After hours: NAFA Visual Communication course review

In my earlier blog post I gave a short description of a graphic design course I signed up for at NAFA, Singapore. Check that post if you wanna know about the content of the course, organization, scheduling etc. In this writeup, since the course is already over, I’ll just add on some new thoughts on course quality!

The academy gives rather generic information about the content of courses and I couldn’t find a review anywhere online, I figured I’ll write my own impressions about the course and how useful I found it (in case somebody wants to sign up in the future and wondering if its worth it).

What I was looking for (quite a lot ;p):

  • Strong theoretical principles of design and related aspects. I already had some practice so I mostly wanted the academic knowledge (usually the stuff everybody wants to skip when doing a degree but I guess perspective changes when older ;p)
  • Learn the science on how do humans perceive colours, what colours (and why) go well together and others don’t, similar about shapes, distance, perspective. How light changes the perception of all those things etc.
  • How do shadows, shading and reflections add depth to design etc.
  • What are different schools/ historical trends in design. How to compose a design (how should a scene look like and what effects do we get by including certain compositions), how does design effect vary depending of objects in the scene (humans, animals, items ?)
  • What are the typical errors and achievements coming out of implementation out of all of those…

What I got:

  • (very) little theory
  • lot of tips and practical knowledge from experienced pros
  • beginner Illustrator/Photoshop tutorial

So comparing my expectations with reality – mostly the course failed to deliver on what I originally wanted and I got little answers to the questions I had. Having said that, it’s not all bad: the course was at times somewhat interesting in the direction it went and I learnt few of things I didn’t know.

The biggest benefit in my view: the teachers push you to work on projects at home as there are a lot of assignments (good!). Furthermore, personally for me, somehow it was a starting point to investigate literature and study the things I wanted to know on my own ( so in other words: bummer for the the course but at least I got motived/pushed into the right direction).

Outside of the fact that the course missed my expectations, I have a feeling it’s rather bad value for money (even tho it’s not particularly expensive). During Visual Communication 1 (Principles of Design), most classes started late and actually teacher had very little to say, so finished early as well. Furthermore, after the few initial introductory classes the majority of this course is just consultations. Teacher approaching each student individually and giving his feedback on the project progress that student develops at home (basically you get ~5 min chat out of what’s supposed to be 3 hour class).

Visual Communication 2 (Digital Design) is more rich in practical knowledge, at least at the beginning. The first 5 classes are packed with learning Illustrator tools one after another, afterwards unfortunately it turns into the same as Principles of Design. Come to the class and teacher basically tells you to do your work (and ask questions if you like).

During the second semester, Visual Communication 3 (Typography & Colour Study), we got surprisingly a bit more theory and slides than VC1/Principles of Design (like I wanted ;p) but unfortunately I think it lacked a form of short in-class exercises that would somehow help to sink in what teacher talked about.

Finally, Visual Communication 4 (Digital Design 2), is exactly the same formula and impressions as Digital Design 1. Except that instead of Illustrator tutorial, it’s 2 classes on Indesign and 3 on Photoshop.

To sum it up you can check out the results of my homework assignments in my portfolio page (and also compare to few projects I could publish and did before the course):

Final note: during a single year NAFA can have multiple classes for the exact same course and those are run by different teachers (usually they do it part time too ;p). From my conversations with students from other classes, it turns out that this can make quite a difference (different home assignments, slightly different exercises/curriculum in class).

After hours: NAFA Visual Communication course

I’ve been doing all sort of design and drawing for quite a while now. For fun, privately but also for my projects at work. Web design, DTP etc…

Everything I did, I learned with trial and error and own experimentation, without doing any proper courses or studying design at a university. Recently, however, I thought it would be a good idea to get some theoretical background to boost whatever practical design skills I got throughout working on my projects.

So … I signed up for a part-time course on Visual Communication at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore. It’s a rather old and renowned public education institution in Singapore. The course has an interesting curriculum and allows to have a day job + attend classes in the evenings. There are 4 parts to it:

  • Visual Communication 1 – Principle of Design (10 sessions x 3 hours)
  • Visual Communication 2 – Digital Design I (10 sessions x 3 hours)
  • Visual Communication 3 – Typography & Colour Study (10 sessions x 3 hours)
  • Visual Communication 4 – Digital Design II (10 sessions x 3 hours)

Parts 1 and 2 go concurrently for about 2 months and afterwards parts 3 and 4 for another 2 months.

The academy gives rather little information on what the courses contain, so in the reminder of this post I’ll explain it from the participant point of view and in another post I’ll update with my review on the entire course once I’m done with it.

“Visual Communication 1” main theme is logo/business card design and teacher passing some of his professional experience with addition of little theory (backed by some minimalist slides).

“Visual Communication 2” is basically an Illustrator tutorial going through some most typical functions (and exploring them from different angles) and concluding with work on a packaging design project.

Each week those two run concurrently but are not directly related (ie what you hear in class on principles of design is not practiced later in Illustrator class), however in totality of things logo design is done in Illustrator, so the lab class somehow supplements the logo assignment.

After hours: Portfolio publishing – CMSes review

I made a little review of dedicated content management systems for publishing online portfolios (e.g. for designers etc.). Be advised – all this info is fully subjective.

I did this for a (web designer) friend and my judgements are done based on “how easy it is to setup the portfolio” vs. “how much you can customise it” to look individual and make the portfolio itself a showcase of ones design skills 🙂 Also I looked on “how easy it would be to add new projects”.

Publishing this in case somebody like me is looking for a list of such systems.

Name (+my rank ) Real (Cool) Examples Short Review
— CMS with Hosting —

Cargobad

http://butdoesitfloat.com/

http://www.funkhausdesign.com

http://cargocollective.com/seiz

Fairly rich but only their hosting. The free version is quite
limited (number of projects, images etc.). In my opinion unless you really like this, own hosting is better.

4ormat.combad

http://martynagalla.com/

http://hollysuangray.4ormat.com/754-holly-suan-gray

http://mason.4ormat.com/278-photography-home

 

Similar like Cargo but more simple.
— Need own Hosting —

Indexhibit

http://www.useyourfriends.com/

http://www.ty.sg/hello/

– simple
– different type of gallery layout, different themes
– in the basic out of the box version add projects/portfilio entires
under predefined sections (on-going, projects, Info)

Secretary

http://www.chilifactory.dk/

http://caseybritt.com/work/ajc-unplug

 

More the same direction/type as Indexhibit but probably better
developed and maintained.

Stacey

http://andmelbourne.com/projects/nicolinis/#1

http://helloalan.com/

http://kimberlymeenan.com/

– does not have interface to manage content, everything is just
by copying files- extremely lightweight, it doesn’t seem to have many options
for configuration-
everything is organised by text files with content & HTML
templates that are filled with this

Subfolio

http://400asa.net/

http://mobile.believein.co.uk/

Very much like a online file browser that can be themed rather
than a full CMS.

Indxr

http://christopherhewitt.com/

http://marcus-eriksson.com/

Similar like Subfolio its more a script rather than a full CMS.

Core

http://www.grahamdunn.be/

http://diftype.com/

Looks ok and has good reviews but is not available for public and I
couldn’t get it.

Symphony

http://nilshoerrmann.de/

http://lundark.com/

http://www.haggsgate.co.uk/

Normal CMS, its not designer or portfolio oriented but very
customizable.