乔·阿尼
Kate Chambers didn’t enroll in a graduate-level design program to make other people’s ideas look pretty. 事实上, she was tired of her role coming so late in the process, 当她的作品只能增添风格, 没有解决方案.
“I felt I was seen as an order taker—‘Here’s my idea, 现在去把它弄漂亮,’”钱伯斯说, Soc的18), 硕士研究生 战略沟通设计方案 at the 博彩平台推荐’s 传媒、传播与信息学院. “And no matter how much learning I did on my own, I kept running into that roadblock.”
So, perhaps no one was more surprised than she was a few months into the program, when she found herself venting to her dad about how she didn’t feel she’d done any great designs yet.
他对我说, “好吧, maybe it’s not so much about teaching you to make things pretty as it is about changing your thinking about design,’”钱伯斯说。. “那是我的灵光一现. The technical skills are the things I learned on YouTube tutorials and in my associate’s program. 攻读硕士学位, you want to learn the high-level thinking—not just be told which buttons to press.”
Chambers may have been slow to see it, but her hard work in the program is paying dividends. 今年春天, she took top honors in the local student competitions of the American Advertising Awards, earning Best of Show and a gold award for a campaign promoting a live auction at Denver’s Threyda Gallery, along with a silver award for a poster that was part of the same campaign. The awards are presented by the American Advertising Federation of Colorado; her work now advances to the regional competition.
不断超越自己
She said the strength of her entry was a direct result of her classes, which forced her to experiment with new ideas instead of falling back on what had served her in her career, which includes both freelance and nonprofit design work. 事实上, as one of the more experienced students in her class, Chambers admitted she brought “a bit of an ego” to the program, 她将在8月份完成吗.
An assignment in a design fundamentals course—which became part of her winning entry—came out just like she hoped, 用她喜欢的简单美学, but it didn’t get the reception she hoped for from her professor.
“She said to me, ‘I can tell this was easy for you. You didn’t need to take my class to do this kind of work,’”钱伯斯说。. 她是对的. 我来这里不是为了成为最好的, I came here to grow and learn—this is my time to try things I couldn’t do before.”
但它很难付诸实践. 钱伯斯发现自己很沮丧, 尝试新的项目方法, “I just wound up with a lot of stuff that was horrible.“和她的教授一起工作, Parisa Tashakori, she identified one concept with potential that she presented in class, 人们说, ‘哇, 那很酷.’ They kept pushing to try other things that made it even better. I never would have made this if Parisa didn’t push me to do it.”
The master’s program is run as a cohort, with students moving through courses as a group. That familiarity encourages a network of ambitious professionals while helping classmates trust one another and seek feedback and insights from their peers.
Chambers, Tashakori said, was an important voice in that room.
“Kate brought a lot of design knowledge to our program, 每次她都在课堂上展示她的作品, 每个人都会说它有多棒,塔沙科里说, a teaching assistant professor and director of the 战略沟通设计方案. “And it was good—but our job is to challenge you to be as creative as possible.
“凯特允许我推她, 让她挑战自己, 我看到了她光明的未来, 因为她把所有的爱, 她对每一个项目都充满热情和努力.”
教师的影响
钱伯斯称Tashakori是一个重要的影响, but also said she’s also benefited from other faculty and the extensive industry experience they bring to class.
“A lot of our projects are vague on purpose,” Chambers said. “提示非常广泛, so you can interpret them how you want and bring what you want to the table. My professors have always left a lot of room for me to be creative.”
Alongside creativity is an emphasis on critical thinking, which trains students to approach problems like an entrepreneur who is comfortable rapidly prototyping and iterating to develop the best solutions.
“他们教你一种设计思维的心态, so you look at the problem from different angles and understand the problem space before getting to a solution,”她说。. “Instead of being told to design a flyer, we’re told to design a solution to a particular problem. At the end of day, maybe a flyer is the solution, or maybe it’s to build an app. 这取决于你.”
It’s great training for someone who eventually aspires to open her own design shop—a future she feels more confident in thanks to her education and her impressive haul at the AAF awards.
“A lot of really good work gets entered in the awards, 这让我意识到我成长了很多,”她说。. “我对自己和工作都很严格, 所以这是一个很好的庆祝时刻, to look back and appreciate that I couldn’t have made this a year ago.”