Boost your print career with postgraduate education in Industrial Design | EduCeleb
Abdulrasheed Afolabi
10th June 2019
After years of back-breaking undergraduate studies, not a few people are just content with going into the labour market to earn a livelihood and keep their lives moving.  No doubt, there is the reality to keep body and soul together. Gracious Lord, there are bills to pick! But, as we do this does it mean bidding goodbye to continuing professional development?
Continuingprofessional development (CPD for short) is the manure that keeps the plants inour careers blossoming. CPD is vital for enhancing competence, with competencebeing associated with possession of necessary skills, knowledge, attitude,understanding and experience required to perform professional and occupationalroles in the workplace. Since learning and competence are the Siamese twinsthat ensure career advancement, individuals must always strive for continualimprovement.
Postgraduate education is one of the many routes to acquiring professional competence. It is a means of developing new skills, as well as a channel to gain in-depth knowledge about a subject matter. It is also an indication of being highly responsive to new challenges.
The printing industry, repositioned by digital technologies, has taken a new shape. According to Patrick Henry, a print industry consultant at whattheythink.com, printing has evolved from an industry to a profession. With this transformation, there has been the emergence of a new printing industry – the graphic communications industry.
This change is indeed a reflection of the paradigm shift that is turning the tide of job roles in the print industry, with immense implications for career placement and progression. A reference to the prepress segment of print production may come handy.
Today,the term “premedia” is catching up fast in usage with respect to prepress. Whilepremedia and prepress are often used interchangeably, they do not, in thestrictest technical way, mean the same thing. Simply, premedia is used in thecontext of visual content production – running the gamut of creation tooptimization of content, especially for digital media. So, with premedia, notall files go to press. On the other hand, the key focus of prepress is creatingand preparing files strictly for print media. Greg, a senior member atprintplanet.com, however argues that premedia is beginning to replace Prepress. According to him, “I work in publishingand have many friends that work at some of the big 6 publishing houses.
Inmost cases, in-house prepress job titles have been re-branded to premedia jobtitles. In some cases these roles have expanded to include preparing files fordigital publishing, but they are still mainly working on files for the printededition.”
So,while not exactly the same, premedia is a more encompassing operational termthan prepress in the current digital landscape. Premedia entails photographyand digital imaging, creative prepress, digital asset management and dynamicpublishing, all of which fall under the domain of graphic arts. For the purposeof training and development, graphic arts, otherwise called applied arts, fallsneatly into design and technology in the profession/discipline of industrialdesign.
Industrialdesign involves the design, development and manufacturing of products thatserve useful purposes in our day-to-day lives. Jerry Emeka Obi, a consultant,explains that the term “industrial design” emanates from designing productsthat are manufactured by industries. According to him the efforts of industrialdesigners are quite ubiquitous. In a similar vein, Dr. Osa-Francis Obasuyi, anexpert in industrial design the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, Universityof Benin, informs that key aspects of industrial design include; graphicdesign, product design, interface design, architecture, information design,computer science and technology. Of these, graphic design, and product designand manufacturing are related to the operations or activities of the printingindustry since the main purpose of the graphic arts industry is creatingproducts that communicate visually. Print products like educational materials(books, charts, infographic aids etc.), promotional materials (brochures,catalogs, signage, postcard, flyers etc), packaging materials, and so on aregood examples.
A2005 study by a group of researchers on competencies and qualifications for industrialdesign roles indicates that the knowledge and skills required in this field arewide and varied. The study, publishedin Design Studies, reveals thatindustrial design education should focus on three categories of competency; i) generic attributes – problem solving,communication, adaptability to rapid changes, ii) specific industrial design skills and knowledge –  design thinking, methodology, visualization,product development, materials, design management, etc., and iii) knowledge integration – strategies forsystem integration.
Today, industrial design is offered ina number of Nigerian universities, including; Ahmadu Bello University Zaria; Federal University of Technology Akure,Federal University of Technology Yola, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University,Bauchi, Federal University of Technology Owerri, Federal University of TechnologyAdo-Ekiti and others.
For lack of space, this piece will focus strictly on postgraduate training in industrial design at two universities; Federal University of technology, Akure (FUTA) and Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi (ATBU).
With a specialization in graphics, thePGD programme aims at empowering candidates with creative and aesthetic skillsin required in contemporary graphic arts industry. It also serves as a bridgeprogramme for HND (printing technology inclusive) and degree graduates who aredesirous of proceeding to the master’s of technology (MTech) degree in industrialdesign.
The key goal is training individualswho can contribute to national development through design innovation, graphictechnical competence and creative excellence. The duration is 3 semesters onpart time basis, with HND and first degree in relevant/related disciplinerequired for admission. In the first semester of the programme, courses onoffer include; industrial design organization and management, general drawing,history and philosophy of industrial design, research methods, African craftsand design, and prototype design for the industry.
The second semester courses are;graphic illustration, graphic design studio, computer application to graphics,repromethods, special project on field survey in graphic design, printingproduction and manufacturing processes, publicity and advertising. In the thirdsemester, candidates are required to take; project critic development, seminarin studio practices, and practical project in graphics.
TheMTech Industrial design programme at FUTA has the broad objective of equippingstudents with specialized technological knowledge in graphics. The admissionrequirement is a PGD industrial design and HND/degree in related fields. Theprogramme runs full time between 18 and 24 months. First semester coursesinclude; survey seminar on concept and philosophy of industrial design, generaldrawing, computer graphics appreciation, creative photography, and printingtechnology. The following courses are offered in the second semester; researchmethods, thesis/research proposal, advanced textile design and printing,advanced printmaking, and film animation and television technology. The thirdsemester is designed for students’ thesis.
Thebroad aim of ATBU’s MTech industrial design (Graphics technology) is to producehigh skilled manpower with both academic and industrial expertise. Graduates ofthis programme would be capable of combining their intellectual ability withpractical know-how to develop new techniques of design and production in thegraphic arts industry. The programme runs for a minimum of 12 months (fulltime) and minimum of 24 months (part time). The list of courses for thisprogramme are; advanced colour and design, advanced studio/industrial practicein graphics, media research, seminar in specialized area, research techniques,history of design, aesthetics, educational statistics, and masters’ thesis. Inaddition, there are electives in; educational research methods, advanced TVgraphics, advanced production, industrial design product development andcomputer graphics.
BothFUTA and ATBU have doctoral programmes for candidates interested in undertakingresearch relating to graphic arts. For FUTA, the PhD in Industrial designprogamme has the duration of a minimum of 6 semesters for full time or 8semesters for part time. The entry requirement is master’s degree in industrialdesign/industrial arts, or applied arts. Similarly, for ATBU, a candidate mustpossess MTech in industrial design (graphics technology) to be eligible foradmission into the PhD Industrial design (graphics technology) programme. Theduration is a minimum of 36 months (full time) or 60 months (part time).
A new generation of graphic media specialists is emerging in Nigeria. These highly trained professionals are pushing boundaries as they move seamlessly between traditional print media and digital media. These crops of print specialists are plying their trades in new frontiers that hitherto were no-go areas. In this regard, a shining light of the printing sector in Nigeria is Dr. Muripshaka Yibis, a chief lecturer at the Department of Printing Technology, Kaduna Polytechnic. With a Higher National Diploma (HND) in printing technology and a postgraduate diploma, Yibis earned a space in the MTech industrial design programme at ATBU. His 2008 master’s thesis investigated the “Technical Skill Improvement Needs of Graphic Artists in the Printing Industry” with a focus on poor quality printed media in Kaduna State and its environs. The study addressed this problem and provided solutions for the production of good designs and quality reproduction of print for effective communication.
With the MTech in his kit, Yibis proceeded on yet another academic sojourn, this time for a PhD at the Department of Fine and Applied Art, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. His 2015 doctoral research assessed the impact of management information systems (MIS) on digital printing enterprise in Nigeria. The study revealed that human capital development, capacity building and organizational restructuring are vital to the full implementation of print MIS in Nigeria. Yibis’ example, like some others that may not find space here, shows the possibility of achieving academic and professional excellence by printing technology graduates (and all graduate printers at that) in Nigeria.