Introduction
Welcome to our website!
Translate here: http://translate.google.com/
We are a
small group of recent graduates (graduated 2008) from Coventry
University's Transport Design course. Here you can read our opinion
on the course and maybe get some information if you are planning to
be an automotive designer.
From our experiences and from what we know about other Universities
around the world teaching Transport / Automotive design, it seems
that if you don't mind studying in Japan, India, Italy, Germany,
Sweden and other countries then you would probably find a better
choice there because the Coventry course wasn't good in our
opinion.
Coventry
University is probably the most popular University in England for a
BA (Bachelor of Arts) in Transport/Automotive design. So if you are
planning on looking for a course to study car design and it has to
be in England then Coventry is a good candidate.
The mistake we did was not to look into all the courses around the
world and options we had available and just went to Coventry
because of what we had heard about it being a well known school for
the subject of car design. Little did we know that the Coventry
Transport/Automotive course has changed much since the days it
deserved that recognition and the changes made aren't helping in
our opinion. If we were to do it all again we would try to research
more carefully into each course and find the right choice based on
fact over popularity and hype.
Last but not least we would like to make clear that the aim of this
report is not to put you off going to Coventry but to inform you of
what the course is like through the eyes of some ex-students. This
way you can form an opinion in order to be better prepared to
compare Coventry with other Universities. Hopefully after reading
this report you will go out there and really work hard to look into
each University offering a Transport/Automotive design course and
make an informed and responsible decision.
The following report is made up of experiences of students studying
at Coventry University on the Transport and Product Design Course
between the years 2004-2008.
Main bad points about Coventry: No teaching of sketching and
rendering with markers, pastels and Photoshop. Tutors are
inexperienced and have not worked as car designers like at other
Universities. Too many students, 550 students and only 15 tutors.
Too many misleading modules that require too many useless reports
on irrelevant subjects. It has potential to be a good course
but isn't
Main good points about Coventry: Friendly and experieenced technicians. Amazing library. Students are very friendly and helpful. It is a multidisciplinary course, they try to teach Engineering, Manufacture, Ergonomics and Aerodynamics to the students.
For any enquiries please contact:
thefightingstudents@gmail.com
Contents:
1.0 - General: An overview of the course
2.0 - Facilities: Listing and analysis of Coventry's facilities
3.0 - The Course: Analysis of the modules and teaching methods
4.0 - Advice: What to look for in a University
======================================================================
1.0 General
The increase in
student numbers
In recent years Coventry University has
dramatically increased the number of students it takes onto it's
Transport and Product Design course. At the same time the
facilities and tutors have not proportionately increased relative
to the number of students needing to use them.
Not more than 10
years ago the same course took on something in the range of 20
students every year. It now takes on 200 in the first year alone.
In all years combined the Transport and Product Design course is
close to 550 students whereas the tutors have remained mostly the
same.
There are usually
200 students in the 1st year, 160 in 2nd
year, 70 in 3rd year and 130 in 4th year.
(The reason there are more students in final year than
3rd year is because some students skip the third year
straight to the 4th).
Money
You might be
wondering why it is that Coventry University has increased it's
students to such high numbers and not proportionately increasing
numbers of qualified tutors, technicians and facilities. The answer
is that in the past few years there has been an increase in demand
for education in Product, Boat, Transport and Automotive Design. So
basically more students choose to study some form of Design. This
means that if Coventry can somehow fit more students into it's
facilities and keep the numbers of tutors low it can make big
profits.
And Coventry University has done exactly
that. They have relied on the University's reputation for Design to
attract more students. By doing this the University becomes a
profitable organization able to pay huge paycheques to Deans and
high ranking people within the University.
But how does the money aspect
work?
During the
years of our study (2004-2008), for students coming from within
England and the European Union, the HEFCE (Higher Education Funding
Council for England) ) gave the University £6,326 per student on
the Transport & Product Design Course. If the student's parents
had a large income above a certain amount then the student was
expected to pay £1,285 and the rest is payed by the HEFCE. Overseas
students had to pay the full amount.
So if you calculate 550
students on the whole course, each earning the University £6,326
you realize that they were getting £3,479,300 each year which is a
lot of money. And that is only taking into account the Transport
Product design course. There are dozens more courses in the
Coventry School of Art & Design building with even worse tutor
to student ratio so you can imagine the profits.
Currently the UK
University pay system is simillar to the one we had. The only
difference now is that students are asked to pat more money
towards their tuition fees. So instead of having to pay the
£1,285 it is now
somewhere in the region of £3,000 per year. This means that the
government is no longer willing to pay as much for your tuition
fees as in our time. The good news is that you can at least get a
student loan on that money. These loans are called 'tuition fee
loans' and are not fot living costs. They are without interest and
you will only have to start paying them back when you have got a
job and started earning above a certain amount of money. In some
ways this system is better because this way the student will
usually try harder to make most of his/her studies in order to get
a good job and pay back their 'tuition fee loan'.
One year of our studies some of us went to London on a trip. We
were shocked to discover that on the London Underground
advertisment spaces there were advertisments to promote studying at
Coventry University. It is fundementaly wrong for an educational
institution to spend it's student's money on advertising just to
make more money. That money should be going towards improving the
education of students. It probably costs alot of money to advertise
all over the London Underground.
The one big course
scheme
The
main point to make is that the course is made up of small courses
rolled into one big course called Transport and Product Design
(TPD) which teaches all students more or less the same mish-mash,
hodge-podge modules that are watered down to take on all the
disciplines. (refer to the subject 'Mish-Mash' under section 3.0).
If you are accepted onto any one of these courses, you will find
yourself on TPD until you graduate at which point you might have a
completely different degree. So an enrolling Product Design student
might end up with a Transport Design degree at graduation. Here is
a list of the courses in TPD:
Bike Design
MDes/BA
Boat Design
MDes
Sustainable Transport Design
MDes
Transport Design
MDes/BA
Vehicle Design Mdes
3D Automotive Design
Representation MDes/BA
Automotive Design
MDes/BA
Automotive Engineering Design
BEng
Automotive Engineering
MEng/BEng
Industrial Design Transport BA
3D Design MDes
Bike Design
MDes/BA
Computer Aided Product Design
MDes/BSc
Consumer Product Design
MDes/BA
Design for Healthy Living
MDes/BA
Industrial Product Design
MDes/BSc
Intelligent Product Design
MDes/BA
Sports Product Design
MDes
Sustainable Product Engineering
BEng
Toy Design
MDes/BA
All these small courses claim
to take on only a limited number of students from 10-20. What is
not being said is that what Coventry basically does, is enroll all
200 students every year onto one big course (TPD) and basically
teaches them the same stuff with minor adaptability. But the
student doesn't always know what they need and being on a module
with all other disciplines only serves to complicate things and
confuse the student that doesn't know exactly what he/she needs to
learn.
So any student who was there to
learn product design and was supposed to be enrolled onto a Product
Design course was doing automotive manufacture modules and classes
and projects because they were enrolled onto TPD. Some might claim
that learning something different can only help broaden a students
horizons but when this happens with all modules you are not left
with any modules that deal with your subject in a specified
manner.
The majority of
the modules were so generalized that no student got taught well in
their own subject. All students did the same modules. How can you
teach Transport Design, Boat Design, Bike Design and Product Design
courses using the same modules. It doesn't make sense. Well not for
the students at least because it is a great system for the
University to keep the number of modules as low as possible thus
requiring less tutors to teach and in effect saving a lot of money
on tutor wages because specialized tutors can cost a lot of
money.
So what they do
is put all the students into one big classroom and basically teach
them the same stuff, requiring only one tutor ,instead of 10 tutors
teaching small specific classes in the subjects students need to
learn for their desired degree.
In the past few
years Coventry and in a general sense many Universities in England
have become businesses rather than educational institutions.
No teaching of sketching, Photoshop,
use of markers and pastels or Illustrator
Yep, there was
absolutely no tutorials on how to sketch cars, use markers and
pastels or use Photoshop to make renderings. They can be pretty
hard to learn on your own. That is why every other University
spends significant amounts of time teaching these things to it's
students. And because their tutors have actually worked as car
designers, they are pretty good sketchers and renderers. At
Coventry we never saw a tutor sketch a nice car or show us a few
tricks in Photoshop and presenting our designs. These were the
things we were there to learn and somehow they got away with not
teaching us. Even when we demanded these things they were pushed
aside for more reports, research and other such activities to
distract us, tire us out and make us struggle to learn the very
things we were there to learn.
So all those cool renderings, sketches,
presentations you see at any given Coventry degree show are all
self taught by the students. Even though Coventry student skills in
rendering, sketching and presenting tend on average to be worse
than the other Universities, imagine how much better they would be
if students were actually taught. Coventry student ideas have
always been quite good and realistic.
Also for the Ergonomics module we often
had to create orthographic package drawings for sideview, frontview
and topview. But in order to make these we had to use Illustrator
which was not taught at all. All the manikins used for these
package drawings can be very difficult to make and the tutors just
didn't care, we just had each make our own, wasting valuable time,
to do all the work ourselves when they could have easily given each
student a copy if they weren't so unorganized.
MDes...the new standard in
lame
There is a course option/diploma called
MDes supposedly for more advanced design thinking. This not only
degrades the other diplomas such as BA but also is quite a lame
course. Most students graduating from the MDes say they just did it
for the title (MDes ranks higher than BA) but will never understand
doing all the reports in Design Analysis and Design in Context,
because a student must achieve above 60% in those modules in years
1&2 in order to be accepted onto the MDes route. (read section
3.0 for info on these modules).
In the final year instead of doing two
design projects they concentrate on their main project and have to
do extra research, journals, reports and such instead of the minor
design project. (see section 3.0 for more info).
Low numbers of inexperienced
tutors
There are something like 15-20 tutors that
teach in the Transport Design course but they are tied up in other
courses too. In fact, from the 20 teachers only 5 or so are
teaching car design/styling/aesthetics, the rest being tutors in
Product Design, Ergonomics, Research, Engineering and such. On top
of that, from those 5 tutors that teach car
design/styling/aesthetics, only two of them have actually designed
cars in their careers. And those two tutors are not teaching that
much, one of them because of age and the other because he is not
good at teaching and because he is usually involved in some
University money-making project.
If you want have
a look at their University profiles to see their
experience:
Alan
Birch
Neil
Birtley
David
Browne
Brian
Clough
Chris
Johnson
Link to all tutor
profiles: LINK
So if you do the math it is
something like 1 car designer tutor to 110 students (550 student on
the course). And these 5 design/styling/aesthetics tutors are also
involved in University projects (not all of them) which means they
are not teaching all the time.
Other Universities like Tokyo Communication Arts or Art Center in
Pasadena seem to be much better off. For example at Tokyo the
student to tutor ratio is 10 to 1 and on top of that, all the
tutors are experienced car designers. This means that each student
gets a lot of tutoring time to improve skills and projects but more
importantly the tutors have worked in the car design industry which
is not the case with Coventry.
Tutors are probably the most important aspect of a course. They
should pass on knowledge that they have experienced when working
for big car companies, because in the subject of Transport Design,
industry experience is more important than theory. The reason
experience is more important than theory in our subject is because
there are no textbooks out there that reveal to you in an organized
fashion the knowledge, information and processes needed to style
cars and how the car industry operates and continues to
change.
The main point to make about the Coventry tutors is that they lack
experience as car designers. At all the other
Universities around the world their tutors are retired car
designers that have worked for big companies and their designs have
been produced and sold. Most of the Coventry tutors haven't
actually designed/styled a production car and that is why they lack
experience on how the car industry works especially when you
consider how fast things are changing in the industry. Only two
tutors have designed cars in their careers. Neil Birtley worked for
many years for Ford and Chris Johnson has worked in many car
companies too. There is a third tutor called Nick Hull who has much
experience but does not teach on the BA (Bachelor of Arts) course,
only on the MA (Master of Arts).
Compare for example tutor experience at Coventry to tutors at Art
Center Pasadena: http://www.artcenter.edu/accd/faculty/fac_prog.jsp
So how come
teachers that have not designed a car in production are allowed to
teach the subject? Well there doesn't seem to be a good explanation
for that other than that they have done so for a long time. And
that brings us to the next point which is that they are all quite
old. That in itself doesn't necessarily mean they are bad just that
maybe they could be better off having one or two fresh young car
designers that have recently worked in the car industry and could
keep the teaching standards up to date.
At other Universities tutors have
experience in the car industry and thus can offer correct teaching
of how the industry works and what it requires in order to get a
job. They have connections in the car industry and that means they
can find placements and jobs for their students. In our yeargroup
this aspect was not as good as other Universities. Other
Universities manage to get placements or jobs for most of their
students if not all. But at Coventry, upon graduation, very few got
jobs as junior car designers. As low as 5-10%.
Because they are not experienced car
designers most tutors act as obstacles that you have to overcome
rather than the help you so desperately need. Irrelevant projects,
irrelevant tutoring and irrelevant ways of thinking.
Tutors need to be passionate about their
job. Coventry tutors are not. If they were really passionate about
their job they would stay and help students past their pay-working
hours. Almost all Coventry tutors start work at 9am and leave at
5pm. They do not come down to the clay studios to help out students
in their free time. They want to go home, away from their job. They
take their full break for almost 1 hour 30 minutes. They go for
lunch. They do not take their lunch in the clay studios like all
the students and help them with their projects in that time.
On the other hand Coventry tutors are very
hard done for. Their job almost makes it very hard to spend time
with students because they have so many to deal with and because
there is just so much paperwork for them to do. On top of having
too much on their hands with the student numbers and paperwork they
also have to do work for the University and that can be simply the
toughest job. There are some few tutors though that are lazy, be
that because of position, character or because of age. But being
overloaded with work does not excuse them for not taking matter
into their own hands and siding with the students against the
administration. Instead they are quite happy to play the
middle-person thus allowing a bad course as far as teaching times
are concerned.
The tutors will always try to pass the
blame to the University Administration and Management for
increasing the numbers of students and will claim they can do
nothing about it. The truth is that the tutors are not doing
anything about it because if they were to make any complaints and
stir up the situation they would be fired and that is why they sit
quietly in their little offices avoiding the large numbers of
students that are in need of some proper teaching and
attention.
Not enough Modelmaking
Technicians
There are only three technicians to cater
for the needs of 190 students (40 in 3rd year, 140 in
4th year and 10-20 in MA) in terms of making models for
their degree show projects. This means that students have to build
their own models and that is fine as long as they are given enough
advice and tutoring on how to use automotive clay and make
models.
The technicians are excellent in their techniques, skills, experience and teaching ability. They are very hard working. They really are good but simply are not enough in numbers to spend enough time with each student to help improve both the finish quality and sculptural aesthetics of the model. Many students in fact only get a few minutes with one of them on their final projects if they are lucky.
The technicians are burdened with other
chores as well. One of them is teaching Alias modeling which
subtracts from his clay-modeling teaching time. They have to clean
up studios, break down clay models for recycling (to reuse in next
years clay models) and are generally distracted all the time and
ordered about by the tutors who seem to think it is their job to do
that. Tutors at Coventry do not get their hands dirty, ever. They get the
technicians to do it for them.
Extremely low
teaching time
There is very
little one-on-one teaching on the course and car design needs
teaching to be on a one-to-one basis at least to review work every
week. This doesn't happen at Coventry because there are too many
students and not enough tutors. So even in the final year each
student only gets 5 minutes every two weeks to show his/her work
and get feedback. So by the time you have said: 'here's my
new idea' there is no time left for tutors to give you advice
because they have to move on to the next student. And the reason
isn't to simulate time pressure in a real working environment, it
is simply because it is badly organized.
Jobs and
Placements
During the third year of study there is the last semester put
aside for students doing placements. Only 4 out of 70 students in
the third year got placements in the car industry and of those 4
only two as junior designers, the other two were doing 3D work even
though they might have wanted to do styling work. At other
Universities such as Tokyo Communication Arts or CCS in Pasadena,
USA every single student gets an industry placement in the car
industry. There are three reasons this does not happen at
Coventry:
First: Coventry used to turn out 20 students many years ago
and now they produce 100 transport students every year.
Second: The British car industry has gotten much smaller in
recent years and many brands have gone bust such as Rover. The
others that survived were sold because the British businessmen
didn't want the risk, so the Germans bought them and turned them
into success stories. Mini was sold to BMW, Bentley to VW, Aston
Martin and Land Rover sold to Ford. So basically all the companies
became foreign owned which means that they would now not
necessarily keep employing students from Coventry. A point to make
about the current British brands of cars is that they produce for a
niche market (Land Rover, Aston Martin, Rolls Royce, Bentley, TVR)
and not for the masses (VW, Ford etc). This means they design fewer
cars which also means their design teams are not as large thus
requiring fewer design students than the British car industry might
have required in the past. So a few decades ago the thriving
British car industry could employ 20 Coventry graduates whereas
now, the ailing British car industry is bombarded with 100 or so
applicants every year.
Third: There are far more Universities teaching car design
than in the past so considering the type of students Coventry turns
out, maybe companies will find better designers at other
Universities. And that is reflected in the hiring of more students
from other Universities than from Coventry.
Coventry takes on far too many
students. The car industry doesn't employ so many new young
designers every year and will employ only a few. On the other hand
each student should have the right to study what they want as long
as the University informs them of their job prospects and Coventry
didn't do that, just made jacks of all trades from us.
Instead of allowing us to learn to be car
designers they imposed a course on us that was meant to make us
designers in all fields thus wasting our first two years doing
products and other design related projects. We were there wanting,
yearning to specialize as car designers but they decided that our
employment rate would be better if we became 'jacks of all trades'
rather than very good car designers. So basically they tricked us
to get onto their course to become car designers and then spent the
first two years doing product projects and writing reports, the
next two years not teaching us at all and never in the whole course
show us how to sketch a car or use Photoshop. Yep, they never
taught us car sketching techniques or how to use Photoshop or
markers and pastels to do car renderings.
Copyright
issues
Believe it or not when you enroll onto the
Coventry TPD course you sign the enrollment forms and apparently in
the process of signing you are giving Coventry University full
ownership of the ideas that you might produce in one of your
modules on the course. So basically if you come up with an awesome
idea, they own it, legally!
On the
other hand Coventry University does support it's students ideas by
putting them (students) in contact with University payed patent
agents. Also they have a program to help students starting up
business with their ideas.
They will help
with patent fees and such in return for a percent in your new
company's shares. The higher your legal and patent fees are, the
higher percentage they will require. Apparently later on when the
business starts to mature you may buy back your shares at
unprofitable for them prices. This shows that their startup
help is a non profitable entity that will only require enough money
from your company's revenues to employ staff and pay for legal
fees.
But this seems quite a shady operation. Why own students ideas?
Well the assumption and logical reason would be that by doing so
the University can associate itself with any possibly successful
ides. So basically they are enhancing their image to attract more
students in the future by legaly ensuring their association with a
student's good idea that might turn into a success story. Coventry
can then say 'look, here is what we create, enroll onto our
course'.
Aeriel Atom and University
copyright
There is a story that
has been covered by newspapers and is valid. There was a student at
Coventry University who for his final year project did a track
sportscar. It was a great design and had great potential as an
idea. One of the Coventry tutors saw the opportunity and did a
terrible deed. He stole the student's idea and made a company to
produce what we know today as the Ariel Atom. Coventry University
took him to court but lost the case thus allowing the now ex-tutor
to continue with his business.
The student's idea and original design was in effect identical to
the Ariel Atom design we see today. Any tutor from Coventry
University is familiar with the story and will talk about it
openly. What is also fact, is how such an ingenious design wasn't
handled properly by the University staff, despite being a course
with some history and prestige.
On the other hand the University seems to have learned their lesson
and are more vigilant and careful with student ideas these
days.
Lack of
ties with the industry (compared to other
Universoties)
The fact that no
car industry persona's came to the Coventry degree show in 2008 was
proof enough of what they think of Coventry University's TPD
program when at the same exact week high profile designers from
major car companies across the globe were at the RCA (London Royal
College of Art) in their dozens recruiting graduates.
In the midlands where Coventry is situated, there are a few well
known car companies such as Land Rover and Jaguar. These two did
visit the degree show but were not recruiting any students. It elt
more like an obligation for them to visit than genuinely look for
talent to employ. They maintain ties with the University for old
times sake because some of their designers have studied at Coventry
in the past. Every year they do take on interns from the
3rd year. About 3-4 from the 70 or so applicants and
even from those 3-4 only the two will do design work whereas the
other two will usually do Alias work. There are not usually more
placements with car companies. That means that all the rest of the
students never get any car industry experience.
Not many experts come in to cooperate with
students on projects. We were lucky to have the FIAT competitions
in our third year where we got the chance to work with FIAT and
Frank Stephenson. But even he only dropped in twice to give advice
and was not there for long enough to really cooperate with
students.
The fact is that most years there is no industry project at
Coventry so if you are in one of the unlucky yeargroups you will
never get to work on one of those. But at all the other well known
Universities there are always industry projects, mainly because the
car companies think well of them, unlike Coventry which has fallen
by the wayside.
Holidays
Christmas : 3weeks
Easter : 3weeks
Summer : 4months
5.5 months we had holidays at University. That is almost half a
year. Some might argue that that is way too long to be away from
University and trying to overload us with so many projects in such
short spaces of time was wrong when the holidays should have been
shorter allowing us more time to do a better job and learn
more.
No Examples
For all the projects we were given we did not have
access to examples of previous student work. Tutors believed that
if we were given examples of previous student work we wouldn't try
to do something of our own, in our own way. It was very silly of
them because first there is not necessarily too many ways to go
about a project and second, many students didn't understand how to
best do their project. If the tutors had allowed students to see
examples of previous students work that did well in any of the
modules, then the current students might have a better idea how to
do their projects. In the same way students look to final year
presentations at the degree shows of older students in order to get
some ideas. The way the tutors were doing it made students always
start from square one thus not allowing any real progress in
standards every year. If students could see the work of their
predecessors they could see how to work best and also improve the
techniques and ways of thinking so the next year students might do
an even better job. This teaching method of restricting access to
previous work ensures the standards at Coventry remain the same and
only students by themselves by looking at content from the internet
can manage to improve the standards, not from withing the
University.
======================================================================
2.0 - Facilities
Coventry's facilities are for
sure the best in England for BA courses in Transport/Automotive
design. Also on a global level the Coventry facilities are quite
good but lack a certain fine tuning that other Universities have
achieved. So yes Coventry does have some of the best equipment
amongst car design schools but that doesn't mean they are utilized
well or efficiently. Mainly opening times are not enough compared
to other Universities and in many cases too
many students need access to facilities and sometimes there is not
enough room.
Opening times
The open hours
are not the best you will find at a University. Tokyo Communication
Arts has amazing access hours. Two students went there as part of
an exchange program for a couple of months and didn't want to
return.
At Coventry the open times are only from
Monday to Friday: workshops are open only from 9am-5pm, the studios
from 9am-10pm , the computer studios from 9am-5pm and the clay
studios from 9am-10pm.
At Tokyo the access hours are really
suitable for the student's hectic schedule. They are open 7 days a
week, the clay studios stay open 24/7 for the times before a
submission and everything closes late at night so the students have
the whole day to get the chance to do some work. So basically a
Tokyo student would have a much more flexible schedule because
their studios and workshops are open for far longer hours.
The only good access times at Coventry are
for the Library computer rooms which stay open 24/7 but are not
equipped for students doing car design. They don't have the
required software such as Alias, Bunkspeed, Photoshop and
PeopleSize.
Library
There is a large building very
close to the School of Art&Design (where TPD operates) that is
called the Lancaster Library. It is one of the largest libraries in
England for Art & Design by dedicating a whole floor to that
section. From architecture to sculpture, painting, crafts,
illustration until your brain hurts from the scale of it. They have
fresh journals and magazines every week, computer access, desks for
work-groups, standalone desks for private study with enough room to
do your sketching and enough quiet to do your thinking.
The Transport
Design section has more than enough for your four years of study.
Many history of car design books, Car & Styling magazines for
every edition dating way back and all other car design magazines
and journals.
The librarians
are some of the most efficient staff in the University. If you need
help with your project and research they will find accredited
journals and reports on the internet for you, track down rare
articles in libraries across England and get a copy for you, they
will record TV programs so you can watch them in your own time, buy
special DVDs and books on your request (as long as they see it
might be useful to the library and future students).
Studios
During the years we studied at
Coventry, for the first two years, we didn't have our own studio.
We didn't have personal working spaces and were not helped in any
way to use a studio, be that help from tutors being often in the
studio instead of their offices or creating an environment students
would actually want to be in and work with eachother.
The result of this was that
every single student worked at their accommodation, on their own,
on their computers. There wasn't a working studio ethic and that
probably effected our work quality and skills for working in
studios as part of a team/community more that we would like to
admit. It is natural for most designers to want to work on their
own, be secretive about work and have complete control over the
outcome. But even though working at home can have it's positives
(peace and quiet, a personal space etc) it makes sense that a
studio environment is needed at least as an option (because some
designers just might not like working in studios). Having a studio
to work in as students allows exchange of ideas and encouragement,
a different perspective on your work and a community feeling that
can only help. There are of course the bad parts which can be
others stealing your ideas or even you being accused of taking an
idea when simply you both came to the same conclusion
separately.
The lack of well
operating studios combined with the low teaching time and other
such things results in all students working at home when it was
evident that at least some students wanted and felt the need to
work in a studio environment. Even other less popular Universities
in England seem to have their studios filled with as many.
Clay Studios
The clay studios are for
students to build scale models of their designs. At different times
of the academic year they are used by different yeargroups. Early
on in each academic year, the second year students do an exercise
in learning how to use automotive clay that lasts a few weeks. Then
when they are done the third year students take over the clay
studios for their project that lasts a couple of months. Finally
towards the mid-end of the academic year the final year students
take over the studios.
As you probably read early on
in this report, there used to be far less students using the
facilities which haven't changed in size. This means that there is
hardly any room sometimes for all the students forcing them often
into a difficult situation. The longer some students wait for a
free spot, the less time they have to make their clay model.
In our yeargroup
things got a bit too crowded and a group of students couldn't fit
in the studios. So what they had to do was take matters into their
own hands. They actually took over a misused workshop that was full
of old junk and spent their valuable time clearing it out instead
of working on their final year projects. They also had to build the
tables needed for clay models themselves. There wasn't a clay oven
in the new studio so students had to rush over to the other studios
across the building to carry large amounts of quite hot clay to
apply to their models. (Automotive clay is not cooked to solidify
like conventional clay, instead it is kept soft in ovens, applied
to the sculpture and allowed to cool and become hard in order to
scrape and shape it to the desired design. To reuse the same clay
it is just warmed up in the oven and used again.)
Unlike other
Universities that keep their clay studios spotlessly clean, the
Coventry clay studios are very dirty and messy and only very rarely
cleaned up by cleaners, usually before shows and such. At other
Universities the students have to do the cleaning up so that way
they learn to keep a tidy space for the benefit of eachother and
working in a nice, clean environment that benefits designers and
the improves the sculpting process.
Also the clay
studios do not have any windows because they are located in the
basement of the building which means that the vast amounts of time
(especially in final year) spent in the clay rooms can be quite
morbid. But the good mood of the students, some good spirited
technicians, the company of others, music and a general sense of
creativity keep the place happier than you would imagine.
Sanding studios
The sanding studios
are where students take their fiberglass models to sand them down.
The fiberglass models have been molded off of the clay
models.
When
there was not enough space for the remaining students to get a
place in the clay studios, this was the area that the group of
students cleared out. So whilst they were developing their clay
models some students were ready to sand down their fiberglass
models and had to use the space. This resulted in a lot of the clay
models in the same room to get covered in dust because when
fiberglass models are sanded down, they create huge amounts of dust
that is very bad for clay models. The reason it is bad for clay
models is that it sits on the surface and when trying to smoothen
the model for final quality surfaces it creates grooves/lines that
take a lot of time to fix. So on top of having to clean up the
studio to make their clay models, the same students, were delayed
even further because of the fiberglass dust. Another thing
fiberglass dust does when it sits on clays is that it makes it very
hard to add fresh clay and make it stay there. So you have
continually to scrape off a whole layer of clay &
resin/fiberglass dust in order to add fresh clay. Plus it destroys
the clean clay so students had to throw it away once it was
contaminated with too much dust.
Again,
like the clay studios, the sanding studios were even more cramped.
At least, unlike the clay studios, the sanding studios have natural
light coming in from windows which makes things more bearable. Many
students could not bear the sanding studios so they simply carried
their fiberglass models back to their accommodation and did work in
their private space such as sheds, extra rooms, gardens.
The
University often ran out of supplies and students had to walk quite
far in order to buy supplies such as filler and sandpaper. This
could be particularly stressful when it continued to happen every
few days before the degree show and students were stressing and
running around to sometimes the other side of town for supplies,
again waisting valuable time. This again is evidence of bad
preparation and organizing and could have been avoided simply by
tutors having an active role with students projects thus keeping an
eye on supplies.
Computer Rooms
The computer rooms are mostly
situated on the 3rd floor of the Art & Design
building and have quite a few computers. The computers are quite
good, the screens are also good and the software is always up to
date. About 1/3 of the computers are Apple Macs and the other 2/3
are operating Windows XP. Most if not all of the Transport students
use the Windows computers because they contain more software
relating to their needs such as Alias Studio and others that are
not available on the Macs.
The computer
studios are fairly usable and don't require too much expertise
although the printers don't always work and the network personal
storage drives fail sometimes.
The computer
studios are mostly used for lessons for all courses in the Art
& Design building. This means that over a thousand students are
taught on these computers for subjects such as Illustration,
Graphic Design, Game Design but the computers are not more than
200. This is very disruptive when you want to do some coursework
and teachers from other subjects ask you to leave because they have
a class. But quite frankly the computer rooms are usually not used
by students to do coursework because it suits them much better to
work at home on their own PC. But the main reason students work at their homes is because there are
no proper design studios with a few computers to keep them
there.
There are only a handful of computers with
Wacom Tablets installed and in order to use one, a student must
hand in his/her ID card to obtain a pen. So a student would have to
rent the pen every day and hand it in at 5pm to get their ID card
back.
Printing
Facilities
Also situated on the 3rd floor
the printing shop can print out almost anything you need in terms
of size and color. The bad thing is that you have to pay for it.
Even for module submissions you are required to fork out what can
sometimes be a hefty amount of money. The right thing to do, and
what they seem to do at other Universities, is for the printing
that is required by any said module to be free and only extra
printing for personal use should be charged.
Also it is not a high speed printing facility. This means that when
it is submission time and students from all courses need work
printed you are not likely to get your printing done on time. So
often students, especially on TPD, which are always rushing last
minute, tend to get their printing done at other companies and at a
significantly lower cost because of student discount.
Shop
There is a resources shop in
the basement which supplies most of the materials at relatively low
prices. The downside is that it is not a self service place where
you can walk around the shop. You have to talk through a
window/counter to the workers in order to get what you need. This
can be a slow process because you cannot browse things on shelves
thus discovering new materials and supplies.
Workshops
The workshops are quite good,
there is usually enough space and more often than not enough
materials and tools. The technicians for the workshops are quite
experienced and know how to help students because they have done it
for so many years. They are not only willingly helpful but also
very efficient in helping students. Always with a sense of humor
and will help keep you calm even when panicking for last minute
deadlines.
There are two
wood workshops and a metal workshop which mostly covers the needs
of the students in all disciplines.
Milling
Machines
There are a few milling machines in the
A&D building. They are used mainly if not exclusively by the
Transport and Product students. In our final year the University
used the machines for a project funded by Saudi Arabians to make a
few redesigned custom Range Rovers. This got in the way of a few
students wanting to use them for milling their models for the
degree show. Eventually students got to make their model but one
student in particular was refused access because apparently he was
too late and the University needed the machines for the Saudi
cars.
This only goes to
show that the University uses it's facilities to make profit. That
would have been acceptable if it put the needs of it's students
first and then any commercial design work.
Students make
their models in 3D software on computers and then mill it out in
very specific materials such as Uriel foam and special plastics.
These materials are quite expensive so students will be expected to
pay in the region of £200-400 for the materials needed. Some even
more expensive materials are used in the SLA (laser) milling
machine where a small cube of 10cm sides might cost in the region
of £100. For example, to make 4 wheels in SLA will cost in the
region of £400 or could make one and then make copies from a mold.
Even though these materials are expensive it seems that the
University sells them at non-profitable prices and sometimes can be
cheaper than buying from companies.
Aerodynamics
lab
The University has a small nice
aerodynamics lab for testing. It is quite a small wind tunnel that
can usually only fit up to a 1:10 scale model. Considering that all
the final year models are 1:4 scale, this means that they won't fit
in the tunnel but it is possible to mill out a 1:10 or 1:15 scale
model on the milling machines or even make a small model by hand to
test it. But very few students do this because it is not necessary
and not particularly accurate in producing aerodynamic efficiency
numbers for their design. It will usually be used for experience
sake from students doing race/track designs. It is not easy to gain
access to this facility mostly because you have to book it in
advance and is not just available when requested even though it is
not used too often.
3D
tracking/motion capture facility
The University has spent a lot of
money on buying new equipment such as the 3D tracking
studio/facility that it uses to simulate products mostly for
ergonomics research. It is like the motion capture system used in
the movie industry and was used to produce such 3D characters as
Gollum for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. However this facility is
not in any way linked to student work as of yet.
Spray Painintg
There
is only a small paint-booth where models are (most times not)
painted a few days before the degree show. The University had hired
a very experienced spray painter for a few weeks that was great at
his job. Because he was so angry with the University he has decided
not to work for them again.
The problem was that the spray-booth is in
a really bad condition allowing water to drip through the ceiling
often ruining paintjobs and the room is not sealed allowing dust to
settle on fresh paintjobs.
It is also a very small room measuring at
something like 6x3 meters. And the painting process to do 120 or so
cars in the final year is impossible with such small space and only
one man to do the job. He had to work from morning at 8am till 10pm
to get work done but even then on the day of the degree show he had
only painted 10 or so models, the rest were not. And on top of that
it was also the day Jaguar and Land Rover were visiting. With the
University not having notified the students about that small detail
and the models not finished yet it all sort of ended up
half-done.
The way car models are painted is quite
difficult and time consuming. First has to be sprayed a coat of
primer in order for the paint to not peel off. This is allowed to
cool for 30-40 minutes. Then follows two or three coats of paint
(allowing each coat to dry) depending on the type of paint chosen
by the student for their model (some pearl-type paints need 2-3
coats of different paints). And last but not least there has to be
a layer of lacquer in order to give the paintjob the shiny, glossy
finish. All that takes a long time to do and there were 120 late
models to be done, one spraypainter in a small room with the mixed
paints being delivered late and no tutors in sight.
======================================================================
3.0 - the Course:
structure & content
As stated before there is one big course
that includes all the students doing industrial design and is
called Transport & Product Design (TPD). For the first three
years of the course everybody mostly does the same modules and in
the final fourth year each student does his/her final projects
depending on marks from previous years.
Not enough cars and sketching, too
many reports
At other Universities students design cars
from day one or at least a few weeks into their first year. At
Coventry it took us two years before eventually getting to do our
first car project that was too basic and was only drawing and
rendering requirements and without modelmaking and such.
So what were we
doing all these two years beforehand? We were doing many reports,
product design projects, ergonomics projects, design analysis
projects and it was very frustrating to Transport students which
just wanted to get on and learn how to design cars. The reason we
were not learning to draw cars is basically that none of the
teachers know how to draw cars, except one or two from the 20. For
2 teachers to teach 400 transport students across all 4 years how
to draw cars is impossible. This meant it was easier for them to
just give us silly briefs and projects that had nothing to do with
designing cars and as a result have us working hard on stuff that
was not as useful as simply drawing cars would have been. So they
kept us so busy that we though we were learning stuff useful for
car designers/stylists but the truth was much worse than we could
expect.
All in all
students got to work on a minimum of 4 car projects, none of
which were directly involved with the car industry in any way. At
other Universities they manage to do more than 10 small car
projects in the first year and especially in their final year
almost always get involved in a car industry sponsored project
which was not the case with Coventry.
We never sketched
cars in a studio and have teachers to come around to help us
improve because no teacher ever knew how to draw a car to show us
how it is done.
Multidisciplinary is
good
It is
good that Coventry does try to teach all skills needed by
designers. Ergonomics, Engineering, Aerodynamics, Manufacture, Clay
Sculpting, Alias and other such skills that all designers need. But
in trying to make their students multiskilled they end up
concentrating too much on these secondary skills by doing too many
projects and reports and not teaching any primary skills. They
don't teach how to draw and render cars, the history of the car,
design trends, new technology and such stuff that is more important
than writing endless and pointless reports on other
subjects.
At Coventry, for all the
projects, each student has to do everything in terms of Styling,
Ergonomics, Engineering, Aerodynamics and Manufacture to a high
standard. This means that styling often takes up as much time (if
not less) as doing each of the other disciplines. But as students
trying to become car designers, it is more important to spend more
time sketching and styling. It's good to learn about other
principles but not waste all the time on those and not have time to
design/sketch. A designer in industry is not expected to be an
expert in the fields of Ergonomics, Engineering, Aerodynamics and
Manufacture. He/She is only expected to be able to communicate with
the company experts in those fields, understand them and then
change the design according to the new information/requirements
these experts have explained.
At Tokyo Comunication Arts University students from different
disciplines colaborate. On a group project for example, a design
student will be doing the designing/sketching and a modeler student
will be making the model. This way each student gets stronger in
his/her field and doesn't waste too much time on other things. Also
this way students across different disciplines can teach eachother
so tutors can take a rest and focus their minds. As a bonus,
students don't have to be experts in every field like they
are required at Coventry so they can focus more on their subject
but they also leatrn to communicate and cooperate with the group
members from other disciplines.
Mish-Mash
There are two types of modules.
There are mandatory modules that every student on TPD has to do and
there are the modules that are chosen by the student on their
subject. This doesn't stop the mandatory modules being biased
towards the transport crowd over the product or boatie crowd (boat
design students are called boaties). Also the mandatory modules can
be quite generalized and not tailored specifically for a design
discipline such as transport design. By doing so most modules loose
their edge and efficiency to teach a very specialized subject to
Automotive Designers that require such specialized tutoring. For
example a product design student would have to learn transport
manufacturing and pass these modules even though they might not be
remotely useful for him/her. This means that classes overfill with
students from all disciplines and the tutor has too many to deal
with across too many disciplines resulting in a watered down module
that tries to satisfy all courses needs without achieving it.
Looking deeper
One of the aims of the Coventry
curriculum is for students to start looking deeper into design and
not concentrate just on aesthetics/crazy styling but user needs,
functional design, contextual design and such. At many other
Universities they do don't do this enough and concentrate too much
on the styling/aesthetics and that is one good thing about
Coventry. So it seems there are two approaches to designing cars.
The first (other Universities) can bee too stylistic thus focusing
too much on the primary skills needed by designers like being able
to create crazy cool drawings/renderings ideas disregarding the
secondary skills: ergonomics, usability and analyzing design. The
second approach (Coventry University) is an overpowering
multidisciplinary approach where the designer focuses too much on
the secondary skills and by spending too much time on those and
ends up with what is a more viable idea but lacks the ability to
draw it or promote it because he/she lacks the primary skills. The
ideal curriculum would be somewhere in the middle enabling a
designer to draw his ideas but also allowing him/her to create
viable designs and not just cool drawings.
Companies tend to
employ designers with the primary skills over designers that only
have the secondary skills. That is why most automotive design
graduates from other Universities are employed rather than Coventry
because our ideas are always too down to Earth (not futuristic
enough) and we can't draw well.
Group Projects
Many of the projects at
Coventry are group projects where a group of students is given a
brief and is asked to come up with a design. The requirements in
these projects are Styling, Ergonomics, Engineering, Aerodynamics,
Manufacture and Modelmaking. So there are many reports and research
to do and it is not simply that the group sits around a table and
sketches. The principle of group projects is a great way to teach
students how to get along with eachother in order to achieve a good
result and is also good experience for when going into the car
industry where there is no such thing as working alone.
But the way it is
done at Coventry leaves much to be desired. A group project at
Coventry does not reflect a group project in the car industry. Yes
both a Coventry group and a car industry project are required to
produce results in all the fields: Styling, Ergonomics,
Engineering, Aerodynamics, Manufacture, Conventional Modelmaking
and 3D Modelmaking. But.! The car industry group has a person in
each subject whose job it is to concentrate just on that: a
designer, an ergonomist, an engineer, a manufacture specialist, a
3D modeler, a clay modeler. In a Coventry group project the members
are all designers.
Because the
students have to do all the Styling, Ergonomics, Engineering,
Aerodynamics, Manufacture, Conventional Modelmaking and 3D
Modelmaking, that means that each student is given a subject within
the group to create a report for in order to do things faster than
if all students were working on all the reports. So if in your
first year group project you were unlucky enough to be doing the
ergonomics report(s) then most probably you will also be doing the
same thing in all the following group projects to come in the rest
of your years on the course. That is because since you have
experience in doing one thing it means it is probably better and
more safe for the group to have you do the same thing again in
order to get higher marks. This also means that in all your group
projects you might get stuck doing the ergonomics reports and never
getting the chance to hone your styling skills.
In Tokyo
Communication Arts University they have a better approach to group
projects. They don't have only designer students in a group. For
example the modelmaking is done by a student that is on the
modelmaking course (studying to be a modeler) and the styling is
done by the student on the car design course. That would be the
ideal way to operate group projects.
At Coventry you
can choose members for a group. So a group of friends can be in a
group together if they want to do similar projects and make an
effective team. But sometimes you might end up in a group with
people you don't get along with but it can be an equally rewarding
experience since you will learn to cooperate and make
compromises.
Heavy English
The Coventry car design course
is in English. It is a preferable language for international
students but when they come to Coventry they find out it is too
heavy and too complex. There are a lot of very big briefs, handouts
at lectures and a lot of text in general on the course that is not
only large in volume but also not easy English. This can get
tiresome especially to the international students that are not good
at English and often have to get the help of other students just to
understand basic stuff.
Transport
designers are by nature not text-friendly and rather look at pretty
pictures unlike product/furniture/interior/ designers and
architects which can usually read a lot of text and not get
tired.
The nature of
design should be to make things as simple as possible but the text
output from the course both in course material and project reports
can be overwhelming for those not comfortable reading all of the
time rather than actually drawing.
At Tokyo even
though the course is in Japanese the tutor communicates with the
students on a basic level. From what the two students on the
exchange program were claiming, that is all they needed, simple
understanding of eachother. Besides, car designers often work
abroad from their home-country and do a great job communicating in
basic English or other languages. They do not use the over-complex
English used at Coventry.
Marking
At the end of a
project which might have taken up all of your time for the better
part of a year all you got was a piece of paper after all your hard
work. No personal relationships with the tutors. At the end of the
day they didn't even know your name or what project you had worked
on because there were so many students and projects but not enough
tutors.
They spend 10 minutes to mark your work.
In 10 minutes they can't even go through 1/10th of your
work and the marking is completely superficial. It was more like a
check-box marking technique rather than an in-depth, individual
process, relative to the student and the project. The tutor would
tick away and add or remove marks in a completely impersonal
manner.
Sometimes a tutor would not have a clue
what students had been working on for the duration of the project
and would only find out on the deadline day when he/she was marking
it. But how can a tutor mark and pass judgment on the efforts of a
student when the tutor hasn't been there to steer the project and
the student in the right direction in the first place.
Referrals
A referral is
when a student does not pass the 40% minimum grade requirement to
pass the module. If a student fails in more than two modules he/she
has failed the year and has to redo it. If however, they fail in up
to two modules, they are allowed to retake them.
Each module costs around £40 to retake and
is usually retaken over the summer holidays. So if referred you
will spend some of your summer holidays re-doing a project. But the
downside is that the tutors will not help you with your project,
you will have to do it on your own. That is completely ironic
because the obvious point to make is that a student that has failed
a module obviously needs some form of help, not just asked to do
the same thing again.
Truth be told though, even if your second
try is not better than your first try, it is still taken into
account that you spent your holidays doing referral work which
shows tutors that you are at least trying your best. Sometimes they
will pass you just because you try hard and don't give up even if
you are not good at something. That still doesn't hide the fact
that the referred student needs some help and that by passing them
solely on their big efforts will not solve the issue that he/she
needs tutor help to improve his/her skills.
Year 1
In year 1 there were
no car designing projects. At the start of the year we were asked
to make a board, all the students together, with a list of the
things we wanted from the tutors. They then also proceeded to make
a similar list of what they wanted from us. They obviously threw
our list in the bin because they never followed through but in
every aspect the students not only followed through but excelled
and overcame expectations.
101TPD Drawing Techniques:
We did exercises in speed drawing
eachother, shoes and other objects. We did some quick design
projects involving sketching over a couple of weeks. We got the
chance to copy renderings of our choosing. We could find a car
rendering of another designer we liked and had to try and make an
exact duplicate but with conventional markers and pastels because
we didn't know how to use Photoshop. We didn't know how to use
marker or pastels either and we were not taught any basic
techniques and had to buy our own markers which can be
expensive.
102TPD Modeling Techniques:
We did a few model making
exercises. A small bluefoam sculpture exercise (1day). A shoe model
exercise where we had to try and make a sketch-model of an existing
shoe design using simple materials like paper, string and such in
order to make it as fast a possible. Also last was the exercise to
make a 1:4 scaled model of an existing chair design but this time
could use any materials and processes we liked and really take our
time to make a nice model.
100TPD Design
Analysis 1: This was probably
the module that the majority of students didn't like throughout the
whole course because we had to write endless amounts of text for no
particular reason that we could understand. We had to do a report
on transforming objects, transforming furniture, to find them,
analyze them and write a lot to show that we were thinking or
whatever. Also we had to keep a sort of thinking diary which for
most students didn't come naturally. But it is not a good reason
not to learn something just because it doesn't come naturally. The
reason these projects didn't go down well with students was because
we couldn't see the point or the reason for doing them and tutors
explanations were never understandable and clear as to the purpose
of the module. Apparently you are supposed to write down your
thinking path in order to be able to trace it at a later time but
that never really happened in our four years of study, at least not
for the 99% of students because there were some few students that
claimed they understood the module.
107TPD Engineering Applications
(optional): This was an
optional module in order to familiarize with more advanced
engineering principles and if we passed could get onto the vehicle
design course which was not at all different to all the other
courses. It was too heavy in maths and engineering from an
engineers point of view. It didn't deal enough with how design
effects engineering and what considerations a designer needs to
make in order to design a well engineered car.
103TPD Ergonomics and Usability 1:
For this project-module students
were introduced to the principles of Ergonomics which was good.
Then we had to implement our new found knowledge by doing a public
transport ergonomics project individually. Each student had to
research a particular sector of public transport of his/her
choosing such as buses, taxis, trains etc and try to design
something new for them such as a seating arrangement and whatnot by
using ergonomic approaches to a solution. The bad aspect of this
project was that we were all on our own without any help besides
some handouts. A group project would have worked better than the
solo way.
104TPD Design and Manufacture:
Even though you might imagine
that in this module we learned how things were actually built,
especially cars, that was not necessarily the case. On top of the
lectures we did two projects.
The first
project was a group project where groups of 5 or so students would
be given a part of the car to analyze and present. Each group had
to concentrate it's research on the part they were given such as
Chassis or Airbags or Seats etc. They had to research the
components history, ways of manufacture, materials ,future designs
and technology. Once their report had been compiled they had to
present it to the class and in doing so all students should have
learned about all the components. It might have seemed like a good
idea to the tutors but it turned out to be quite disastrous. If a
group didn't do a good presentation and their research wasn't good
that ruined it for everyone. So in many subjects groups messed up
meaning we got incomplete tutoring because this would be the only
time we would learn this stuff. It should have been the tutor
teaching us a proper stable module by providing this information
himself and not leaving it to the students which messed up in our
year. Also, almost all presentations were rushed by the tutors
which only gave us a few minutes to present our presentations. The
reason they were rushed was because it was seen mainly as an
opportunity to mark the students. Some groups didn't even get the
chance to present either because they didn't want to or because
there was no time left, or they were running too late or their
presentations were not of a good standard.
The second project was to design a street cart/luge out of
cardboard. The purpose of this project was to make students try to
design something strong out of a soft material by using it the
right way. An optional requirement was for students to work in
groups to actually build these things in cardboard. The steering
mechanism and the wheels could be made of anything but the rest of
the body had to be cardboard. At the end of the project all the
cars were raced down a slope in pairs until there was a winner. It
was a great experience and very funny despite how unorganized the
module was.
105TPD Design in Context 1 (optional): Students that passed this module with marks
over 60% this year and in next years version (Design in Context 2)
could get onto the MDes course. This module was perpetrated by the
same sort of tutors doing the much disapproved Design Analysis
modules. It was quite similar in that you had to write a lot of
your thinking process and research a lot. But it was not at all
connected to cars. Students had to research public places and their
users and start analyzing everything and writing it down. Students
could pick from the few areas the tutors had listed. Then each
student worked alone on their solo project. They had to do all the
aforementioned observing, make questionnaires for users, research
and a lot of writing. Later in the project students had to use all
their findings to design a new version of the area they had
selected. It was purely an architectural project concentrating on
user needs and trying to design in the context these areas were
already in.
106TPD Visual Design: Towards the end of the year we got to work on
our first proper design projects but it wasn't car oriented but
products. We were given a list of brands such as Apple, Ford, JCB
and others and were asked to research them in order to design a
completely new type of product for them For example a Ford fridge,
a Dunhill airplane etc. It was quite a straightforward project but
again we were still unfamiliar with sketching and rendering
techniques because we had not been taught them. We could also make
a sketch model of our design for our final presentations which was
simply hanging up our work in 100's of boards and leaving the room
until the end of the day for tutors to mark us.
And so the first year ended, and we hadn't done a car
project yet.
Year
2
No cars until the end of the year. We were
hoping that we would start doing cars but it didn't turn out that
way.
211TPD Form Development (optional):
This was our first clay project
but not in cars. Each student had to sculpt a human or animal head
using automotive styling clay and try and abstract the forms. The
purpose of this project was to familiarize students with form. Once
sculpted a first impression, students had to use sketching to
improve the design of the sculpture and when they had improved the
design on paper could they transfer it to the sculpture, and this
process would continue until either the design was satisfactory or
time was up just like in the car industry. It would have definitely
been a better exercise to do small cars in clay but for some reason
we were doing clay heads. Probably because the head tutor on this
module is a Masters graduate of fine art and not design in any way
so is completely ignorant to car design despite also being the head
of the Industrial Design/TPD course. So the head of TPD has nothing
to do with cars. His name is John Owen. Still it was a lot of fun
but that doesn't justify why we were not using this opportunity to
do a car.
John Owen's profile: LINK
200TPD Design
Analysis 2: 'Not again' was
most students immediate response. This year the module was for
group projects. Each group had to pick a subject from a list in
order to research. Subjects such as 'aging population', 'areas of
meeting, greeting and departure' and 'access and egress from public
transport'. Each group had to do as much research of those subjects
as possible and compile a 10,000 word essay on their findings but
also accompany the report with a reference report which would
contain all the material they had researched in order to compile
the 10,000 word report. This reference book/report often was made
of printing huge amounts of pages of the internet, usually at
300-500 pages. At was a lot of paper being wasted when we could
have easily been asked to submit it digitally.
This year things got a bit ugly in the
module because some students were really unsatisfied with the bad
tutoring and organization and had started to demand some
change.
209TPD Vehicle Engineering and
Aerodynamics (optional): Very
few students took the module this year compared to 107TPD from the
first year. Quite heavy and unnecessary on the engineering side but
quite informative on the Aerodynamics side (for car design
students). This module was split into two parts: Engineering and
Aerodynamics classes. The engineering classes were quite
overburdened with calculations but at least the tutor was
interesting and passionate more so than tutors on other modules
(but he has now left Coventry). The aerodynamics part was later on
in the year where we were taught basic aerodynamic principles. Once
we had completed the basic aerodynamic theory we split up into
groups and did a wind-tunnel project. Each group had to design
their own Batman car and improve on their first version design by
testing a small model it in the wind tunnel and using the findings
to improve the design. Then each group had to make a report showing
their process of tweaking their design and improving it.
201TPD Computing in Design:
In this module we were first
introduced to Alias Studio. We did a few classes to learn the
basics of the software. We then had to make an object in Alias 3D
software and be marked on that. Most students made copies of
existing cars and transportation vehicles and some did products.
Some students found it natural and enjoyed making 3D models whereas
other students were content to not learn the software because for
them sketching and rendering by hand were enough. It was a
relatively new software at the time we started learning it. The
tutors that were teaching it were not 3D modelmaking experts and
had only had the summers before to get to know it a little bit
while the students were gone for the summer holidays. But still
many students really embraced Alias and really wanted to learn it
even if it meant they had to learn it by themselves.
203TPD Ergonomics and Usability 2:
In this module the main part was
taken up by group projects re-designing interiors for public
transport and cars. Each group could choose a type of transport
like trains, buses, cars and redesign an interior by using
ergonomic understanding for user needs.
204TPD Transport and Product
Innovation: In this module
students got even more angry with the organization. Again it was
being organized by the same tutors doing Design Analysis and Design
in Context. In this module students had to use the report they had
made for 200TPD and design some solutions for the subject of their
group's research. On top of the module being quite disappointingly
organized, students did quite bad and achieved very low marks in
general.
205TPD Transport Design and
Manufacture: A following to
the first years 104TPD. This year we learned two main things.
Safety systems and how the company board of directors works. We did
two projects focusing mainly on those two
subjects.
The first
project was for each student to play the role of each head on the
board of directors in a car company on imaginary projects. So there
would be quite a few scenario groups made up of students and each
student had to move between those groups, each time playing the
role of a different head (eg Finances Director, Engineering
Director, Safety Director, Design Director) and at the end write a
report showing his/her contribution to each of those scenario
groups.
The second project was less confusing. Students split up into
groups and got the chance to re-design the interiors of existing
cars. Some cars that were on the list were the Ford Mondeo, BMW
Mini and others. Each group had to design a nice interior but at
the same time improve it so there are less parts, lowering the
cost, making the design more safe for passengers and such. It was
quite an informative project because we learned the inner workings
behind conventional dashboards.
208TPD Automotive Styling: At the end of the year we got the chance to
work on our first proper car design project. We were already
halfway through the course, it was the end of the year and
everybody was a bit too tired from all the other stuff we had
already done that wasn't particularly about styling cars.
Students that wanted to work on automotive
projects in the following year had to get 60% in this module. That
was particularly unfair because this was our first car design
project and it would also determine our route during the
3rd year that is for industry projects. So whoever
didn't do well on these projects had to do industry projects in
product design, boat design and such.
We were given a list of basic cars to restyle for the market 10
years ahead. Cars were the Audi A3, Renault Mégane, Volvo S60, Ford
Focus and a couple more. These were very ordinary cars so if a
student wanted to do a small citycar because they wanted to
specialize in that then they were unlucky. Same for students
wanting to do sportscars, supercars and limousines. We all had to
do cars that might have not excited us. Yes of course in the car
industry, when you are working as a designer you don't always work
on cars you like but this was University and students should get
the chance to study what they love the most whether that is to draw
vans, trucks, limos, citycars etc. They were narrowing it down too
much and not giving us room to design what we felt the most passion
for.
At the end of the project we all hanged up our work and when tutors
came we had to leave and return at the end of the day for our
marks. A very detached and impersonal process.
Year 3
This year was
dedicated to gaining experience in three parts. First semester we
would work on our own, on design competitions. In the second
semester we would do group projects and in the third semester we
could try to get a placement. There are usually less students in
this year because many students skip the year straight to their
final year if they are in a hurry. So whereas in other years there
might have been student numbers in the region of 160-180 this year
it can be more like 60-80. It is great that there are fewer
students but there are also fewer tutors. Only one to be exact.
David Brown and he hasn't ever designed a car. He has only done one
interior for a Rover and that is all. Yes, only one tutor for 70ish
kids! Here is his profile: LINK
At least this year
we didn't have Design Analysis or Design in Context.
301TPD Design Competitions: This took up the first semester.
We could pick from quite an extensive list of competitions and
could even do a project of our own choosing and specification if we
didn't want to follow the competitions. The head tutor was quite
flexible on that which was good. The most popular competitions were
the Peugeot Concours, Interior Motives and l'Argus. Each student
worked on his/her own and could make either an Alias 3D model or a
mirrored clay model. There were some problems in the clay studio
because the stuedents from 2nd year doing their clay
heads (211TPD) were late to leave the clay studios. Also there was
only one (broken) mirror going around where there should have been
one for each student. For the Alias students it was quite a lucky
year because an expert in Alias that was working for Bentley had
offered to come in once a week and help students with their models.
Also throughout the whole module we weren't getting any styling
advice. We were getting modelmaking advice for the clay models and
the Alias models but not any advice on styling. But that's because
there were too few tutors and none of them had worked as a car
designer.
302TPD Professional Development: This module spanned the
first and second semesters. Once every couple of weeks, groups of
students would have a tutorial with two tutors. Each student got
something like 10 minutes. The subject of this module was to start
building a portfolio and to learn how to write a CV and a covering
letter. The actual tutors were not the best for the task because
they haven't worked as car designers and so weren't particularly
experts on what is required from a car design studio to get you
hired. They didn't have car designer portfolios either to give us a
good idea of what to be doing. The first of them was Alan Birch who
has been mostly doing product design all his life. His profile:
LINK
At least he had a good eye for style. Elaine Mackie was the second
tutor which is an Ergonomist. Her profile: LINK
We also learned how to write proper cover letters with Alan Birch's
instructions and had to send a test letter to him so he could mark
our efforts.
300TPD Professional Practice:
This module took place in the
second semester. We would work in groups on industry projects. If
you were one of the students that had got 60% in last year's 208TPD
then you were allowed to participate in the FIAT Brand competition.
This involved designing a car for either Fiat, Alfa Romeo or
Lancia. All other students had to do product design projects or
boat projects either set by the university or by a design
competition currently running.
The lucky ones who got to work on the FIAT
competition got some visits from high ranking designers such as
Frank Spephenson (BMW Mini designer) and other big names from FIAT
headquarters. They also were favored by David Brown over the other
students working on products or boats. That was because David had
more interest in making a name and representing the University more
in the FIAT competitions than the others. This meant that he would
spend all his time helping students in the FIAT competition with
their designs whereas he didn't even visit some of the other groups
to help even though students had repeatedly asked him to help
out.
And the worst was when it was marking day. For the students doing
products or boats David had not been involved so at presentation he
didn't even know what they had been doing all this time. Having not
provided any assistance to steer the project in the right
direction, some of the projects were not so good but the tutors
still marked them just the same as they did the FIAT
projects.
More than three months work had been spent on some of those
projects and they were marking them withing 10-15 minutes. That was
particularly unfair because all the sketchbooks, reports, in-depth
design was not even looked at.
On another note the available projects
were not necessarily what students wanted to work on but what the
University saw as the best opportunity to spread it's name. So
students were not given the option to do any project they preferred
depending on their area of interest be that cars, boats, bikes etc.
At University that should be how it is. Students should be able to
study whatever they went there to learn, not
what suits the University's and tutors agenda.
Placements
So for the
third term, students were supposed to be working at placements.
Only 4 or so students from the 70 get placements at car design
studios. These 4 placements were at Land Rover and Jaguar. They
were unpaid and students had to pay for their accommodation and
living expenses despite working full time for these companies. All
the other students tried to find car design placements but that was
impossible. Some few students managed to get placements at design
consultancies and most didn't manage to get anything. For them the
University had some projects they were allowed to work on, such as
a decompression chamber modelmaking project. For one or two these
University projects students were paid a minimum wage but did not
involve any design work. So as you can see the University did not
manage to secure placements for many of its students despite
promising to do that when we enrolled on the course. To some
students the University tutors had promised in-house placements (as
they were called) and had gone back on their word.
The two main reasons Coventry students don't get placements is
first because the head of year tutor who is responsible for
securing placements is not doing a very good job and second because
the students Coventry produces are not up to standard. When
Coventry student portfolios are up against students from much more
successful Universities such as Royal College of Art, Tokyo
Communication Arts and College of Creative Studies, competing for
placements in car companies, Coventry always seems to fail.
Year
4
'Chaos reigns: let the best
survive'. That was the mentality adopted by both the tutors and the
students as well. Some students, mainly the egotistical ones, got
through by taking advantage of the weaker ones and using any
possible means to achieve their goals without considering their
fellow students. But the majority of the students got along well,
helped eachother out and tried to achieve their goals without doing
harm.
Even in this year there were no tutors assigned specifically to us.
They were all teaching in other yeargroups and working on
University projects thus leaving very little time for us.
This year included a major and a minor project as they were called.
They both started at the start of the year (October), the minor
ended in the first term and the major ended with the degree show in
the first days of June. There was also the big pain: Design
Analysis 3 which meant writing diaries, journals, attending
seemingly drug-induced lectures on subjects so far off the map of
styling cars it made previous Design Analysis modules look
relevant.
345TPD Industrial Design Minor: It could be any project of our choice: car
project, product, boat, plane, anything. There were no modelmaking
requirements so it only involved sketching and rendering and
optional use of Alias Studio 3D for the final design. We had to
research our subject of choice and follow all the usual paths. To
do the engineering, ergonomics, user research and such. We
presented our final design after returning from Christmas
holidays.
340TPD Design Analysis 3: One of the lectures
involved us viewing part of a cricket match, most students didn't
mind it (maybe the ones that liked cricket), they had probably
given up, some were furious they wasted our time in our final year
when time was of the essence to make the best design possible and
get a job. A tutor had a passion for cricket and wanted to use it
to teach us something about unexpected outcomes or whatever. But
showing this to students that had basically never been shown how to
draw cars, that were tackling how to learn to do just that all by
themselves in their final year and needed every last second they
could get was asking for trouble. We had to do many little
tasks/submissions like explaining our drawings, some ridiculous
lists about the aims and objectives of our projects and such. Maybe
some students found all this helpful but the majority didn't, so
really this module should have been optional. Also the major
submission was for each student to write a reflective report on
his/her project.
355TPD Industrial Design Major: The Major project as it is called was the one
we would present at the degree show in June. We only got access to
the clay studios after the third year students had finished their
competitions in 301TPD. But we had a midpoint review presentation
where after Christmas we would have to show a basic package
drawing. If it was approved by the tutors we could proceed to make
a clay model. We got tutorials every two weeks for the first half
of the year and every week from Christmas up to Easter. The
tutorials were in groups and each student got between 5 to 10
minutes. It was too short because by the time you have explained
what you had been doing for the past two weeks the tutors were
already moving on to the next student without giving any real
advice on your project (not that they could since none of them had
worked as car designers). The tutors were Brian Clough (car design
tutor), Peter Barker (product design tutor), Sarah Davies
(ergonomics tutor), James Shippen (engineering tutor).
And that was not all. If you had selected do do a
product project for minor (345TPD) then your tutorials were with
the product tutor, even if your major was a car. This was because
there were so many students and so few tutors. So even in your
final year you were being taught by product design tutors when it
should have been experienced car designers.
After Easter the tutorials stopped and tutors did not come down to
the clay studios to help students. They dared not because with that
sort of chaos tutors had just given up and decided to let the best
make it and the weakest not to. The head of year tutor was spending
his time teaching third year students how to use Alias Studio and
for the rest of his time was content to fill out forms, send
emails, supposedly plan the degree show but on many occasions could
be found playing away on his computer tinkering at Alias as if
teaching himself. Can you imagine that? No tutors in the studios,
leaving the students to struggle for themselves. If ever a tutor
came to the studio he could be bombarded with students requests for
help but would have to make up an excuse to leave.
In extent none of the tutors even know (or cared) what your project
was and how it was going.
Another problem was when students had run out of automotive clay
and it took over two weeks to get in a fresh shipment. For two
weeks work almost drove to a halt because there was no automotive
styling clay. And all this was happening a few weeks before the
degree show. In the end the charity of Jaguar saved us because they
donated £2000 worth of clay. Imagine if they hadn't done that. The
threads keeping our degree show on track were very thin.
In order for students to do their models in
fiberglass they employ the services of a full-time technician. This
technician is named Rob and instead of being available most of the
time, he is doing work for students with money. So if a student
needs help in a workshop he is usually not available because he is
making fiberglass models for students in exchange for money. He
does though have an excellent modelmaking track record and has
worked for many major car companies making prototypes.
The Degree
Show/Exhibition
On the opening day of the degree show only
10 or so out of 70 cars had been fully painted by the University.
The tutors had been so uninvolved that students struggled to meet
the deadline. Many students simply left the University and found
companies to help them with their projects/models in exchange for
money of course. The completely unethical part is that students are
allowed to showcase models that they have paid for experts to make
as their own, and students who have made their models by themselves
are not indicated for their efforts. So a model that has been made
by a company for a student paying many thousands of £ is allowed to
be shown as the students modelmaking work and not indicate that it
has been a model made by experts. Also these models, because they
are so well made to a high standard, are always the ones to be
selected for a special show at the Transport Museum in Coventry. So
only the students with a lot of money get the chance to showcase
their designs because they could afford an expensive model. This
shows that at Coventry it doesn't matter how good your idea is or
what potential your design has, it only matters if you have enough
money to pay for an expensive model.
No
industry people came to recruit new talent at Coventry. They were
all at the RCA in London looking at their fabulous work and hiring
their students. Coventry only managed to get the same Jaguar and
Land Rover people but only because it is seen as tradition. Neither
of these were employing. And this was before the financial
crisis.
======================================================================
4.0 - Advice: What you need to look for in a University.
Tutors
Tutors with a lot of industry experience
as car designers. Who
are they, where have they worked, what cars have they designed?
Nubers
More car
design tutors and less students.
Curriculum
A detailed plan of
what you will be learning throughout the 4 years. The more high
profile car projects the
better.
Studios
A studio environment with computers and
space.
Modelmaking
Preferable to do clay modeling
by yourself but final
grade modelmaking should be left to expert model-makers.
Degree
Show
That they
have a prestigious degree show that attracts employers and media coverage
every single year. Check out the different
degree shows at: http://www.cardesignnews.com/site/process/college_exhibitions/
Placements
Ask what percentage of students get
placements in the
car industry. What companies the University works with for placements and is a
placement guaranteed in
the car industry.
Ask
students
Ask the
Universities for contact emails for some of
it's recent graduate students.
Contact them and ask them in detail whatever you want. They
will usually be happy to
help. But don't get all the contacts from the University because they might try
to get you in contact
with students that favor the University. So try and get more contacts
through the person the University has mentioned for a list
of students in his/her
yeargroup for an all-round view.
UNIVERSITIES
Here is a list of Universities doing car
design in some way.
EUROPE
UK
Coventry School of Art and Design
Royal College of Art (only Masters – 2 years)
Swansea Metropolitan
University
University of Bradford
(industrial design)
University of
Huddersfield
University of
Northumbria
France
Creapole ESDI
Strate College
Espera
Sbarro
Italy
Domus
Academy
Instituto Europeo di
Design
ISSAM Istituto di
Scienze dell'Automobile Modena
Istituto d'Arte
Applicata e Design
Politecnico di
Milano
Scuola Politecnica di
Design
Master in Car Design
and Mobility – Domus
Academy
Spain
Elisava School of
Design
Germany
Hochschule
Pforzheim
Braunschweig
University of Art (only Masters)
Sweden
Umeå Institute of
Design
AIDE - Automotive
Industrial Design Engineering
Spain,
Sweden, UK
Majenta Academy
(3D Modelmaking courses)
Australia
Monash University
ASIA
Korea
Hongik University
Japan
Tokyo Communication Arts
India
MAEERs MIT - Institute of
Design
National Institute of Design
(NID)
America
USA
Academy of Art University
Art Center College of
Design
Cleveland Institute of
Art
College for Creative
Studies
Lawrence
Technological University
Pratt Institute
Savannah College of
A&D
University of
Cincinnati, School of Design
Canada
Carleton University -
School of Industrial Design
Montreal University -
(Industrial Design course)
Useful Links
http://forums.cardesignnews.com/eve/forums/a/frm/f/61860207/p/3
http://www.carbodydesign.com/directory/car-design/car-design-schools/
http://www.cardesignnews.com/site/careers/design_schools/