John James Marshall thesis.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

designer. One he terms the specialist executor and the second is the polymath
interpolator and he says that sometimes you come across both – an individual
who has both qualities but these are very, very rare. In terms of economic and
funding change there has been a lot of debate on the electronic forums ID
Forum and DRS Forum about the number of design graduates that we are
actually producing in this country and also in the USA. Obviously, this is partly
the result of the huge pressures being exerted at a national, regional and local
level. I think this continuous subdivision of design courses is ultimately aimed
at obtaining more cash and currently we’ve gone through a restructuring
process. Presently we offer three courses in design and we’ve been faced with
the task of turning those three courses into fifteen courses within a year with no
more money or staff and if we don’t then we’ll be shown the door, frankly. In
terms of statistics I would estimate that anywhere between ten to twenty percent
(I would imagine that was a good year) of our design graduates actually find
work in a design-related field. I would also throw in the caveat that we are
actually a very successful design department so those figures are not great -
particularly when kids come through the door and say what are the
opportunities like? They are very, very competitive. Coming down today on the
train I looked through Troutman’s Postgraduate Guide at the range of
postgraduate qualifications – I completely overlooked undergraduate which I
think is four or five times thicker than this booklet here. But the range of
postgraduate qualifications available today extend to: DPhil, MA, MA Res, MCA,
M Des, MAD, M Ent, MFA, MG Prac, MH Prac, M Lit, MM Prac, MPhil, M Res,
MSc, MSc Res, MST, BDC, PDD it goes on and on and on. I don’t know how
many there are there - maybe twenty different postgraduate qualifications and I
think there are at a rough estimate about a thousand postgraduate courses on
offer in the UK. Probably more than half of them are in a design-related field.
So I think there are massive pressures and change in terms of economics and
funds available.
The obvious one and why many of us are sitting around this room today is the
blending of computing technologies in and across creative disciplines has
enabled designers to transcend what we’ve historically seen as distinct and
separate design disciplines. What I would say is that I had a walk round with
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