NADIM MATTA

Assistant Professor of Design & Chairperson at the Department of Design Ramez Chagoury NDU

HOW DO YOU EVALUATE THE OVERALL STANDARD OF WORK?

The overall work was of an acceptable standard given the chosen theme and the variety in the submissions, which ranged from first year students to professionals from the industry.

ANY ADVICE THAT YOU’D LIKE TO EXTEND TO STUDENTS?

I encourage students to participate in future competitions to help better themselves and enhance their communication skills. I think that more emphasis on the concept and message should be placed, rather then just focusing on the aesthetic and finishing part. This is stressed in the Graphic Design programme we offer at the Ramez G. Chagoury Faculty of Architecture, Arts and Design at Notre Dame University, where we challenge our students to help them develop their critical thinking capabilities and then visualise it into a visually pleasing solution. We further believe that our students learn best with the ‘learning by doing’ teaching philosophy, which we adopt in our program learning.

ANYTHING THAT YOU’D LIKE TO ADD?

I would like to emphasise the importance of the collaboration with the industry and the role this plays into developing our program curricula. We strive in our department to provide strong links with different Design and Advertising agencies as well as other related fields. We encourage our students to participate in conferences and competitions as well as local and international internships and workshops. We believe that this broadens our students experience and brings richness to our program. We finally encourage interdisciplinary learning through a collaboration between the different programs that we offer, mainly the Fashion Design, Photography and Interior Design. This is reflected in the final output of the different projects and in the End Of Year Exhibition ‘EYE’ that we hold on yearly basis to promote our graduating students work.