I received an email from my child’s school asking if any parents would like to come in and talk to the children about their job and give some guidance about the workplace.
I thought why not, it would be something new for me to try and interesting to see how the kids engage with graphic design.
When I arrived at school I felt confident, I’d made an interesting, engaging slide deck and what kid doesn’t like design right? As the teacher brought me into the classroom, I noticed a sheet with all the other career advice speakers. Here was the list: Brain surgeon, Doctor, Fireman, Accountant, Web developer and Estate agent.
Brain surgeon! How do you top that? For some reason a competitive edge inched into my psyche — ok we might not be able to top Brain surgeon or Fireman but if we can’t impress them more than an Accountant or Estate agent, then you need to retire immediately. Having shaken off my egos nervous disposition, I proceeded to get ready to present to the kids.
I was talking to 10–11 years old so my first thought was talk to them as adults, perhaps adults that needed an introduction into design and let’s see what their understanding is and the level they’re at.
So I kept it visual and mixed in questions with lecturing.
My first question. “What do the colours mean on the taps?”
“Red is hot!, blue is cold” Correct I said and how do we know that? Silence excellent. “Because at a point in time someone designed a tap to represent hot with red to signify fire and heat, and blue for cold. Those colours signify a visual language to tell you what something is without the need for words. So graphic design can be about solving problems.”
I improvised, the door handle to exit the room I noticed was a pull design, so I asked the kids to look at that door handle and tell me how would you exit the room. “You’d pull it open” “Ah yes but how do you know that? there are no signs that say pull? no arrows telling you what to do. Someone has designed something so intuitive that you naturally know what to do to exit the room. That is part of a designers job, to solve problems.”
Now I turned my attention to typography and spoke about how type can be used to enhance and influence what the viewer is reading. “Let’s take the word fast, which out of these feels the fastest?”
“The top word there doesn’t feel fast, there is nothing to tell you visually that it’s a fast word. But when we look at the bottom design it feels fast, why is that?” A few tentative hands went up and a child told me that because it was italic it felt like it was moving forward. Brilliant I said, the angle of the text gives it movement and the lines behind it feel like it is being propelled forward. “So if you’re creating a poster or a piece of artwork and you wanted to emphasise the word big on here how would you do it?”
Nearly all the kids hands shot up and answers were pouring out of them. “You could bold it…you could make it bigger…you could change colour”. It felt great to see the kids engage in this brainstorm of ideas.
Excellent answers, so the next time you need to design something you could pick out a keyword and emphasise it, that way you are telling the viewer what the most important part of the text is. It’s not the dog it’s the message that the dog was big.
I moved on to discuss how long art has been around for and showed them the first known piece of art that was discovered by archaeologists some 45,500 years ago. I asked them what it was and they answered correctly.
I then moved on to art and how graphic design needs to sometimes take something complex and then represent it in it’s simplest form so that people can still understand it. To represent this I thought it would be fun to show them Damien Hirst’s minimalist design for Mickey Mouse.
It’s astounding how he managed to capture so much of the personality and features using just 12 circles.
Now the next part of the presentation was uplifting for them but bruising for my ego, let me explain.
“Shout out if you know the name of the company” I say.
“McDonalds!” The kids all shriek in unison. “How do you know this?” I pose. “There’s no word that says McDonalds…There’s just an ‘M’. A brand can be whittled down to just one symbol, or motif and if it is marketed hard enough and get’s enough recognition then you don’t even have to have any writing in a logo to know the name of the company. Now who can tell me the rest of the brands”
I then presented the logos one by one with the kids screaming out the names in joyous satisfaction of knowing the answer.
I actually thought they might stumble on Starbucks, but no it turns out they or there parents have all been there.
“Now imagine how many times these logos have been seen”. “Millions” someone shouts — “it must be because YouTuber’s have like millions of subscribers and will see that logo every time”. That’s exactly right I say (and now I lead myself into the hole ready for an ego bashing). “Someone designed these logos. A graphic designer. A graphic designer designed something that will be seen and used by millions of people around the world and if you go in to graphic design and are excellent at it, then that could be you.” The awe inspiring message swept over them like a blanket, or at least I thought. A hand was tentatively raised. “Did you design any of these?” “No unfortunately not.” “Have you designed any logos we’d know?” Ouch there was the sucker punch. “No probably not” Silence. “Can you show us anything you’ve designed?” “Erm no I didn’t use any of my own material in this presentation.” “Oh”. What just happened? did I lose my audience and miss the chance to inspire the next generation of designers whilst simultaneously reflecting on a career that must be failed if I hadn’t created a logo seen by millions?
Quick show them a screen grab of Netflix UI and talk about user experience.
I walked them through the design highlighting hierarchy, legibility and composition.
I then asked them some questions about symbols within the UI of Google drive.
I asked them what each icon did, and astoundingly they all knew. I then explained how a graphic designer would have come up with that idea and through repetition it became expected behaviour.
I talked through some other types of graphic design such as the London tube map. How something so complex can be made understandable and beautiful at the same time.
We then spoke about graphic design for posters using Dr Strange, Marvel film — And no before you ask I didn’t design it.
Next came the description of what it’s like working in an office. It was actually bizarrely quite difficult to do. We sit around at a desk and usually plug headphones in and look at a screen and design for 8 hours. There’s meetings. “What’s a meeting?” “Like a chat where you discuss ideas, or don’t really discuss anything and feel like the time could have been better spent working. I also like it if there’s plants in the room.” To remind me of what nature looks like.
“Can you tell us like what happens from when you walk in to the office, to when you go home.”
“Well the first thing you do when you go into the office is moan about the temperature, it’s always either too hot or cold.” The teachers laughed the kids just kept staring. It dawned on me that children don’t have a clue what a work environment is like and I think it would benefit everyone if we expose them more to work environments to help shape and give them ideas of what career they might want to enter into. Obviously that’s only if there vlogging career doesn’t take off first.
I also spoke about the hardship of being a designer that every time you produce something it is there to be scrutinised and some people will not like your work and tell you so, so you need to be strong and welcome the feedback to make you better at what you do.
I talked them through the skills you need.
I walked them through the different attributes that all good designers need.
At which time I felt they were starting to switch off. It was time to wrap it up and as I’m sure you’ll agree the best way to finish a presentation is with a joke.
Only the teachers laughed. I really thought that would be unanimous.
As I ended the session I got a raucous round of applause from both the children and the teachers. I was pretty chuffed as I actually felt like the kids learnt something and were enthused with the design world.
A few days later and that feeling was still with me, so I messaged the school thanked them for the opportunity and told them that I loved chatting with the kids and if there was a possibility of letting me teach some graphic design at the school I would jump at the chance. Turns out the kids thought my presentation was the best one! Ego boost restored back to normal levels. The school also thought that would be a good idea too.
Read part 2 of How to talk to kids about graphic design to see what happened next.
