When you first read the Hadlow College prospectus it says all you need are secateurs and a digital camera may be an advantage. It doesn't tell you about the programs that you will be required to buy for your computer in order to be able to complete the course. So here we are needing another one.
In the first year we learn Autocad. Two months of learning and we haven't used it since. We were taught Photoshop for 2 weeks but we use that all the time but what we learned doesn't really help. Sketchup, we had about 2 hours on, but its quite important. Now it has been decided that we are to use Indesign to prepare a written document. Total tuition time for this, 2 minutes crowded around a computer on Thursday, well that helped!
We learn things on this course that we are never going to use, we read endless Pdf's about mind-numbing management plans that we are not interested in or will bear no relevance to our future employment. If we wanted to learn garden history or garden conservation we would be doing a degree in those subjects. Any design potential any of us may have had is being eroded by sitting at a computer screen for days on end to fulfil the task of writing up pages of text with nothing to do with designing.
Where have the sketching and design courses been for the last two years?
Nice rant, Can't say i agree with everything you say, i have learnt a lot by doing History and realising that i don't actually have an original idea in me, all nicked from some were ( bit like eerhumm my adobe stuff) either consciously or sub consciously.
ReplyDeleteSaying that the InDesign is Bstrd counter intuitive, been screaming all afternoon and evening, entertainment for the neighbours if nothing else!
If you get really stuck, send me an email, probably won't have an answer, but a problem shared and all that!!
See you later
Grant
Hi
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to know what you think your future employment plans are?
It did get frustrating, last year, when we were in our final year. Similar comments circulated from time to time, but they were really due to frustration and workload. It’s important to keep in mind you are doing a full honors degree that is validated by the landscape institute and international assessors.
A full degree programme must have a wide field of view or graduates would be unemployable in large sectors of the industry. Whether you decide to continue the skills you learn is up to you, but the more skills you possess the more job opportunities will present themselves.
I hardly used autoCAD at all in my final year and I haven’t used it with my client’s designs at all, but I keep those skills up to date just in case I need them just around the corner.
If you work in the commercial or public arenas you will find CAD software such as autoCAD, Vectorworks and publication software such as Indesign are industry standards.
Jamie will not force you to use any of this stuff. You can do the entire final year sketching, hand drawing and hand rendering if you wish… it’s up to you.
I had no Photoshop, Sketchup or Indesign teaching at all at Greenwich of Hadlow so you are slightly better off tha we were.
Good luck with your final year work; it seems impossible but it really isn't.