To work for a design firm do you need a design degree?

[manoverde84]

Well then to catch on to the big boom in Houston, I am moving back in less than a year. I will start my program by then and should I start looking for internships right away? I would appreciate a leg up as to how I should take advantage of the opportunities in Houson and in TX.

Thanks.

[nrschmid]

Are you going to school in LA or Houston? If you want to focus on subdivision design and master planned communities, which many would call sprawl (not that it's a bad thing) I would recommend a formal three year MLA program if you don't have a design background. Considering just a few posts ago you were set on California, what is your plan with school and finding internships here? My concern is that you wouldn't be done with school for at least 3 years, possibly 4 depending on your application status, and by that time, things are likely to have slowed down here. I am not sure if subdivision design and master planned communities are in line with your original goals.

[Raf]

Finally, most importantly, formal training cannot make up for lack of creativity. If you are going to be able to draw, you are going to be able to draw. I don't care if it is an architectural drafting course at a community college or Harvard GSD, most of the standards (ROW width, lot width, reverse curves, pavement, irrigation) are not really taught directly. You usually have to badger your professor/TA to get the nuts and bolts of actual physical site design. Most of the time you learn the actual specific skills on the job. The portfolio is YOUR work. You are showing YOUR skills to the employer. I have been at my current job for about 14 months, and I learned very early on how very few designers, including experienced ones, can do large scale design with tracts larger than 50 acres. There will come a time when you have to figure out the site plan for yourself, sink or swim. So get cracking, pull out the pencils, and get going on design. Stop talking about it and just do it.

+1. Large tracts is an art. It is one thing to do a few blocks, but large tracts takes some skill and space planning that you can only learn through OJT.

[nrschmid]

+1. Large tracts is an art. It is one thing to do a few blocks, but large tracts takes some skill and space planning that you can only learn through OJT.

I agree. In many ways large scale site design is like starting to paint on a very large completely blank canvas, especially if you are lucky to work on very flat land with no existing site features. I just finished designing a 300 acre tract over the weekend. Two of the five tracts of this project are very long angular trapezoids. I decided to design the street pattern as large "shell-like" wedges at various angles because that is the first shape to come to mind. No class or school is going to train your eye (or brain) to visually break down a 400 acre tract and a pattern of local streets, cul-de-sacs, open space, and detention. I arbitrarily determine axes and focal points, and splinter off other cross axes. I re-sketch curved roads over and over again until I have a pattern I like. I eliminate triangles where I can as it is wasted space. I am surprised at how few skilled designers can quickly sketch out massive sites, although it STILL took me 3 full days in the office to hand draw the two tracts and another 1 1/2 days to design the much smaller commercial tracts (and parking) directly in AutoCAD.

[Raf]

I agree. In many ways large scale site design is like starting to paint on a very large completely blank canvas, especially if you are lucky to work on very flat land with no existing site features. I just finished designing a 300 acre tract over the weekend. Two of the five tracts of this project are very long angular trapezoids. I decided to design the street pattern as large "shell-like" wedges at various angles because that is the first shape to come to mind. No class or school is going to train your eye (or brain) to visually break down a 400 acre tract and a pattern of local streets, cul-de-sacs, open space, and detention. I arbitrarily determine axes and focal points, and splinter off other cross axes. I re-sketch curved roads over and over again until I have a pattern I like. I eliminate triangles where I can as it is wasted space. I am surprised at how few skilled designers can quickly sketch out massive sites, although it STILL took me 3 full days in the office to hand draw the two tracts and another 1 1/2 days to design the much smaller commercial tracts (and parking) directly in AutoCAD.

Agreed. One of the toughest things is to start with a blank slate with a 3,000 plus acre community and really get your hands dirty on focal points, etc. I never learned this in school, it was all learned through my old boss and co-workers. To the OP. The question is, what kind of "design" talent do you posses now? Can you think critically with spaces, or are you just an ordinance writing kind of person?

[manoverde84]

To the OP. The question is, what kind of "design" talent do you posses now? Can you think critically with spaces, or are you just an ordinance writing kind of person?

I can do some stuff on Sketchup 8

Other than I was a policy wonk in college. So yes I would be perfect with the policy side but I want to do design.

[nrschmid]

Sketchup can make a rock star from anyone, artistic skill or not. I would never do my main design work in Sketchup, I only use it for visualization purposes. I started using Sketchup as an independent contractor when i

[nrschmid]

Some how my internet connection disconnected earlier...

Sketchup is more of a three dimensional visualization tool than a design tool. If I were doing physical land planning for a tract larger than 0.5 acres, I wouldn't do it directly in Sketchup. For land planning, I design in 2D plan view. Site topography, if it is provided (and in many cases is not necessary for flat land), will help me to identify outfalls, sloughs, creeks, streams, etc. in a 2D environment. I still have to figure out street patterns, lotting, open space/reserves, but I am going to do that in plan view. Therefore, a well constructed 2D plan will give me enough information in my mind how to design a site, but I still have to design.

I started working in Sketchup as an independent contractor when the software program was in its infancy (2004-2005) and most of my small contracts were eaten up by CAD work. Sketchup was a very rocky program and .dwg files needed to be completely clean (closed polylines, flattened line work, etc.). The work in Sketchup was more about coloring and placing components in a site plan, in my case neighborhood and community parks. Sketchup is one tool to help quickly visualize the spatial relationships of components, versus taking the time to create separate CAD blocks and extrude lines in z coordinates. For example, I will do a site plan for a four block streetscape in AutoCAD, which will include curb cuts, pavement markings, parking striping, fence lines, concrete planters, tree grates, lighting, etc. In Sketchup I use the AutoCAD layers to locate 3D components (specific street furniture from a manufacturer, lighting, plant material, wrought iron fencing, etc.), throw some color/texture on surfaces, adjust the lighting, and call it a day.

Over the past 8-10 years I have seen how the program has allowed thousands of people to do design concepts without formal training. Three dimensional visualization is very much a design tool, but I have become more rigid in assessing a designer's 3D skills against traditional two dimensional site planning. This is one of the reasons I am very mistrusting of non-standardized design programs, including MUDs. A designer can churn out great looking renderings, hand drawn or by computers, but I don't just need a renderer.

[beach_bum]

Just to add a little to conversation on this topic, design is one of those things in Planning that I sort of think of on a scale. One being you can understand general design and a ten being you can actually design with different programs and by hand. Most private firms asking for a designer want a 9 or 10. I'm not sure an Urban Design degree alone will get you to a 9 or 10. The culture of the firm also has a lot to do with who is designing and who isn't. Is an LA the head of that group? Then they likely only hire other LAs.

[3Dexp]

Hi manoverde84, If time/responsibilities or whatever factor does not allow you to enroll in specialised degrees in design (i suggest the MUD if you can). You can start to have some basic courses in design -sketching, even some basic fine art if you can. My background is in Fine Art and Planning and Fine Art helped me enormously in understanding the development of design and eventually develop realistic urban design concepts successfully. I also suggest you have a go in international competitions, the development of a good portfolio in the design field is critical for you to be marketable. Your aim for participating in any competition is not to win any award (if you win-awesome!) , but it is a great opportunity for you to get some experience and eventually include it in your portfolio.Cheers

[manoverde84]

Thank guys!

I have just enough saved up to pay for half of a grad program. I am leaning toward the MUP/MUD combo BUT the LA program at UCLA EXtension is calling me after I attended an info session. I talked to an LA there for about a half hour on my goals. Granted he was trying to sell the program to me, he did make mention that if I am interested in UD and Planning that an LA would be a great place to start because he himself worked for the LA City Planning Dept and LAs filled up a third of the planners there. He said it's always good to have a design background.
To make the long story short he pointed out a reimbursement program the school has set up where I pay for courses up front and I get the money back during the course of the quarter. Essentially he said I could attend the program for close to free as possible through their financial aid setup. The UCLA program is the only program (besides UC Berk) to be recognized by the association that acredits LA programs.

I don't know what to think at this point but I have to act now as it is getting close to the wire. By the time I am done with the program I will be 34 going part time and I am always dead afraid of age discrimination (regardless of how much it''s against the law).

With the MUP from Florida (I plan to take half the program online and do the final year on campus), I can specialize in urban design and be done with it in two and half years tops.

But the problem with this program is that I will be at least 40k in the hole. With my savings, 25 k in the hole.

If I really wanted to walk a care free life I could just get a masters in interior architecture (a field I am not that interested in) and work for my family's construction company in interiors or some other company they have connections to. But that requires moving back to TX, all that junk.

Really I just need to know what the biz/market is like out there to help me make an informed choice.

I keep hearing planning is the most lucrative but if "you're lucky", < just what does that mean?

I hear landscape architects are making out really well, but rarely get paid oodles of money (which is fine by me).

Interiors I hear is so-so money wise and for jobs (but that doesn't concern me as much considering my family is already in the biz).

Forgetting about the third option, it's down to LA or MUP/UD. My main concerns about either program are modicum of job secruity, availability of jobs, and at least 30-40 income to pay back any loans incurred.

[nrschmid]

If you incur 30,000-40,000 to pay back in loans, you will need to be earning at least 2x-2.5x your debt load to make payments on a regular basis without breaking the bank, and that means no other dependents and no other debt. Until you are actually working and supporting yourself entirely will you realize just how much money you actually need to be taking home after taxes to understand just how long it takes to chip away at debt. Some people pondering school options have said on cyburbia and other forums that they have no problem paying $500.00 a month in loans after they are working for some big firm. Cobbling up an extra $500.00 is a month is no easy task for anyone. It will take you at least 1 1/2-2 decades to pay off that 30,000-40,000 as a landscape designer/landscape architect/urban designer.

Age doesn't really become a serious issue until your late thirties, early forties, so 34 is not that old. I am 32 and am looking to go back to school in a few years and get out of planning altogether. I hope to earn a Masters in Accounting or Finance and ultimately move back to oil and gas, while continuing to work full time as an urban designer. Planning is not that lucrative, nor is architecture or landscape architecture. If you are in the profession to make money, start your own firm. If you are successful businessman, you could probably earn enough to make some profit but it's a long shot to strike it rich. We are not celebrity city planners or starchitects. Some LAs and architects are doing better than a few years ago, because there are some emerging real estate booms going on RIGHT NOW. Last week I earned a mid-year bonus that was greater than one of my paychecks, BUT I was also laid off several times over several years. The pendulum could just as easily swing back the other way and I'm out of work. This work is very feast or famine. Rank and file workers speculate how much owners/principals earn in salaries. They forget that plenty of business owners put up their own money/assets as collateral to become vested in a company.

[manoverde84]

Wow. I wanted the real deal truth and I got it. You're dead on apparently.

I know that paying for a student loan debt that high will require a significantly high salary but I was planning on consolidating all my loans and getting an income based repayment plan for 30 years. That would roughly come out to 300 bucks a month if I do the math right. But yes, even then it would require a steady job which is like spotting a unicorn in this business, no?

I guess it all does hinder on booms in construction, eh? I figured that the GIS skills an urban planner acquires along with the planning skills would make him fit for a gig at an engineering firm.

Is the talk about LAs making out like bandits right now only because of the small booms in certain areas?

I was postponing going the usual route for people in my major and earning an MPA in Public Finance and Budgeting. But the public sector is just as shaky now too, especially here in CA. Another option is going for the GIS masters here, I hear that is more stable.

I could do interiors but that's contingent on my family's business which isn't doing the best right now either.

nrschmid, you're ditching planning too? Is the profession that unstable? From what I've heard from other planners, it is the most lucrative but only if your'e lucky. Whatever that means I do not know.

And by lucrative, I never planned on making six figures, and was fairly comfortable working my up to 50k if possible.

I guess you just cannot take a keen interest and turn into a profession.

[nrschmid]

[QUOTE=manoverde84;691994]Wow. I wanted the real deal truth and I got it. You're dead on apparently.

I know that paying for a student loan debt that high will require a significantly high salary but I was planning on consolidating all my loans and getting an income based repayment plan for 30 years. That would roughly come out to 300 bucks a month if I do the math right.


You forgot interest. I am not an expert on loans, but you have to pay down the interest before chipping away at the principal. To really see your loan amount change at all, you have to pay back the loans for several years.

I guess it all does hinder on booms in construction, eh? I figured that the GIS skills an urban planner acquires along with the planning skills would make him fit for a gig at an engineering firm.

If you want to make good money at an engineering firm, become an engineer. Anyone who is less than that will play second fiddle. I currently work in an engineering firm. I probably make more than the average planner/mentioned, and as I mentioned I just received my second bonus this year, and am up for a second raise at the end of this year. This is VERY unusual. #1. My boss really likes me, which goes a VERY long way. #2. I work for developers NOT local governments, so I am tacked on to multi-million dollar engineering projects. #3. I have had to train two new planners AutoCAD from scratch which is NOT in my job description. #4. I design projects of over +500 acres on average. These are mega projects, and apparently there are very few designers/planners who can do this work easily, so there is a shortage of manpower to do what I do. Sometimes I think my job is half designer/half artist, but I also am AICP and easily do non-design planning.

Is the talk about LAs making out like bandits right now only because of the small booms in certain areas?

Probably. And by the time you finish with school, those companies might be laying off people. I started my planning career in 2005, at the tail end of the boom. From 2007-2012, I heard more stories about layoffs and pay cuts. I moved to Houston because I really like Houston. I just happened to move here at the beginning of a new housing boom (and one that really never evaporated as in other metro areas). I didn't move here because I wanted to do subdivision design. I was looking to switch into oil/gas and get out of planning after going through repeated layoffs.

nrschmid, you're ditching planning too? Is the profession that unstable? From what I've heard from other planners, it is the most lucrative but only if your'e lucky. Whatever that means I do not know.

I have a ton of interests and curiosities outside of planning and design. If I only do this large scale work for a few years that is more than enough for me. I am interested in going into the financial aspects of oil and gas, possibly commodities, futures, or oil/gas marketing. I haven't decided. No industry is completely stable, but I think oil/gas will pay far more dividends in the shorter term than planning ever could. I don't know what I would earn in compensation, but I am pretty sure that are FAR more opportunities in finance/accounting than planning.

And by lucrative, I never planned on making six figures, and was fairly comfortable working my up to 50k if possible.

If 50k is your goal, it will take you roughly 30-35 years if not longer to pay off a 30-40k loan, while keeping your living expenses the same. I never reveal my compensation, but I am starting my own side business (non-planning) to bring in extra money to set aside for grad school and pay down loans.

[manoverde84]

I really really appreciate your candor. And we are also taking totally different roads. I majored in Econ/Government in college and did two internships for Merrill Lynch before it was scooped up by BoA. First in their global wealth management the Galleria (which was a lackey job for FAs, sucked) got in well and then moved on to private banking in the JP Morgan Chase tower in downtown. It was fun while it lasted. This was during the time when I was in college and it was banking, consulting or bust. Anything below those two and you might as well just go to grad school. LOL. Different time, different mindset.

I hated those internships and ended up taking a gig at the UH public policy center doing stats on opinon surveys the center did for major companies and local agencies.

I figured my interest with all things economics was political economy, not finance. Then I found urban planning/design and figured what a creative and innovative way to apply the social sciences. (I am sure you've heard that before).

Are you sure you want to get into finance? It's long hours with people who are highly brash. The money is good but I didn't find it worth it. I was only marignally caught up in it.

But man I envy where you're at now! What you're doing to me seems more amazing than being an Excel monkey for bankers.

[Burnham]

I got a masters in planning, worked for several years, and then eventually went back for an M Arch. If you want to design work, don't kid yourself, even if you area able to get enough skills to draw master plans and diagrams, your career options will be very limited if you don't just get a design degree. The fact is, an MUP, like many masters degrees, is a piece of paper and an opportunity to build some valuable relationships. It is similar to an MBA, you learn a few applicable skills, but the degree really is not about the skills, it is about a rite of passage to enter the profession. By contrast, a studio-based design degree, an M Arch or an MLA, is a REAL degree - you leave the program a COMPLETELY different person than the one you were when you entered. The degree is not a replacement for your own creativity (as others have noted), you must have that as well, but you will discover that in the studio - you learn about yourself and you develop your design ability. To be quite honest, in contrast to what others have said, the standards/dimensions are not the most important thing you learn in design school, nor is it the software and graphics skills (although both of these are certainly essential); design is a set of "soft skills" that you must develop through a long-term commitment to the art.

Most planners who claim to be design-minded, have really just memorized a few principles and best practices, such as street-building relationship, scale issues, and maybe some street width dimensions. There is a reason that the New Urbanism is so popular among planners - it is a set of easily understandable rules that non-designers can memorize. However, knowing best practices is NOT the same thing as design. Design is about taking a set of conditions and MAKING something out of them. In real design, there is no textbook, there is no template, there is only your ability as the designer to solve the problem at hand. And if you are good, you can solve the problem AND enhance the experience of the user. You can make place. You can make poetry.

I wish I could go back and save the two years I spent in planning school. After years of school and working in the field, I am confident that the absolute truth is this: if you want to be a DESIGNER-designer, get an M Arch; if you want to be a PLANNER-designer, get an MLA. City planning, and certainly urban design, IS a design discipline; however, city planners are not typically designers, and this is a major problem. This means that most of the professionals who are in the field are not actually equipped to do the job. It is not the architects (or really even the developers) who are to blame for the lousy built environment in our country, it is the PLANNERS themselves, and the wide-spread professional malpractice on the part of the city planning profession who are not trained to do the job they are paid to do. Planners, in general, are spatially incompetent and design illiterate. This comes as a result of the fact that city planners are not trained in city design and city building. Landscape architecture absolutely can (and quite frankly should) replace the profession of city planning within the next 15 or so years. LAs are far more equipped, due to their design training, to deal with the planning problems facing cities and regions in America than the so-called planners.

A note on MUDs: Something that often gets overlooked on this site and in other forums when talking about MUD degrees is the fact that the very existence of a special "masters in urban design" is largely the result of design schools (architecture and landscape architecture programs) moving into the realm of urban planning to fill the void left by the actual urban planning discipline within academia. City planning programs have largely refused to address the physical conditions of cities (a latent result of advocacy planning and other well-intentioned but misguided movements within the discipline over the past few decades) and MUD degrees are an attempt to train the more traditional design practitioners to scale up to the urban, metropolitan, and regional scales. MUDs are very useful as a mode of training those already versed in design to become planners. They are, by contrast, probably not so useful to planners without a design background.

The short of it is this: JUST GET A DESIGN DEGREE!! It will be well worth the time and energy you invest in it. If you just put in the time to get a real design degree (not MUD, not MUP - unless it is a dual with MARCH or MLA), you will never need to be self-conscious about your skills or about the value you bring to a project. You will have wide career opportunities (in consulting firms, in public sector, on your own, as a planner, as a designer, etc.) Plus, studio design education is so much more enjoyable than planning education! I loved architecture school! It was tough, but so incredibly rewarding. By contrast, planning school was a money and time sink without the payback. JUST GET A DESIGN DEGREE!!!! (I wish I had listened to the people who told me that when I was starting planning school....)

[jwhitty]

Design is future speak for outsourced and apped.

[Burnham]

hmm...?

[nrschmid]

I agree with 99% of Burnham's argument. However, licensed landscape architects can be involved in limited structural design work. If you want to do physical design of pavement (drive paths, curbs, roundabouts, alignments, roads) I would recommend an engineering degree.