When you are focusing on putting together an amazing book to land a great job, you will take any advice you can find. However, have you ever stopped to think about where that advice was coming from? Not all professionals are created equally, and the advice of some is not as valuable as that of others. I never really saw this as an issue when I was a student, until I witness first hand a situation that left me utterly disgusted.
I was talking with some colleagues who use a common vendor to hear that they were out of the office for the day because they were performing senior portfolio reviews at a local college. This would seem like a charitable and worthwhile thing to do if not for the fact that this individual is not a designer. In fact up until a couple of months prior this individuals company did not even offer design services. This company has traditionally been a programming vendor for a specialized niche that was not even web based. In the past couple of months the company had begin offering design services, but only on a sub contracted basis. However this individual still took it upon himself to review portfolios of senior design students that I personally know have far more design knowledge than himself.
Who is at fault?
Obviously, there are a number of people at fault here in this situation. The faculty (which I will not name here) is responsible for not screening and finding individuals with the qualifications to make such assessments. The individual is also at fault for not admitting that he is not qualified enough to participate. However the institution as a whole should be equally at blame. This neglect of proper screening speaks horribly for the quality of education that can be found at this school.
Know when to listen.
Ultimately this situation leads me to a lesson that anyone can learn from. If you are going to take advice that would ultimately shape the way you perform your work or will influence you as a professional, make sure you know where the comments are coming from. Ask yourself very carefully whether the individual who is critiquing your work has the experience and insight to do so.
Don’t avoid criticism
It is important for me to state that I am not saying that you should totally ignore any comments that have been given to you, or use this as an excuse to avoid taking criticism. Criticism is something that is very important in the development and learning process of a designer. Just remember that you should know who is giving the criticism.
While I am on the subject of criticism, make sure to check out Andy Rutledge’s great article Criticism: Myths and Childishness. It is a great look into the role of criticism in design.
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May 7th, 2008 at 7:43 am
We usually have creative professionals who’ve been in the field for at least a decade come over and give us talks on portfolio building and finding work. It’s really lovely to hear about others experiences and draw inspiration from what they’ve done as opposed to getting a set list of rules.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:43 am
You don’t say in your post…did you do the right thing and point this out to the relevant parties? It’s very possible that you’re the only person with enough knowledge of the situation to understand the problem.
I went through similar problems with a professor who taught an intro to HTML class only because she had gotten such poor evaluations that she was no longer allowed to teach her sociology classes. It’s unlikely that anyone will believe or act on comments from the students, so I think it’s really important that you politely start this conversation with someone from the school.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Unfortunately it is outside of my control to notify these students about the problem. Unfortunately the party that I know who would be able to do something about this is the same person who asked the individual to take place in the review. My colleague has said something about the issue, but it fell on deaf ears. I am unsure as to what more I could do in this situation as it has already taken place. I do suggest to students looking for a design program to look elsewhere…
May 8th, 2008 at 1:53 am
My typography professor once said that when you get your mark back from any work, you should find out what you did wrong not to earn the X number of marks out of 100.
What is the point of submitting an assignment and getting a mark back but no feedback on what did exactly wrong?
Pretend if you got 93/100, obviously you had a very good piece of work but the 7 marks you didn’t receive, why was that? Challenge your teachers / markers and ask them why. They will be surprised and probably taken back and generally they have a hard time pointing it out (if it is a good piece of work).
This scenario actually did happen to me and because they couldn’t point out anything wrong I got those 7 extra marks. Can’t beat 100/100.
May 8th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I always found it humorous that the Art instructors at the 3 colleges I attended, in fact, weren’t very good at all. Some of the students were far better qualified to teach the class. Finally, it dawned on me that maybe I didn’t want to take their criticism and advice too much after all, unless I wanted to end up with subpar work like their own.
And that’s perhaps why they were teaching a class on the subject, instead being out in the field and doing it for a living.
Some of the best Designers and artists are the ones that DON’T go around telling everyone how it should be done. The real ones are too busy doing it.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
RC Pop Art,
Great comment! Even though I know that I am a teacher and I don’t think I am directly telling people how they should do their jobs, you have had me questions whether I should blog or not lol!
May 9th, 2008 at 1:34 am
Nice read, never really had too much of a problem when I was at College, I had a clear understanding of what my teachers knew, they would often show you their own personal work, and it does help build trust.
There were a few that we didn’t know anything about and didn’t give any constructive criticism, so we learnt to just focus on getting feedback from the teachers who we knew had an idea of what they were talking about.
It’s always good to get more than one opinion, even if you only have one teacher I’m sure there is someone else at your college who might be able to give a second opinion, maybe you could approach them and ask for their feedback, and point out that the feedback you’re getting from your teacher isn’t very good.
I think the main advice is to question your feedback, dig for answers if your not given them. Like Jacob says if you only get 93 out of 100 ask why, that’s the only way you can move forward, and the only way you can find out if your teacher really knows what they are talking about or not.