Brady J. Frey

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the failure of colleges and universities in web design

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For the past three weeks I’ve interviewed for an assistant in web and print design — with little to no success. The position is perfect for a college student or the technically inclined changing careers; however, the portfolios and teaching methods from these schools is more than questionable — it’s downright disastrous.

The majority of my interviewees have come from Academy of Art University in San Francisco, and I’m sure this is more so regarding proximity than anything else. However, a brief look through Alumni Portfolios reveals the same dated methods:

  • Splash page
  • Full flash embedded websites (most also with a splash page)
  • This site requires…
  • Frames?!
  • Imageready and Photoshop are not web development tools, regardless of what Adobe says

After time, like most users, right when I saw flash starting to load, I closed the screen.

Except these designers came close:
Wilson Gheur (no points gained for lack of semantics, audio loading and invalid pages)
Justin A. Metros (on the proper path, but a lot of divitis and break tags without semantics)
Juan Carlos Añorg (best of all, strong knowledge of html, in the right direction and only slightly shy of proper semantics and validation)

And that’s it, from atleast what their career center could send me. Examples of Professor websites and websites from current students were not much better.

Now I’m sure there’s a few diamonds in there that they just aren’t finding me, but it’s blatantly apparent that this school isn’t teaching modern web development in the true sense. What level of professionals are they preparing for the real world? The same dated designers running without a care for proper methods and costing their clients money? Caring nothing for Accessibility, market reach, and SEO?

Design is knowing your tools. These students pay good money for those lessons, they should be taught — my blame falls squarely on the establishment for their lack of experience and sincerity. Their own website validation with over 30 errors should be a message loud and clear that Academy of Arts University should be preparing students to be designers in the present sense.

What to do?

The question is how to further educate these schools that their mistakes are blatant (and if that’s in debate, I’ll take the pepsi challenge against you any day). This shouldn’t be a standards vs. everyone else camp — there’s no everyone else anymore that’s current and up to speed.

My advice to new students in this medium: test your professors and your school sites before hand. As a print designer turned web, I self taught with the help of HTML Dog tutorials, and asking questions left and right on Codingforums (users such as Brothercake and dotfive’s own Andrew Krespanis kept me inline and on the right path), read Simplebits Publications and Zeldman’s Designing with Standards. My web coding and development training was significantly cheaper and yet more advanced than anything I saw come out of a University so far… and that’s not right.

Anyone show me a school teaching it right that I can recommend?

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5 Reader Comments::
  1. 1 Justin Metros says:

    ( i got alot outta control. i just had to respond )…

    hello b739-546,

    I saw some traffic in my stats coming from your site. Very interesting article. You make a good case overall and i commend you in addressing what I strongly agree to be a very important industry issue. However, your article is misleading in many ways with regards to the Academy, and ART schools in general.

    I say you make a good point because the Academy does not preach strict web development, in fact its not a “Web Development” school at all. Web development, although in many an art, IS NOT AN ART – its a science. One department in the entire university teaches web design; New Media – and even in New Media, web development is only one of many paths to choose from. There are just a handful of classes the delve into technologies like php/coldfusion/flex, etc… My point being – most of my peers are not web developers… they are ARTISTS.

    At the Academy, primary and fundamental emphasis is not placed on developing web applications or blogs or database driven sites…. The primary emphasis is on concept and design. Sure, the basics are taught and we all can make what we will of it. You don’t need a University to teach you web standards – they are right there online for us all to read. Web code is infallible, that is – it works or it doesn’t — design is not that simple. My friends Paul and Wang who i graduated with – they went on to form Faucet Studio – http://faucetstudio.com/ They chose the web-development path from the Academy and are currently in the process of changing the world. I don’t need to tell you that concept is everything. And its great concepts that change the world ( and bring in the cash ) – not proper semantics on break tags.

    In college, I learned ALL disciplines of New Media, because i LOVE THEM ALL. This has since proven to be my most valuable asset. You personally specialize in the web and print – thats awesome. There’s an infinite amount of knowlegdge out there to be had – one could essentially build the perfect site forever… But can you edit video? Do you know what codecs and frame rates to use for webcasts? Broadcast TV? Can you 4-track a punk rock band and then master the cd? Can you shoot a music video, do the print/package design and then author the dvd? Can you build a Flash/CSS/PHP site and then build a custom video mixer in Max/MSP/Jitter back to back?

    Its that diversity that is invaluable to any employer. In many ways, sure I may be a ‘jack of all trades’ so to speak, but im undeniably a hard-up, nasty motherfucker when it comes to New Media as a whole. My current company and my previous companies seem to appreciate the fact that i can do everything in house without them having to contract out each little task. On any given day im developing in as2, recording audio, designing in photoshop/illustrator, making wierd shit in after effects… Its no wonder that the new media department at the Academy has just as high of a job placement rate as damn near any other discipline in any other school anywhere in the United States. Take the Pepsi challenge to that.

    Back to the matter at hand – YES – there is QUITE the need for better overall teaching of web technology at the university level. However – one must acknowledge the need for both the developer, AND the artist. Sure, there are an amazing few out there that do both very well, but on any worthwhile web project the need for two completely unique skillsets is obvious — and trying to find one person to fill both roles is probably not the smartest move if you want your project to be a success. As an art director, i dont want my artists wasting time trying to program a photo gallery. i also dont want my developers creating crappy, lame ass art. Its my responsibility as a new media professional to have a solid understanding of the ENTIRE project – as its absolutely crucial to be able to manage it accordingly. Someone with an education from an institution like the Academy of Art is ideal for such a role.

    Not to start pointing fingers or anything, but honestly take your site under consideration. You are a great developer and have many very intelligent, well-written articles. You are obviously very educated with years and years of indusry experience – much much more than myself. But Ive been on your site for 20 min now and i still dont know who you are or what you do. You have icons on here that god only knows what they mean. Ill just click and hope it takes me somewhere fun i guess… And all this “Flight departure, literature” stuff”… Too bad a web validator cant tell you your concept and design isn’t as strong as your code. Funny how it doesnt care about that, right… Perhaps instead of hating on my schools DIV tags you could focus more on the need for clearer lines between disciplines. not to mention you could be thinking about an overhaul on your own site to make who you are and what you do more accesible… but i digress…

    Yeah, I know my sites not the greatest thing either, but then again i dont claim it to be. i made it in one sitting one rainy saturday morning to suffice while i work on my real portfolio. ( the dopenes of which is ridiculous ). yes, i acknowldge my divitis – you got me. But hey, ask me if i care – its just a simple little page to keep those interested in my work out of the dark. For some things semantics just dont matter… if it works,, it works.

    Justin

  2. 2 Brady J. Frey says:

    “But Ive been on your site for 20 min now and i still dont know who you are or what you do. You have icons on here that god only knows what they mean. Ill just click and hope it takes me somewhere fun i guess… And all this “Flight departure, literature

  3. 3 Justin Metros says:

    Hey Brady,

    Thanks for the response! im quite aware of your qualifications, and you are doing alot of good for us all – anyone who has a blog and shares code/ideas/gets topics out is good in my book. i didnt mean to hate on your site either – i was making the hard point that nobody is perfect ( plus i had a long day… ). Everything you’ve said holds water. This matter could be argued forever. I see two things that I strongly agree need to be addressed on a large scale. 1) Universities are not doing a good enough job teaching artists code and teaching coders art. 2) the gaps between being a designer vs. a developer are continually growing further and further apart. I guess this brings us back to “What to do?”

    Absolutely, every web professional must understand his tools – and the more you understand them, the better you are able to communicate. As an artist, ive wanted to learn everything i could about web technology so my designs can be as functional and accessible as possible – its our responsibility to the world to do these things right. The Academy has nothing to do with the fact that overall – YES, artists are not focusing enough on development; and developers are not focusing enough on art.

    Most people when they start in this business are branching over from something else. You either come from an art background like yourself or from a computer science background. Having gradutated from the Academy, i come from both equally. I believe strongly that the most of the stuff i see on the web, and i mean new projects for huge companies with huge budgets, suck. They suck because there is a failure to balance function and architecture with good design. How often do you see a really intelligent site that has crappy design, or a brillant concept poorly executed technically?

    Sure, in appropriate sites – robust accessiblity and databases are necessary. But for other things, they are not. If you have a content-driven site, you want a design that works rigidly with the php/asp/codfusion or whatever you are using. In order to design that, you need to now what you are doing – you dont need to write the SQL, but you have to know how to work in and around these languages to make them work for you and design within their limitations. If you are making a 100% flash based site, you may need to be a damn good illustrator or animator as well as knowing how to use actionscript. Too often, when i see one person obviously trying to do it all, the result is just blah – and ive sen so much shit that i feel its lowering the bar on what passes for good design in the real world.

    The web market is incredibly divided. Todays businesses, online stores, and information-driven sites NEED to be well developed – to the point where asking anyone to develop AND design them is ludicrous. Allow me to make my point by focusing any phpBB forum and the way they operate. Those systems are an intergral part of the way we communicate. ive seen exactly 4 well designed, forward thinking forums in my life. Why? because they all take the same canned systems and hack them apart. Sure the code works – but the code is very complex, and the design is compromised… making everything look the same. This is not an uncommon pattern – look at typical suburban America where have a huge neighrhood packed with houses and everyone is exactly the same. To me, thats very, very depressing.

    …so wheres the balance?

    Any small to medium sized business like yours and mine needs to have, and can only afford, just a few web people and they need to be able to do it all. Agreed. You argue all day whether even a small project with1 developer and 1 designer working together is going to be better than a site created by 2 designer/developers. It depends on the project, it depends on the people. But saying the need for both is a common copeout is just ridiculous. If you build sites all by yoursef, well – thats a whole other thing isnt it. Youre not going to build the GAPS website on your own…

    good stuff…

    ~ justin ;)

  4. 4 Kat says:

    Its that diversity that is invaluable to any employer. In many ways, sure I may be a ‘jack of all trades’ so to speak, but im undeniably a hard-up, nasty motherfucker when it comes to New Media as a whole.

    Too often, when i see one person obviously trying to do it all, the result is just blah – and ive sen so much shit that i feel its lowering the bar on what passes for good design in the real world.

    Now I am lost. Are you arguing that this diversity is successful or unsuccessful?

    I am still an undergraduate but when I talk to employers they are interested in the specialist, not the generalist (diversified).

    I think it’s important to understand the philosophical basis of the web as a ‘database’ of machine-readable electronic documents. Once you’ve truly understood that, I don’t think there’s any other way than valid semantic mark-up. I think the problem is that so few understand that.

  5. 5 Brady J. Frey says:

    I find large corporations look for more of a specialist ideal — small to medium size is interested in the multi-talented. Regardless, any high level management is expected to have an overall knowledge or they cannot work effectively — so the question would be if you want to be a worker bee, or run the show? If you want to run the show, don’t let poor managers and teachers tell you to specialize, they’re artificially limiting your own expectations and growth. There’s lots of talent, but not a lot of ambition in this industry — and I see that even still in professors.

    Sun Microsystems has this down, where managers and individual achievers are considered level — individual achievers can excel as general or specialist, but may not necessarily have managerial skills, managers maybe the complete opposite — regardless, all high level has a combined understanding of both through experience, time, ambition, or the latter.

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