip for getting a job in design is not to wait for an advert to appear in design magazines. "What graduates have to do is set up their own opportunities, make their own chances and create their own luck. It's about contacting the type of companies they want to work for. Keeping in touch with people and letting them know what you're doing is so much more important then turning up in a smart suit for an interview where there are 400 people outside the door. It's not Popstars, it's graphic design. You've got to find you're own way of doing things."

So to package yourself as graphic design material Lawrence advises:

• Be honest
• On your CV make sure everything is typographically perfect and that there are no spelling mistakes. There are two schools of thought about CVs: produce a CV that is creative or a traditional CV that is beautifully presented
• The covering letter is important. It gives you a chance to say something about yourself and your personality
• When writing to 20 different companies, you have to write 20 different letters
• Portfolios are where you can be creative. Make sure you present your work in a logical order.
• You need a big dose of 'gumption' - don't give up

V.Verdi

For more information about design courses at Brighton University go to http://www.brighton.ac.uk/structure/soac.html To see research work go to http://www.brighton.ac.uk/arts/research/

Lawrence Zeegen's own site is http://www.zeegen.com