Yesterday I had the pleasure of looking around the end of year showcases of Huddersfield Universities Degree students, where they put on display ready for marking all their final year work. Obviously, the work is of varying quality, but even the ones that didn’t grab my eye were better then I could have done, so I can’t fault them on ability, and some of them were stunning.
However, every single student had put out a pile of business cards for you to take, a practice I wasn’t aware of, but it seems to be the done thing. Not one of them however struck me as been fully professional.
The single biggest problem jumped out at me time and time again, to the point it got me really angry: The all used free email accounts as they primary email address. At best, it was the just about acceptable firstname.lastname@isp.com - but far too many of them were nickname123@hotmail.com and the like. Even the students who had gone to the effort of getting their own domain name and website didn’t have their email address at that domain - which in my eyes was criminal.
I’m sure most of the students didn’t care, to them their degree was just something to do for 3 years and keep them busy before going to work in a call centre. But for the better ones, the ones who were going to be looking for jobs as professional designers, then just a little bit more attention to how they market themselves would go a long way.
My only lasting impression of the displays was the collection of cards I have, and should I have need of a designer, I would give the websites listed a look over - but as a graduating student, they should be acting like professionals in every way, if their card looks good to me, I’ll look at their site, if their site is professional, then I might use them. When you get down to heart of the matter, if someone presents themselves as a professional, they are a professional, and if you act like a student and don’t go that extra mile, you wont stand out from the crowd.
