Question:
> Within Graphic Design and Fashion & Textiles particularly, there is a very direct and obvious relationship between the work students might want to do and the commercial industries, such as advertising and fashion. Can you tell me about some of the issues this raises when it comes to academic study of design?

Graphic Designer Lecturer (GDL):
>> "I think whilst they're on the course, there's the whole thing about designing for the mass market, and in fact that's what most of them may end up doing when they leave. If a student said they wanted to do that you would think that was actually quite good, but it's incredibly difficult to do well. It has got to do with audience, and the criteria that you're applying on the degree course and the need for the student to critique their own work and being innovative, but that gets quite restricted within the mass market end. I know of a certain other course which was very strong in that respect, saying their ethos was to train students for the industry, but when it came to their degree show everyone said the the work was boring. They defended themselves by saying that the critics didn't understand what they were doing, that they were doing something positive and very good of its time, which it was. But everyone was saying, "yes, but we want to see something new and innovative. I think that's true of all the subjects and in a way that's a hell of a lot to expect from somebody at graduate point."

Q:
>"That's really interesting because there is that line between; are we training people for the industry and serving the status quo, or are we trying to nurture artists and innovative creative designers? In the middle there's the skills and techniques which both camps need to progress. How do you think that relationship is managed?"

GDL:
>> In the past there was a definite HND and degree separation, and it was very clear what each was, and I think that worked quite nicely. But when there's this pressure on people that they needed a degree, and a lot of HNDs became degrees, everyone who ended up doing the subject ended up feeling like they should do a degree course, and it means that the degree courses really are less elitist, which is good, but need to serve a wider audience and student need. In one way that's fine, but the expectations outside of them are still wanting to see in the degree show something new and exciting that they've never seen before. I think a lot of staff would say that it's fine to let the students work commercially, that the students are working really well within this context, but then you're always at the mercy of external examiners and course assurance people, which don't necessarily see it in the same way."

Q:
> "How does this impact on the notion of originality in design education? For creative innovation I would have thought you need a high level of originality, but for industry needs the work might not necessarily be original or even that creative, but it is serving a definite market which contains it's own skill and knowledgeable approach."

GDL:
>> I think that's one of the problems of degree courses because in the criteria for getting a student getting a First, then that's definitely got to be originality, and it goes down in a sliding scale. So a student who gets a Third, is a perfectly good, serviceable, employable designer, but the students don't value that all because they want to get this high level badge so the pressure is on to get First. The trouble is, statistically the students who get the Firsts aren't the ones who go on to get the jobs as they are very often seen as too self-indigent, too wacky, and unless they set up their own businesses people find it quite hard to employ them. I think it's a real problem with the whole classification system."

"The classic one I've seen in graphics, which really shocked me when I started interviewing, was the amount of students who thought all we would just teach them software packages, and expected graphics was just about teaching them PhotoShop and Quark, and that once they got those skills they would be graphic designers and be able to work in advertising. And I suppose you do get people with DTP packages on their computers and they do commercial graphic design, but it is when you question them about how much they know about the subject and what they're interested in, you soon realise that approach is quite limited. Then you will get another student who has used those packages but have applied it to something quite inventively, and you think great, I'll take them."

30.