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Designer pedigree is nonsense: it’s the work, not the school

Michael McWatters
UX Collective
Published in
6 min readSep 12, 2019

The talk

A few years ago I was speaking at a well-known NYC design school about our profession. The audience was made up mostly of students about to graduate, as well as some faculty. The topic of my talk was the laughably broad “working in design.”

There was a Q&A after my talk; most of the questions focused on how to land a first gig, interview etiquette, portfolio prep, etc.

During the Q&A, one brave student said, “This is a pretty good school, but should I be worried that I didn’t attend a top-tier design school like RISD?” At first I was a little surprised; in my opinion, this was a good design school. Certainly better than the school I attended.

My response was fairly direct: “No, the school doesn’t matter much. Just focus on your portfolio. Make sure you have interesting, well-conceived and well-executed projects to share.”

Incredulous, the student pushed back: “But when you’re looking at a bunch of résumés, don’t you filter for the best schools?”

“No, I only look at the work. I don’t care what school someone attended.”

To my surprise, a faculty member stood and said, “I appreciate your response, but are you being 100% candid? I mean, surely the quality of the school counts for…

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Written by Michael McWatters

VP, Product Design at Max | HBO Max. Formerly TED. Better after a nap.

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