"There are growing rather than diminishing opportunities in design," he says. Part of the problem is people don't fully understand what design is, or the job opportunities – even among career guidance teachers.īawden agrees. requires forward planning, project management and communication skills and visual communication." There are a whole load of implicit learning skills that go on with design education at school level. "It's such a critical component of being an innovative nation. "I would honestly want design to be a mandatory subject in all schools," says Whiteside. He believes design should be taught throughout school.
VCE DESIGNER HOW TO HOW TO
"Design definitely helped me in my thinking, and planning how to solve a problem, how to think outside the box and brainstorm different ideas."ĭesign skills have wider application, says Professor Scott Thompson-Whiteside, executive dean Faculty of Health, Arts and Design at Swinburne University. "I didn't want to just be a 'calculator'," he says. He was accepted to the UNSW Canberra, but he was disappointed that his work was marked down. With his sights set on aerospace engineering, he chose product design and technology in order to round out his studies in maths and science. Zac Berra understands how useful design can be. "That's often when the innovation comes through – when you're apply the design and engineering part of the STEM." "We also need to value the design skills and the application in engineering," says Livett. The Australian government's push for STEM (science technology engineering and maths) subjects is part of the issue. It seems odd, then, that we don't encourage students to pursue design. What happens to the development of Victoria as a design state? The Victorian Design Initiatives program of 2012-15 boasts that more than 185,000 people are employed in the Victorian design sector, contributing around $7 billion annually to the state's economy and drawing more than $300 million in design-related exports. "If the same dwindling occurs we'll be scratching to fill our programs in 10 years." "We're feeling the impact of students not choosing the creative units in high schools," says Dr Gene Bawden, deputy head of design at Monash University. Zac Berra's Total Instrument Management System is on show as part of Top Designs. These concerns are shared by tertiary institutions such as Monash University. So the effort is not recognised or valued." The workload for subjects is really high, yet it gets marked down. "They're written to have the same educational rigour. "They're not supposed to be easier subjects," says Livett. In the past five years, there has been a 25 per cent drop in VCE enrolment numbers for Product Design and Technology, with a further 25 per cent dropping the subject in Year 12. But his peers were "shying away from design because they don't want the time and effort they put into the subject for the reward they get out of it at the end of the year".Įducators such as Jill Livett, vice president of DATTA Vic (Design and Technology Teachers' association) and co-author of the main textbook for VCE design subjects, believes scaling down is one of the reasons there has been a flight from design subjects.
"After Year 12 – and seeing the amount of work that people put into folios – that view of it as a 'bludge subject' does change," says Berra.
Top Designs' Sophia Loughrey's jacket/backpack.