Stemato.com - Stephen Tompkins’ Blog

In the past I have used my blog as a forum to both praise and criticize my college. Well today, I am proud to say that I am a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design. Why do you ask? Well, I was reading Bruce Nussbaum’s Innovation Design blog and I noticed that Businessweek had ranked the world’s top design schools. That is right I said WORLD’s Top Design schools. And SCAD was amongst the handful of North American schools that were chosen.

So without further adue, I will let SCAD shine today. Congrats Savannah College of Art and Design and thank you very much for the top notch education that you gave me. I am forever indebted to you.

Here is a link to the SCAD section.

Here is a link to all the College chosen.

Ok….I admit the title is a little misleading. Maybe it should have read “almost everything I learned in design school was wrong” but it does not have nearly the staying power. Anyway, I went on a Bruce Nussbaum reading frenzy yesterday and found out that design education in America really could improve.

First the good stuff about my design education. As I have stated before here, I am so proud to have received a BFA and how it helped me to be innovative to adjust my career path. I do not think a typical business education would have done the same for me but that is just me. I needed a different type of education to learn to adapt and to process different orientations.  Plus it was really cool to make pretty pictures and exercise my right brain muscle to the fullest.

Now the bad stuff that I believe needs improvement. As Nussbaum correctly points out, design is everywhere not just the touch points they teach you in school. Contrary to what I was taught, design is a journey not an finishline. We spent an entire semester learning how to make Rubylths, amberliths and ink drawings. A complete waste of time! Think about how much more effective it would have been for us to learn design as an experience instead of a process to an end.

All the blame cannot be thrown on SCAD as they did the best they could in the time alloted. I do think that they could have made the education a little more adaptable to current trends though. For example, I graduated in 2001 and attended most of my classes during the middle of the web boom and they still emphasized print design as a primary focus.

What if we did not spend time on a specific aspect of design and learned about how people experience design around them before stepping into techniques. Then gradually built up those techniques based on design as a journey from which people experience their lives. Almost a reverse concept of what was taught to us in school but definitely something that would have shaped a new type of designer.

I just recieved some sad news from the SCAD alumni newsletter. One of my favorite teachers and a real legend passed away, John Earl. I took his History of Jazz course and I will forever remember his irreverant teaching style and brilliant stories of the Jazz greats of all time. I just wanted to post the news as I received it from the newsletter as its truly a loss for all of us alumni, students and faculty.

Rest in Peace, John Earl. I am truly a better person having sat in your class for that semester.

“John Earl died at his home Friday, Nov. 28. He taught in the SCAD photography and performing arts departments from September 1980 to September 1995. As a photography professor, he often taught The Nature of Photography, and later as a performing arts professor, he often taught The History of Jazz. Earl was a veteran of World War II and attended the University of Miami, where he majored in music. He was an accomplished jazz drummer and later became a nature photographer. His photographs were published in many national magazines and books, and he was commended by the Georgia State Senate in 1977 as an environmentalist and photographer.”

Also here is some of his photography online.