It's just drawing all day!

[muses_nightmare]

So I was surfing around and I see a banner ad for the VCAD (Vancouver college of art and design) Graphic design program. In big fancy type it says "Get paid to draw pictures all day. Seriously." I'm sorry but that is not what a graphic designer does, drawing is a very small part of designing something, sometimes it doesn't even come into play. It's just terrible advertising on their part, it's perpetuating the stereotype that graphic design means that well, you get to sit around drawing pretty pictures all day. This is partially the reason that a lot of people don't take the profession seriously, at least why a lot of parents don't think that design is a good career choice.

I'm looking for a job in Design now having graduated from my program (not at VCAD), and trust me the jobs available to recent graduates with very little experience aren't terribly creative. One I recently interviewed for will be basically applying a companies re-branding to all of their packaging, sounds interesting until you get into the fact that this is a tool company, and all of the packaging will basically be the same except for variations in the size and type of package. So I'd be using a template to apply a pre made design to drill-bits and the like. Not the most exciting of work, but I accept that this is the type of stuff I'll have to do in order to get experience so that I can eventually do the creative projects that I'd really love to be doing.

Now how many students are going to apply to the program and be sorely disappointed when the realize afterward that they won't get to be all that creative when they start out? I know my school never gave me those illusions, and I'd hope that maybe some of the instructors in that school know well enough to inform their students of this like mine did.

[Eisa]

Well, it's like the misconceptions that people have about psychology, that it's all like it is in the movies and all based on "so lie down on the couch now..." And that's not it at ALL. So many people apparently think that psychology's an easy major, too...and it's NOT.

So I can understand your frustration a little. I guess it's to hook people in, but I don't think it's gonna attract the people who will actually stay in the program once they learn it's NOT just "drawing pretty pictures all day."

[fireheart17]

Or the BA, which in my area gets referred to as "the sheep degree." It is only a sheep degree if you pick majors that are all but useless in the real world-for example, my picks were International Studies, Politics and initially French. All three of these would prepare me for a career in say, Department of Foreign Affairs. In comparison, a degree that involved Women's Studies as your major and Australian Studies as your minor, might be somewhat useless.