Print version Recommend this page Press release
21/ 2007
Bonn, 03.05.2007
Designer of digital and print media - An ideal combination of creativity and technology
"I want to work with media - be creative and design things...." These words are often heard when young people are asked what they want to be. One reason is that media-related occupations are very popular among the younger generation. Starting 1 August 2007, prospective trainees will have a new, more modern option. Working together with experts from day-to-day vocational training practice, the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training ("BIBB") has revised the training content for the occupation Designer of Digital and Print Media which was created in 1998. One of the most popular occupations among young people will make a new start this summer: Adapted to new developments in a sector that has seen many technical and economic changes, the training for this occupation is now leaner and more geared to the core tasks of consultation, visualization and design. The Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research - which are responsible for regulating the training for this occupation - will soon announce the amended training regulations in the Federal Law Gazette.
The changes in a nutshell:
Media integration, design basics and the use of data will continue to be the mainstays of the core training provided during the first two years. However, design and typography will be considerably more important in the future. Training requirements now foresee a minimum of six months' training in these two areas.
The third training year was completely restructured. The previous four areas of specialization were streamlined and rolled into three:
- Conception and Visualization
- Design and Technology
- Planning and Consultancy
The area Conception and Visualization primarily targets persons wanting to work as creative professionals. The third year for trainees in this area of specialization revolves around how to analyse customer requirements in order to develop design ideas for media products, prepare design concepts and visually illustrate them in presentations.
The core skills in the Design and Technology arm of this occupation include preparing and processing data of all kinds for the creation of print and digital media products, taking into account the specific design-related and technical factors involved. Vocational training experts expect the lion's share of media design trainees to be interested in this area.
The training content for the third area Planning and Consultancy was taken in large part from the previous Media Consultancy area of specialization and then supplemented with marketing skills. These skills will be incorporated to an even greater degree in the future in the development of project concepts which in turn constitute be an essential element of final examinations.
The new training regulations offer a number of elective skills with the aim of enabling firms to provide training that is tailored to their particular specialization. The training for existing elective skills was reorganized: In the area of digital media, for example, trainees now have a variety of options involving database-supported, interactive or audiovisual media production. And new skills were added: Companies that could not offer in-house training to date (because existing training regulations did not cover the particular skills they could potentially teach) now also have an opportunity to do so in the future thanks to the new training options in systems management and geographics.
Digital and print media designers work in the industrial sector and the trades. They work for communications and marketing firms, design studies, firms in the printing and media sector, for media service providers, publishing houses and in the marketing and communications departments of enterprises and public institutions, just to name a few.
Further information regarding this subject is available in German on the BIBB homepage at www.bibb.de/de/28869.htm
Your point of contact for information at BIBB is:
Heike Krämer, Tel.: +49 (0) 228 / 107-2431, kraemer@bibb.de
