Is pursuing a creative education from a university or college worth your time and money?
Note: This is just my personal experience and point of view.
When I graduated from high school, I have no idea where to further my studies. I am not particularly inclined to any subjects but I do know what I don’t like – math, and there’s a lot of field that require math. After a few months working and researching through various courses, I decided to go to The One Academy, a top tier design school in Malaysia, but with some doubt in my own decision. However, I bite the bullet and gave it all.
You know, there are a lot of things to consider if you decided to pursue this field, because there are a lot of uncertain things that you might or might not know exist, and you gotta be prepared for it or else it will give you a hard time. Here’s a piece of advice: get to know yourself better before settling in this field. Think of these things I am about to tell you:
1. Interest
First thing’s first, ask yourself some questions like: have you tried designing? do you like to create? do you like drawing? are you interested in art? did you ever look at something and think that it is a good design? All in all, you have to love design to succeed in this field. If you are not at least 80% interested, you should not go to design school because they will give you a lot of assignments to strengthen your fundamentals and explore on your creativity. In this case, if you are interested but not as much as fully committing, self-learning is also a good option because there is no restraint on workload or ‘rules’ so you can learn at your own pace and have more freedom on your creation, not to mention that there are many designers who are self-taught and is successful in their career.
Design is as much a matter of finding problems as it is solving them.
— Bryan Lawson, Author, Architect and Scholar
2. Talent
Ah, the harsh truth. If you are talented in this field, everything will work out better and make your life easier, otherwise there will be more frustration than you thought. Talent is something that cannot be ignored and yes, you can say that practice make perfect but talent on creativity? that is quite debatable, because I’ve been through there. To be honest, I am quite a perfectionist. I can produce good quality outcome on tasks with clear instructions or template. Creative tasks, on the other hand, I always need enormous amount of time to do research for inspiration or ‘steal’ design ideas because I am not a good decision maker, and that always costs me sleepless nights thinking for ideas. When I take a break and look at my friends’ progress, they have already come up with interesting and novel design, I can’t help but sigh on how important talent is in this particular field. If you trust your talent, attending design school will definitely sharpen your skills.
3. Perseverance
To be successful in this industry, a strong persistence and commitment will be required because you will face many challenges as design is a very subjective topic. Some design might appeal to you, others won’t, and this applies to everyone else too. You might face hardship for this reason, whether from lecturers, clients or your boss. Going to design school or not will not solve this problem, but if you accept these rejections or failures, along with your perseverance, you absolutely can improve and adapt to any kind of demand. Design is a long journey, constant breakthrough will make it worthwhile.
It took me a few seconds to draw it, but it took me 34 years to learn how to draw it in a few seconds.
— Paula Scher, Designer and Partner at Pentagram
4. Fundamental
In order to produce a good design, a good fundamental is indispensable. If you have the heart but inferior in terms of fundamentals, consolidating your foundation in college seems to be your best bet, unless you are a self-disciplined person that can push yourself to learn everyday. Universities or colleges will provide you guidelines and deadlines, hence it is easier to establish a stronger and well-rounded foundation for your future need. Usually good companies or studios seek designers with good understanding on the basic core of design, not only considering talent or potential. Similarly, not all design school are able to teach you the basic core of design, so if you decided to further your studies in this field, choosing a great design school is also a critical choice you have to make.
5. Time
Going to design school will make you wonder why time was never enough, because lecturers will probably give you a lot of assignments to push your creative process with deadlines — it is just a prelude of how working in this industry feels like. You will often find yourself tired whether mentally or physically, but don’t be afraid because having a good time management skill can save your health. To have good time management skills, you will also need to let go of your perfectionism (if you are a perfectionist like me), because things will never be perfect in a design aspect, it can only be better.
Here’s a long story short of mine — I sleep for an average of 2-3 hours per day during my time in design school, because I strive to draw stuff to ‘almost perfect’. I can say that I live lifelessly because I can only immerse in piles and piles of homework. Before the deadline for a final assessment, I worked on it for 23 hours and went to school without sleeping because I wanted it to be ‘perfect’ (the draft was on grid paper so my OCD is constantly triggered). On my way driving to school, I couldn’t control my sleepiness and I was also not aware of how loud my music was, even though I set it loud on purpose to keep myself awake. It was hard to focus on the road and cars around, I was dizzy and constantly late to react to the car in front braking. Thankfully, I reached school safe and sound, and it was a lesson learned to not drive when feeling drowsy.
All in all, it is critical to allocate enough time for creative tasks, and take care of your health at the same time, though sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice an appropriate amount of sleep to get things done. After all, your health is the deciding factor to have more time to spend for the rest of your life.
Have no fear of perfection — you’ll never reach it.
— Salvador Dali
So… should you go to design school?
To be honest, I am not here to tell you if you should go to design school, but those were the factors that did not go through my head enough when I first enter design school and that has costed me some precious time. I have only 50 percent of interest, I didn’t discover my talent or know myself better, which leads to a decaying perseverance while still learning fundamentals in the first few semesters in design school.
To be honest, I am not here to tell you if you should go to design school, but those were the factors that did not go through my head enough when I first enter design school and that has costed me some precious time. I have only 50 percent of interest, I didn’t discover my talent or know myself better, which leads to a decaying perseverance while still learning fundamentals in the first few semesters in design school.
Most occupations will require a degree to land jobs more easily, but that is not the case in the design field. If you want to get a job, it does not solely depend on your qualifications, it is more on how your portfolio appeals to people. That being said, going to design school is not necessary but surely, it is a safer option for those who don’t want to risk. On the flipside, there are so many ways to learn design nowadays, tons of free or paid resources are available for you to learn from, from books to any kind of online platform, but that requires more self-discipline and self-discovery because you don’t get to see the tutor everyday (if you take online courses from the internet) for guidance.
“Take all these advices, make a list of your own if you need to. Think about all of this while trying to make your decision. Think about your feelings, your needs, and not what society is telling you to do. If you feel like you need college, then, by all means, do it. Education is never wasted. I will take everything that I learned in college with me forever. But if you feel like college is not for you, then that’s ok too!” — Rayane Alvim, Hand-Lettering Artist, Illustrator & Blogger
Stay safe and be happy!
phernut. 