Earlier today I stopped by the University of Missouri – Saint Louis, to attend the Motion Titles presentation of the current junior graphic design class. My class, as did many classes before us, had to go through this same rite-of-passage presentation, the first we as students had to do. The audience is usually made up of the faculty, some family, other students and alumni. This all part of the Advanced Problems in Graphic Design II class, where we had to choose a movie, create a new poster and DVD package that incorporated more symbolism and relevance to the movie than the average off-the-shelf Hollywood garbage (generally a big budget/big name movie poster/DVD cover will consist of the actors faces with some irrelevant background imagery). The last part of the project were the motion titles, which is just a fancy word for the intro. Not many people pay attention to the motion title, unaware of how much they say about the movie. I think the best motion title I’ve seen was for the movie U-Turn (starring Sean Penn and Jennifer Lopez). So much is revealed about … well everything. Anyway, this tends to be the most challenging part of the assignment, because all of a sudden you’re dealing with an entirely new element. The first thing I noticed today was how many people used a completely different software to do it then my classmates and myself did only two short years ago. Two things here: 1. time flies and 2. boy is technology eager to leave you behind. That said the little ones did quite all right. I was very impressed with two of the students and quite satisfied with the vast majority.
On a more negative note, I’m more convinced than ever than universities need to make public speaking classes absolutely mandatory. I’m no Demosthenes, but I’ve always striven for some measure of eloquence, and I’m rarely left speechless. While I was in school I found some of my classmates lacking good communication skills, but I guess being away for almost a year now makes it a bit more of a shock. For a second I imagine them talking to my VP, nervously muttering about something, sounding entirely unprepared for all of 10 seconds before being looked with the strangest of looks and told to get to a point … soon. Not a single person talked about their work, instead they all just read things off a piece of paper some with a voice so monotonous it was hard to take. Some would lose their spot on the page and restart at the beginning of the current sentence, the way novice telemarketers do when they are startled by an unexpected question. While no particular part about this irked me, the apparent (not actual) lack of knowledge on the subject of their own work was nothing short of disappointing. I have been there and I know all of them spent enough time with their projects to know them inside and out, yet they all spoke (read, actually) with the shaky uncertainty of an 8th grader reading Nietzsche. Of course it’s not the end of the world but communication is damn important, in my opinion, and if we’re out there education a new generation, shouldn’t we teach them how to speak rather than just talk?
