Live Project - Future Perfect

For the Live Project I chose to work on a brief which was set by the group Designers are Wankers and Grafik the magazine. I bought a copy of Grafik to inspire me as to what they were wanting... I'll review it in a bit but first:

The brief reads:
Write an 800 word article in response to one of the following titles
01 Graphic design's best-kept secret is...
02 A manifesto for the modern graphic designer.
03 Advertising is the root of all evil. Discuss.
04 In what ways does design education leave its protégées ill-equipped?
05 Designers are wankers. Discuss.

the prizes were:
First Prize
For one overall winner:
01 A paid writing assignment to interview an international design studio in a future issue of Grafik.
02 An Apple MacBook.
03 Publication of your article in Grafik and on designersarewankers.com.
04 A regular column on designersarewankers.com.
05 Dinner with the Designers are wankers guru of your choice.
06 A library of essential design books.
07 A year's subscription to Grafik.

Runner-up Prize
For three short listed entries:
01 Publication of your article on designersarewankers.com.
02 A selection of design books.
03 A year's subscription to Grafik.
04 A copy of the Designers are wankers book.

I chose to write an article concerning title number 04 and here it is...

The Art of Bullshitting
By Nikki Bratt

Those creative students with a fragile deposition must beware of the dangers of placing their work in the spot light if they have not learnt the invaluable art of “Bullshit”. Bullshitting is something that all students must learn in order to pass as a designer; they must be able to talk their way through their work and out the other side with some dignity intact; this can be a messy process to begin with.

On the whole design tutors hold the ultimate skill of bullshit and are able to recognise a bullshitter at thirty yards but yet they never let on. They never speak of how you’re floundering but instead push and pull you until you find some sort of edge to grasp or rather a deadline to swim for and pull yourself out in time. Only to be shoved back into the swirling wake of ideas once again and the process is repeated throughout your entire educational life in the design world.

It seems most small children hold the ability to be creative, so why as they age do they become more or less adept at these skills? It is all down to a crisis in confidence, the child begins to recognise the world around them and how what they do can be perceived by others. They begin to hold the desire to fit in, to conform to the norm. In later life (after mastering the art if bullshit enough to give you time to become a good designer on the side) it becomes necessary to be able to place your ideas out into the open to be scrutinised and regarded for what they are, without you there to defend yourself or your reasoning. This in turn with a desire to fit into the accepted roles of society has the strong ability to crush or conceal the creativity within many young artists who flared as children only to die down in the presence of years. To ‘educate’ in the simplest form means:

“Give intellectual, moral, and social instruction. To train or give information on a particular subject.” Concise Oxford English Dictionary

So if you cannot teach creativity what exactly are we being ‘trained’ for? Is the focus predominantly shifted onto the technical side of becoming a practicing and paid designer; the abilities required to be able to take whatever form of creativity and artistic drive the pupil holds and form it into something desirable, useful to the outside world? The tutors must have the aptitude to be able to see what talent the pupil has and mould it to fit into the overbearing world of the designer. While the whole time allowing for the bullshit to circulate and manipulate the student who will on the whole generate their best ideas when placed under the pressure of critiques and blagging their work. The tutors must have the ability to nurture the creative gene and allow it to flourish in a safe environment, occasionally allowing it to be exposed to the world but not long enough for it to be crushed by opinion because let’s face it after all – we’re only learning.

So when does it become acceptable for our work to be left out in the spot light for more than this predetermined time, when the gaze of opinion has time to form a voice? Maybe GCSE or A-Level or possibly Foundation? Or maybe they should keep it safe until the time in which we leave university and have to find out on our own that the world is not as safe, un-opinionated and supportive as we were led to believe? This is a harsh lesson to learn and so they attempt to wean us away from this support during our years in university, away from the comfort of the protective wing and into the real world through the use of live briefs and critiques at all stages of production. They allow complete strangers to appraise our work, strangers who could hold the key to our success and who will not tolerate the finer art of bullshit.

The fault cannot be placed solely on those who teach design education but also on the student themselves who, in the sudden freedom of university has realised the world’s a bigger place and has gone to investigate. Some may take this desire to create with them on their wanders while others leave it behind and go and get distracted with ‘life’. It feels that by the age of university students we are in such a position as to feel we have reached adulthood. We have contradicting feelings between the want for nurture of our creative gene and the lust for freedom but without that piece of paper that states we can be creative to a professional standard we are all a little stuck. Thus we continue to live by the deadlines until we reach that freedom, piece of paper clutched tightly in hand and mortar board tossed deftly into the air to realise that actually the worlds a pretty ugly place and shuffle back to do an MA course under the safe wing of education.

And so we return to the art is bullshit, which in truth is what you’re being trained for, never mind the technical aspects the jobs required, as long as you can get in and out of a critique or design proposal alive and with the majority of your arrogance intact then you, sir, have the ability to be whoever you want to be in the pretentious, mixed up world of design. Now good luck trying to find a job.

I doubt it's a winning piece but it was fun working towards a live brief and the possibilities of my work having some credit outside the walls of the college and the internal briefs we've worked on in the past