should you go to design school, or just use youtube?

I’ve been teach­ing at Amer­i­can Riv­er Col­lege since 2003.

And wat I love about the school’s Art New Me­dia pro­gram is its orig­i­nal stat­ed ded­i­ca­tion to ‘an art and de­sign ed­u­ca­tion in a dig­i­tal en­vi­ron­ment that hon­ors tra­di­tion­al art foundations.’

Mean­ing: Stu­dents will learn the nu­ance and process that oth­ers pay a lot of mon­ey to learn at an ex­pen­sive de­sign school – plus, soft­ware training.

Be­cause learn­ing just the soft­ware and not learn­ing wat it’s sup­posed to be used for is re­al­ly a vo­ca­tion­al dead end. Most­ly, imho.

Also, I be­lieve this makes a güd de­sign student:

There are the kind of stu­dents who wait to be told what to do, how to do it, & then need re­as­sur­ance that they did it the “right”way.

And there are the kind of stu­dents who fig­ure it out by try­ing, see­ing what hap­pens, & learn­ing from failures.

Be the sec­ond kind of student.

— Mitch Gold­stein (@mgoldst) Jan­u­ary 17, 2020

Ed­u­ca­tor Mitch Gold­stein teach­es at RIT and his posts on so­cial me­dia are no-non­sense cheat codes for de­sign students. 

So is his book – re­leased a few years af­ter I orig­i­nal­ly typed up this blog post. 

And this thread, be­low (post­ed on twit­ter) also just hap­pens to ex­plain wat my class­es are all about:

“Time for a thread. I have had a few ques­tions re­cent­ly about for­mal de­sign ed­u­ca­tion, eg de­sign school (which I will re­fer to as DS) vs. free/low cost on­line ed­u­ca­tion, eg Youtube, Skill­share, et al. (which I will re­fer to as YT).

“Nat­u­ral­ly, I have some thoughts.

“I think a big dif­fer­ence is the idea of ‘train­ing’ vs. ‘ed­u­ca­tion.’ Train­ing is about learn­ing how to do spe­cif­ic things with pre­dictable out­comes and pre­de­fined tools. Ed­u­ca­tion is a deep­er un­der­stand­ing of ideas and con­text, as well as more open process­es & methods.

“YT is very, very good at train­ing. If you want to learn tools, tech­niques, and ‘how to’ you can do pret­ty damn good for free or very low cost with on­line classes/tutorials/demos. YT is also very good at get­ting up to speed ASAP on the newest, RIGHT NOW tools.

“DS is not as good at train­ing, and be­fore teach­ing some brand new tech you need a fac­ul­ty mem­ber to learn it, and be able to put it into a class, pos­si­bly get cur­ric­u­lar ap­proval, etc …. The Ivory Tow­er Ma­chine™ can get in the way bigtime.

“DS also teach­es you a spe­cif­ic train­ing top­ic usu­al­ly by one per­son in one class in one se­mes­ter, which is then ref­er­enced and the­o­ret­i­cal­ly re­in­forced in oth­er class­es. YT lets you watch a dozen videos by a dozen peo­ple on the same thing to get a more round­ed understanding.

“YT has a mas­sive, ex­pan­sive set of things it can train you on – way more than can fit in 4 years of a BFA. You can just keep fol­low­ing the rec­om­men­da­tion al­go­rithm for­ev­er and learn how to use al­most every­thing. And yes you can do it in your jam­mies with your dog in your lap.

“DS is also usu­al­ly AB­SURD­LY ex­pen­sive. Full stop.

“DS has a lot more con­text and a lot more deeply ex­am­ined con­nec­tions with­in its ed­u­ca­tion. You have the con­text of a bunch of peo­ple in a room to­geth­er bounc­ing ideas off each oth­er. You have a strong­ly de­vel­oped cur­ric­u­la in­clud­ing non-de­sign topics.

“DS also pro­vides way, way more the­o­ry and his­to­ry. Very few peo­ple try­ing to learn de­sign on­line take a his­to­ry class. Or a writ­ing class. Or a lit­er­a­ture class. This is the ‘ed­u­ca­tion’: the stuff BE­YOND the ob­vi­ous stuff. This is part of what takes train­ing to education.

“The im­por­tance of in-per­son, face to face cri­tique can­not be un­der­stat­ed – I have yet to see any­thing come close on­line. Yes I have been in Slack crit chan­nels, and I have seen Google Crit Hang­outs and while by no means use­less, there is a lot miss­ing vs. in-per­son dialog.

“So … what should you do? Ide­al­ly, you should do both. YT & DS both have lots to of­fer and ide­al­ly every­one would use both to­geth­er to get what they need. For DS cost & time & ge­og­ra­phy are ob­vi­ous­ly huge is­sues, es­pe­cial­ly for those who are not from priv­i­leged backgrounds.

“But, and this is re­al­ly, re­al­ly im­por­tant: Any­one who tells you that YT is a one-to-one sub­sti­tute for a for­mal de­sign ed­u­ca­tion, and you can do the same ex­act thing on­line for free or for $20/month is com­plete­ly full of crap. That is ab­solute­ly untrue.

“Both have val­ue. Both of­fer a way into in­dus­try. Both can be good or can be bad for some­one. Re­gard­less of $, ei­ther one can be the right way or the wrong way to learn. Any­one who speaks about this stuff in sim­ple ab­solutes should be ig­nored. It’s nev­er that simple.

“For me per­son­al­ly: Go­ing to DS was a life-chang­ing ex­pe­ri­ence that I was des­per­ate­ly in need of. I knew I would go into debt even with some fam­i­ly $ sup­port. I was pre­pared to do so. I tru­ly be­lieve I would not have got­ten re­mote­ly close to where I am to­day with­out it.

“Gen­er­al­ly, I be­lieve DS makes you a bet­ter cre­ative prac­ti­tion­er. BUT de­pends a LOT on the in­di­vid­ual. There are peo­ple who are bril­liant & suc­cess­ful who nev­er went to school. There are peo­ple who went to elite de­sign schools who can’t de­sign their way out of a pa­per bag.

“An added bonus to DS is the com­mu­ni­ty, which is much stronger and more ac­tion­able than an on­line fo­rum. 95% of projects I have got­ten came from for­mer teach­ers, clients who knew or had a con­nec­tion to the school, and for­mer class­mates. The net­work is important.

“So to an­swer the big ques­tion: Should you go to de­sign school, or just use YouTube?

“Yes.

“Cou­ple of more thoughts: I’m see­ing com­ments about how teach­ers at DS are an­ti­quat­ed & tired & coast­ing thru teach­ing while they en­joy tenure. While yes, there are teach­ers like this, the vast ma­jor­i­ty are ac­tive prac­ti­tion­ers AND in­sane­ly cu­ri­ous about their field.

“A hell of a lot of what ed­u­ca­tors are paid for is be­ing ac­tive­ly in­ter­est­ed in stuff. It’s lit­er­al­ly in the job de­scrip­tion. That say­ing ‘Those who can’t, teach’ is ut­ter bull­shit. It should be ‘Those who can, and do, and can ex­plain why and how they can and do, teach.’

“I per­son­al­ly look at teach­ing as a part of my cre­ative prac­tice. It feeds my work and my work feeds my teach­ing. Much of my mo­ti­va­tion is be­ing cu­ri­ous. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, some of YTs mo­ti­va­tion is view counts. Just some­thing to be aware of: Un­der­stand WHO is teach­ing you.

“I am also see­ing com­ments about how YT is just a bunch of un­qual­i­fied young­sters mak­ing worth­less videos. This is also a gross mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. There is an in­cred­i­ble, mas­sive, high­ly ac­ces­si­ble wealth of knowl­edge on­line and you should not be so quick to dis­miss it.

“Do you need to vet YT videos to make sure they are ac­cu­rate? Sure. But if some­one is post­ing to YT they are gonna be eas­i­ly find­able on­line. Look at their port­fo­lio. Check their qual­i­fi­ca­tions. See if they are worth lis­ten­ing to. (You should ALSO do this with your DS teachers.)”
—Mitch Gold­stein, Twitter

 

I’ll also throw in Ger­ry O. Simp­son’s

“Don’t let your taste get in the way of your work.”

Be­cause that’s a whole oth­er bat­tle, since stu­dents are in school to learn and re­fine their tastes, in­stead of just re­ly­ing on wat they al­ready kno when they walk thru the door.

“I’ve nev­er done that before …”

That’s why you’re here. Yes, I’ve made this post re­quired read­ing for my newest stu­dents. If you’ve made it this far, you’re in pret­ty güd shape.

 

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM! Pho­tos: El­e­ments of fur­ni­ture-mak­ing by Mitch Goldstein.

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