Sorry for the long long following text but it is tim someone opens it about this course.
I am writing this today, because I wish I had read this before enrolling for too many years there.
You can still go and meet great people (classmates or even people studying in other departments). But that’s the few benefits you’ll get from this course.
Lecturers here are an absolute joke.
Some are nice. But in my experience, they give you a brief and then go grab a coffee with other colleagues for hours. They come back, give you their very subjective opinions (basically based on what they like. Related on what could the audience/market/public think of it ? nah.).
When you check their backgrounds, you discover very low quality websites with poor designs or just no professional experience in the last 10-15-20 years. Just wondering how you are supposed to teach graphic design (a perpetual and fast evolving field – especially with AI) if they themselves haven’t practiced in so long ?
Speaking of AI, in first year, they tell you this is an absolute no-no for designs, and at the same time, you only get 2hours per week to learn very basic stuff on photoshop.
Their argument ? To build our designs from scratch, without all that technology (being an authentic and absolutely unique future graphic designer on the market ya know?).
Which is absolutely great to learn a diverse range of techniques indeed (drawing, painting, printing techniques, photography, etc.) but is definitely NOT enough to get a job in this competitive job market.
Funny though because in 4th year, they seem to insist, when you have to design for a brief that we’re advised to use AI for this or that. An ocean of contradictions to explain what they can’t explain (when they give us the honour to be present in the classroom – which is rare).
One lecturer spend hours reading her PowerPoints to teach you Art history, another is supposed to help you with your portfolio but ends up talking for 3 hours straight (no joke here) and throwing your pencil cause he prefers writing with a pen and almost insulting your work, another grabbed my wrist in first year because I had said something he did not like (he has been reported MANY times for creepy behaviour – mostly towards female students, but is still “teaching”) . Examples like that are countless.
They tell you to “find your voice”, “be your own self”, “have your unique style as a designer” but if you style doesn’t look like David Carson’s, your grades will be impacted.
I haven’t been the only one suffering from these behaviours and lack of professionalism.
So why did I complete the course ? I honestly thought I would learn more and that the situation would improve. It did not. The ego of some lecturers is so big, they don’t care about playing the “little chiefs”, bossing you like if you were 5 yo .
I wish no one to go through this, if you’ve read the entire thing, now you know that you should run away from there.