I graduated with a degree in Graphic Design and worked as a designer for a little over a year before I made the switch to full time development. It really depends on if you are doing back-end or front-end programming, because it can affect each in a different way. For back-end, you might think through problems in a different way than someone with a CS degree would, which can be really helpful on a team and bring a different perspective. With that said, your skills would definitely be more apparent working on the front-end. Developers with a design eye/background are a designers dream. You will notice little design flaws (offset padding, font style, font size, etc.) that other developers might miss. As a designer who used to work with developers, that can be the most frustrating and time consuming thing of all time. So for me personally, it's definitely transferred over well for me and made me both a better developer AND designer.
Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
51–60 of 175 posts
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#52BFA student turned full stack developer here. I wanted to actually share WHY artists can really excel in this space, both positive and negative: 1. We've been trained to critique, and communicate issues constructively. This is absolutely essential to working quickly, the sooner you realize there is an existential problem with what you're doing, the sooner you can work through them. I've become an absolute user story…
Ah yeah, the critiquing aspect is spot on. In my first programming job, my supervisor would try to be as gentle as possible in telling me why my code was wrong. I had to essentially say "dude, just tell me my code sucks and then tell my why!" I didn't realize how thick of a skin I have due to my arts background.
Totally agreed. Actors and artists have to develop a thick skin or else they would whimper daily. :D
Any job where you are sort of putting yourself out there in the form of your work can be quite demoralizing, especially with the wrong people in charge. Programmers can be just as touchy about their work as artists--I've seen it personally. Some of this may have to do with cultural diffs. Some cultures seem (at least to me, with limited exposure) to be more or less amenable to "being nice" about criticism.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#53I have art degree in graphic design (visual communication). After studies I was working very seriously, created a strong portfolio, was specializing in branding. But design (and other types of (applied) arts) is very uncertain thing. In design for you 2+2=4, but for your client 2+2=7 and for the target audience 2+2=46. There are no objective criteria how to measure graphic design. In programming 2+2=4. Another bad th…
Well said.
Similar path here. I'd just add that visual design (and to a lesser extent, interaction design and ux design) is becoming commoditized due to common CSS libraries and patterns, WYSIWYG website building tools, more accessible design tools like Sketch, and a general convergence and consensus on best practices.
I switched to web development from product/digital design, then more recently to iOS development. I'm really glad I have a design background, especially with iOS/mobile where users have a higher experience bar, and where pretty much any interaction is not just achievable but easy.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#54I have a degree in Fine Arts and am mostly doing painting nowadays.
Developing your very own attitude towards things and being able to defend it helped me in many ways outside art.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#55I studied a BFA in Sound Design. It was an incredible mix. Along with the base arts courses, it stepped across music, film, animation and comp sci. It taught me the basics of signal processing, encouraged 'play' and seemed to balance creative expression with the engineering skills to enable that to happen. After getting through all the courses that interested me I dropped out to travel and then fell into a few intere…
This sounds super interesting to me!
I watched the video and it led me to install Sonic Pi and start messing around. Very cool stuff, will be interesting to see where electronic music goes in the future.
As someone who is still an EE student but is super into music production and film in my spare time, can I ask how you ended up where you are and to what degree your creative background helps out?
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#56I have a BFA in creative writing and a JD (law degree), and now work building tooling to assist in legal tasks.
I've been programming and writing since I was quite young, mostly making games, but wanted to make a go of it as a writer. I went through an AFA and BFA program, but became less impressed with the quality of my own writing, and the output of MFA programs, as I went on. Because of my love of programming and interest in intellectual property law, I decided to go to law school instead.
While in the BFA program, I had started to develop tools to help me track vocabulary, word usage, sentence structure, and analyze other authors works. In law school, I did he same thing, building chrome extensions to speed up trademark searching, building toy-scale trademark watch services, and a variety of other projects.
Having the practice making quick prototypes of useful legal products was useful when finding a job. An automation focused legal company hired me during my third year of law school, and I've been building tools to help them automate all sorts of business tasks ever since.
Some of the key things from my art school days that still help are my ability to handle and give feedback constructively, and a willingness to quickly try new things to see if they'll work.
If anyone has any questions, don't hesitate to ask!
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#57BFA - Graphic Design circa 1997 here. I've found a good art foundation is valuable here in IT for 3 reasons:
1. Art is largely about communication. So, you already know how to ask 'is this work effectively communicating what you intending to communicate?' This question is directly related to the spareribs comment about critiquing.
2. Sometimes the work is in the meta work. Better-looking documentation, reporting, and demos are significant.
3. Both art & IT are about creative problem solving within constraints.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#58I have a BFA in sculpture and would have a minor in CS but for the math requirements. I currently work as a data scientist. If I'm feeling punchy, I'll try to sell myself as a data poet. I use abstraction and metaphor to create meaning from chaos. The distance from art to science has always been very short. If I ever need to explain myself, I just say it's all about problem solving and abstraction.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah yeah, the critiquing aspect is spot on. In my first programming job, my supervisor would try to be as gentle as possible in telling me why my code was wrong. I had to essentially say "dude, just tell me my code sucks and then tell my why!" I didn't realize how thick of a skin I have due to my arts background.
Totally agreed. Actors and artists have to develop a thick skin or else they would whimper daily. :D Any job where you are sort of putting yourself out there in the form of your work can be quite demoralizing, especially with the wrong people in charge. Programmers can be just as touchy about their work as artists--I've seen it personally. Some of this may have to do with cultural diffs. Some cultures seem (at least…
To a degree, the same goes for scientists. Having anonymous peer reviewers telling you the past six months of your professional life has been a waste, because this was done by a Czhechoslovakian in '73 (paper never translated) and turns out to be uninteresting, can be quite demoralising.
Or like one of my first papers, when sending it to a very good journal, having one reviewer say "this is all wrong" and the other saying "this is a well known result in the field, nothing new" and the editor just saying "reject".
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone here have an art degree?
#60I ended up taking a BFA in Fine Art after realizing I would need another semester for a Graphic Design/Digital Media degree. My degree is from a state university.
Worked as a freelancer web dev for a while, did IT helpdesk, went back to tech school, got involved in hackerspaces, got a job in machining which was more stable than web dev work & less mindnumbing customer facing than helpdesk. Paid my dues and worked my way from running machines to building machines, programming PLC's, and writing programs. Now I'm part of the Advanced Development engineering team. I spend a lot of time pulling data to run reports, 3d modeling parts & assemblies, & hands on troubleshooting of our prototypes.
Web development helped with the industrial programming I deal with & the art degree taught me visualization, deconstruction, and problem solving.
Anecdotally, I used to scour McMaster Carr for parts to make for sculptures. Now I actually order stuff for it's intended uses.