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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Basic skills for design

19:56 / 10.06.04

Ok, first the context:
I work at a school in Guadalajara, Mexico. it's relatively equivalent to high school level.
The last year of studies (the tenth, counting kinder as first, the student’s are 17-18 years old) there’s a pre/career division.
We are talking about the area where they receive a first approximation to design, architecture and visual arts (but it’s not a technical school).
One of the main problems now is that some students get into this area because “it’s less work”, since they spend 9 hours (from a total of 33) in drawing-related classes.
So, the thing is to create a kind of admission exam for going into this area. Mainly to discard those students that want to spend a year without working much.
And here comes the request. A double one.
First: What skills would you ask from an aspiring student? (Have in mind that it’s their first approximation to this area)
Second: How would you evaluate those skills?

11:38 / 11.06.04

i dont think i would ask for skills per say, but a dedication and a active intrest in the subject would definatly a plus, this can be shown by evidence of earlier work ,sketchbooks are a good habit to get whatever field of the visual arts you plan to get into.

also keep a second sketchbook collecting thing that catch your attetion or just like the design of, in mine there are flyers newspaper rippings, postcard and that sort of thing. this shows evidence that you aware of context.

im at work at the mo so this was pretty short, i hope it helps

19:17 / 11.06.04

What if they were assessed on a written critique of some art? If they were really interested in it and had potential they would be able to make some sort of intelligent comment.

00:44 / 14.06.04

Granted, this was employed at a university school of architecture, but the best test I've encountered went as follows:
1: "Select one piece of architecture (or art) that you have personally encountered. Explain why it is significant to you, what qualities appeal to you (or do not)."
2: Sit them down in front of objects(there were about 50 of us in the room when we did this, and we were looking at models of buildings), give them a black pencil and a red pencil, and tell them to sketch what's in front of them.
Exercise #1 is obviously to see if they actually observe their world critically, or if they're just pedestrians in life. Exercise #2 is mostly about raw talent - if they can sketch a reasonable approximation of their subject and figure out a good use for that red pencil, there's some potential there. I think these, along with a small portfolio submission of some sort (after all, they're still kids, and they may not have the confidence to put together a lot of work), would help separate those who really want this sort of education from the ones who want a lighter work load. I imagine that just having a testing process will eliminate a lot of the lazier students.

12:38 / 14.06.04

To add to the folio / sketchbook idea -maybe if you ask for them to work through a design for something, so they could show that they can research something, apply it to their own design, and so forth. I don't know what they should be designing, it doesn't look like the course is oriented towards product design so possibly some kind of graphic design. (The standard at my school was things like CD covers, t-shirts... really it was just about making a design that fitted with the overall theme)

It would probably indicate that the course wasn't going to be that easy, and as design generally takes quite a lot of time it might indicate that there's work outside the teaching hours.

Hope this makes sense, I'm tired just now...

17:25 / 17.06.04

Hey, thanks for the ideas. Proposed them and some were taken in for the selection process

17:27 / 17.06.04

Sorry, sent the last one unfinished.
As it seems, the ideas qere good. If you are interested, I'll tell you how everything goes on.

21:57 / 18.06.04

Please do -I'd be interested to know how the class works out as well. What kind of things are you going to be teaching, it is going to be drawing / art or design based?