Last night, I took some of the team to the D&AD New Blood event in Old Billingsgate. The event is supposed to showcase the best creative talent from across the UK higher education system. If you are a student creative, this is the place to be seen and try and get that elusive first job.
We went down, full of hope and smiles, arriving just before 8pm and then spent over 30mins queuing to get in – even though we had private invitations. When we did get in, we were informed that all the free beer had been consumed within the first hour ‘by the students’. Not only that but the free beer was the only beer they had – so you couldn’t even buy any! I was offered warm white wine or a coffee? No thanks. Fed up from queuing, thirsty from the lack of decent drink and bloody sweating from the heat of so many people in the venue, we decided to hit the task at hand… until the size of the task became apparent. In previous years the D&AD student showpiece has grown from one floor, to one and a half… this year it covered three floors. How the f*ck are you supposed to be able to go through that amount of exhibition area in the 2-3 hours of the evening, without air con, no cold drinks, serious heat, and after a 35min queue? Stick with me because I am not at the REAL issue yet…
We split up and headed out to all corners, looking for someone with a flair for creative and digital and that was the issue. I can count the number of websites I actually saw on screen on ONE HAND! Some of these did not even work. I don’t mean the buttons did not link I mean they did not even load (on a local machine). Personally, I think there is a massive issue, when we have such a skills shortage online and yet the colleges, unis, etc are just vomiting out thousands of students who know FA about digital and have not been made aware of it (except for the Flash or Dreamweaver lesson that just puts them off).
Why is digital treated as the bastard brother to traditional creative?
Why is the system churning out a zillion print designers when there are hardly any pure print jobs left? Look on any creative job page (on or offline) and you will see that most jobs expect experience or an understanding of digital. These kids have none.
Digital is the future, so why are our future generations are so bloody unprepared for it?!
Tags Design