A recent post on Creative Bits (and the subsequent commentary underneath) got me thinking about what might be required to refer to oneself as a ‘graphic designer’. Is it a college degree, a kick-ass portfolio, or is it simply because you’ve printed the flyer for the local church’s fish dinner on your home inkjet for the last 10 years running…? There’s a commercial that appears on TV in my neck of the woods for a local trade school called Gibbs College, and it manages to make my blood boil most every time. Not only because of the deafening audio levels at which all cable ads seem to run at, but because it also seems to cheapen what I do for a living. “You TOO can become a graphic designer!”, the voiceover blares at me. Then out walks a young woman with pink dye in her hair (signaling to the audience that she’s a hip, groovy artist-type person), explaining just how ‘easy’ it is to enter the “exciting” world of graphic design, where you’ll instantly be creating magazine layouts, album covers, even video games! Meanwhile we’re treated to stock footage of various young go-getters sitting at their computers, all simultaneously working on the coolest project imaginable. Can you imagine if this sort of approach was used for other professions? Picture a similar (deafening) ad on your local cable network: “You TOO can become a doctor! In just 8 short weeks you’ll be prescribing pills and removing tumors!” Cut to stock footage of guys in white coats performing appendectomies and laughing to each other in the doctor’s lounge. To give you a bit of background on me, I attended a four-year school and cut my teeth in what I considered to be an excellent graphic design program. I soaked up all I could about the theories of color, composition & type, studied ad design and marketing principles, and learned to use all of the design software employed by the industry at the time. I spent countless hours in computer labs and darkrooms, lugged tons of equipment and paper samples all over central New Jersey, and racked up enormous bills buying the books, comp markers and anything else my professors deemed necessary to my education. My reward? A book of stubs that I tear out each month and send to Citibank for 10 years. Oh, and a Bachelor’s degree. But honestly, what *good* is that degree when just about anyone watching that same TV commercial can register at someplace like Gibbs and seemingly achieve the same status in a matter of months? Does this bother anyone else? And furthermore, do these ads create colossally unrealistic expectations about the profession in general? Somehow I think graduates of Gibbs might be a little disappointed with the “exciting world of graphic design” when they’re sitting in a tiny cubicle at an accounting firm, laboring over pie charts & Powerpoint slides for some middle manager who simply *loves* Comic Sans. However I also understand the viewpoint that having a degree in graphic design can’t take the place of talent or experience in the field. I imagine that any particularly motivated individual could carve out quite a career for him/herself without ever stepping foot in a design school. Personally speaking, I never learned HTML, CSS, or Adobe InDesign while in school, but in my free time on lunch breaks or at home in the evenings. Unlike the medical (or legal) trade, a piece of paper really hasn’t dictated my career path much past the first year or two – rather it’s been a lot of hard work. But here’s my question – shouldn’t that degree carry a bit more weight in the design profession? Would it benefit me at all to put “B.F.A.” on my business card or resume? Would it actually mean anything to a client as “PhD” or “M.B.A.” would for a physician or an accountant? Somehow I think not.