Are universities meeting their obligations to provide design graduates with appropriate skill levels in presentation?

If traditional presentation skills are still a valuable part of the design professional skill set, are universities meeting their obligations to producing graduates suitably skilled in this area?

As I don't have an international or even a national prespective in this area I would be curious as to other peoples opinions.

If this is not the case, what can be, and what is being done to address this situation? ( In the university community, or the private sector.)

Alternatively if presentation skills are a shrinking or an increasing specialized skill set, then what impact is this going to have on the various design disciplines?

Is this going to become a specialty in its own right requiring an independent ( either university based or private sector.) educational training structure?

Regards

Nigel Gough

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Permalink Reply by Brian Lin on September 29, 2011 at 12:53am

This is a great and important topic Nigel. Here in the U.S., most design programs have "dropped" or curtailed their hand drawing classes in favor of digital rendering classes. Over the last 10 years or so, I have found that portfolio work of new recruits from design programs are beginning to look the same and almost "too realistic" and dull. By that I mean renderings and drawings no longer have the vibrancy and raw passion that hand drawing evokes. But what is happening is that all this work is being sent offshore to places like India, China, and even Europe, and in most cases, priced much cheaper than what U.S. firms charge for renderings. At my firm, we always use renderers in China, not only because they are cheaper, but the fact that they can crank out quality renderings at no time at all. U.S. rendering firms just can't compete, and it will be like this for a while.

That said, I think the hand drawing as a skill set is finding a niche upstream in the design work, and that realm is the design process. And with digital programs becoming easier and more universal for everyone (that includes clients) to learn and use, hand drawing for designers will become even more important; hand drawing is something unique and different to everyone and cannot be outsourced for the sake of design efficiency and profitability.

In teaching, I cannot and will not accept students and professionals "talking" design with computers only. They have to be able to draw out their ideas, from brain to paper in one single gestural stroke of their pen/pencil. With hand drawing, it becomes very personal, like your signature.

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Permalink Reply by Nigel Gough on October 3, 2011 at 2:06am

Hi Brian,

It appears I will be the doomsayer on this occasion in response to your comments

Even though traditional drawing and rendering skills are still seen as a core design skill by many professionals, universities are increasingly dropping these skills from their curriculums in favour of digital skills. Why?

As you mentioned these same digital skills are intended to provide images that oddly are increasingly being outsourced to cheaper overseas competition. Nice to have the skills but now we can’t use them in the current global marketplace. What a waste it would seem.

Where does this process end?

I assume developers could also outsource the design , and the documentation to cheaper overseas companies as well, and it would have the same effect on the “vibrancy and raw passion” of regional design as well as destroying local pools of skilled labour in the process. For that matter we could also outsource the education then what?

It seems we live in interesting times.

With a view to the phase think globally and act locally, what is our role as design professionals in this regard, and what should we be doing to maintain the depth of both digital and traditional presentation skills within regional markets?

Or perhaps should we adopt a laisee faire approach and let the market find its own level as a rule of nature… survival of the fittest in an economic sense?

Hope this generates some more discussion.

Nigel.