Educate Yourself

I have recently gone back to extending my education and knowledge on design and business. Technology and the internet is changing so damn quick, that we all must be avid learners in order to keep up and survive. However, my “education” is quite similar to Andrew Maier in which he elaborates in The State of Design Education.

When I say “I am learning and expanding my knowledge”, I am not saying “I went back to school”. Oh, God no. My schooling comes in the form of books, blog posts, online videos, and learning by doing. After reading what Maier had to say about today’s design education, I couldn’t help but relate to his experiences. 

College.

I did go to college. For two years! So you have to give me at least that much credit. But going in, I already had an understanding of what it means to be a designer (degrees and resumes mean nothing) and how one actually gets work (portfolio and who you know). I decided to skip the degree programs and shoot for something that would get me in and out quickly to start making money by designing: certificate program (my certificate in graphic design is somewhere under my bed).

I’ve been creating websites on my own since junior high (my first website was a Star Wars one), so I was excited to finally receive some professional training in college. My expectations quickly diminished when I realized their curriculum was several years behind (i.e. teaching web design in tables) and a program for a “web designer” did not necessarily exist. 

Design for the web, if you’ll pardon the generalization, is oftentimes grossly misestimated; viewed as too “technical” for artist types and too “artsy” for engineering types.  -Andrew Maier

Web design is a healthy balance of visual and the technical. You’re not a web designer if you just know Photoshop and do not understand the code that makes a website functional. And I’m not talking about PHP, Python, and all those programming languages. I’m talking about HTML and CSS at least. It’s not rocket science.

Anyways, going back to my story: to essentially learn design and understanding the principles of “code”, you basically had to jump around from design programs to the computer science programs. You were basically creating your own program without having the luxury of receiving a piece of paper from your efforts unless you went through two separate programs. And they were behind in the latest trends and technology. But I don’t blame them. How could I? It’s expensive and incredibly time-consuming to be updating the curriculum every time the internet changes. And lets be honest, change happens incredibly fast nowadays. I mean, look at Twitter and Facebook. If a business is not learning those tools, they wont survive by 2011.

Web design is no different. HTML5 is on the rise, new devices are utilizing the web (smartphones, iPad, etc), the future of Flash is in jeopardy, and design trends evolve incredibly fast. The industry is just too quick for colleges. That’s one reason why Artifice Studios enjoys working with colleges to improve their web presence. They need help.

Learn how to learn.

So what do you do when educational institutes cannot provide what you are looking for? Take matters in your own hands. Lazy people not apply. This means educating yourself. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of great universities out there that actually do teach web design and the principles of user interaction. But why pay a buttload of money and to be among students that are going to school to one day run their own business, have the freedom to choose their projects, and do what they love—-wait a minute, that’s what I’m doing already! All of that information that is taught can be learned through blogs, online videos, and attending conferences. Hell, I get my marketing education by watching Gary Vaynerchuk’s videos or reading what 37Signals has to offer.

I don’t have a degree in design. I don’t have a degree in business. Yet, I run my own business, I design websites for a living, and help companies take their web presence to the next level. I’ve become successful at it. How? It wasn’t that the right stars aligned and the moon and sun channeled the right amount of energy to the Earth. I learned to learn on my own. And most of that involved just doing it. Mistakes were made, yes. But that is the best way to learn. And I continue to learn by taking the plunge into the unknown. 

Antonio