Last week, I gave two guest lectures at The College of St. Rose in Albany, New York. A small college, they are known for having one of the best graphic design programs within a liberal arts curriculum in the country. At their downtown arts building, they always participated in the monthly First Friday arts night, and my husband and I were always impressed with the quality and vigor of the student artwork and graphic design work we saw displayed in their gallery.
I offered myself up to them, telling the department head I'd be happy to discuss anything she thought I might be able to credibly address and which would be helpful to the students. They suggested the general topic of "branding". In one hour. Hmmm. How to break this broad topic down into a manageable and informative chunk...
Well, it turns out that I did a bit of a crash course in basic business marketing. I started out by asking students what interested them about design and creating a list on the white board. I then wrote a different list that detailed some of what their clients would be interested in: ROI, P&L, market segmentation, etc. I pointed out that the two seemed to have nothing to do with one another. And that, to my way of thinking, branding was the thing that actually linked the two lists. Branding is using the tools of graphic design (and writing like I do) to help business people meet their goals. Business people pay graphic designers to do what they love; in turn, graphic designers must do what they love (sometimes, anyway) in service to commercial interests. I discussed the difference of B2B and B2C companies, touched on distribution concerns, described some of what you need to get from research, and led a discussion about how design's job is to translate the features of what a business makes into messages about what they're actually trying to sell. In other words, Apple isn't selling electronics; they're selling self-expression. Candy makers aren't selling sugar and fat; they're selling fun. And of course, just about everyone else is selling sex.
I was fortunate to have two very engaged and interested groups of students who paid attention, asked questions, and entered in dialogue with me. Not to mention, were also polite and thankful. But I was suprised that this kind of subject matter was not already part of the curriculum. The two teachers whose classes I addressed, who were both designers, were deeply appreciative and enthusiastic and suggested I try to offer a complete course like this. Which might come out of the "communications" or "business" departments. While this would certainly benefit the communications and business departments, wouldn't it also be even more useful to have a course like this specifically addressed to how design is practiced in the real world of business? After all, it is a "commerical art." Or at least, that's what it used to be -- and was probably more honestly -- called in the past, before design became fetishized in our consumer, Martha Stewart-ized, Michael Graves-ized culture.
I'd love to hear thoughts from designers and educators out there, especially since I'm not a designer, nor did I study, design. Did you study maketing and basic business in school? Would you have benefitted from a course on these topics? Were you shell-shocked when you got out in the real world and realized that no one cared about the perfection and beauty of your composition of type, word, and image unless it helped them SELL something? What practical information was missing from your design education?
P.S. Moments after typing this post, I stepped away from the computer to get tea and the mail, picked up the latest issue of Dynamic Graphics + Create, and saw that St. Rose has received Grand Prize in the magazine's Re-Design contest for their self-promo materials design by in-house art director Mark Hamilton. Instead of the usual recruitment piece, Hamilton's team designed a real book, 100-pages and journal-sized, where "each page provides a new experience to the reader," according to Hamilton.
