Shillington School

What led me to Shillington was its focus on portfolio development, and formal training with design software (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and Sketch). Prior to the program I had little to no experience with each, and was hoping to transition to the field of graphic design.

Coming out of the program I'm fluent in each software, armed with an understanding of design principles and the portfolio I needed. The projects were very similar to the work I wished I could be doing while working at an agency beforehand, and now I'm confident in my abilities to complete those design projects and more. You gain significant practice reps - completing 30+ projects in a 3 month window. If it were easy, it wouldn't be worth it! 

Shillington provides all the resources to make it possible, with hands-on learning, one-on-one teaching, and tons of positive energy throughout. NYC also immerses you in a world of design to learn from.

My overall experience was great. I was able to submerge myself in an environment I sought for so long. I met very engaged, supportive, and passionate people from all over the world. I'm very glad I did it. 

However, DO NOT expect this program to change your life immediately or make you an expert. For beginners, it'll be a crash course in Design where you will be introduced to a bit of everything. The on going flow of work will make it very challenging to find time to practice and let concepts and techniques to really set in. It might feel like a sink or swim situation at times.This program is BEST for people with previous knowledge.

I highly recommend to maintain ties with your current employer and take this course as a short leave of absence for personal or proffesional development. Alllow yourself some sort of security. Since there isn't real job assistance, besides a recruiting program and an email telling you to keep your chin up, you willl need to work harder to find your place in design and a job. 

It's essentially a Portofolio program. I appreciate the push to meet deadlines as in the "real world", but considering time management can be learned, Portfolio week should be giving more care and time. Promoting NO SLEEP in order to finish certain projects for "sign off" is a bad move. 

Please only consider this course if you have money to burn. You will spend in excess of £10,000 (not just fees, extra they get you to buy that you don’t actually need, materials, software - the price also goes up every year) for an overly hyped course, that is only slightly useful if you have previous experience and are naturally very talented in that area - despite the fact they market it for beginners. My two male teachers were incredibly dismissive of people in the group they felt to be not very good, looked exasperated when people asked for help or they were clearly tired or had a bad day, made snide comments about previous students. It’s a very pretentious bubble that Shillington live in. You will be better off learning the tricks of the trade online, saving that money, and investing in your own professionally printed portfolio  for about £30 to £40 as you can learn everything they teach you online. I ended up having to pick up most of it on YouTube due to rushed/poorly planned evening classes. 

You are ultimately paying for the name with Shillington, and no connections are offered and it quickly became apparent the course is designed to pick out new talent, rather than the desire to teach graphic design.

 

Plain and simple, Shillington changed my life in the best way possible.

I always loved art and creative "stuff", but never thought I could make my passion into a career. After graduating college with a BS in Advertising from Syracuse University, I got a job in NYC at an ad agency as an account exec. While it was an incredible place to work, I felt that something was missing. I realized that the best part of my days were when I got to sit with my creative team or go to brainstorms. It became clear that I needed to go with my gut and try something new.

I looked into every single program in New York (and some outside of the city) and found generally only two options, neither of which would work for me. The first was a 2-3 year graduate program at a university like NYU, Parsons, FIT, etc which were way too costly and too big of a time commitment. The second option was one-off classes for continuing education, which seemed more for people who felt like dabbling in an interest of theirs on the side. Not intense enough for me.

Then, I found Shillington and I thought...this honestly must not be real. I hadn't seen anything like it. It was literally everything I wanted to learn... in only three months. 

Turns out it is very real and was hands down the best decision I have ever made in my life. I will not sit here and say it was a walk in the park. It was definitely hard work, but the more you push yourself, the more likely you are to graduate with a portfolio that looks like you went to school for four years. The teachers, all practicing graphic designers, are some of the most incredible people I have ever met. They are talented designers and more importantly, they are passionate about teaching in a way that will help you develop your own style. I can easily say I learned more from my Shillington teachers in 3 months than I ever did from any of my professors in college. 

The course is set up perfectly so that even if you have never touched a Mac in your life, you can succeed. After having no experience with Photoshop, InDesign, or Illustrator, I am now sitting in front of a massive Mac desktop as a Graphic Designer for an awesome ad agency in NYC working on cool brands like Nike, BMW, LG, Hennessy, and more. Somebody smack me!!!!

If it isn't clear already, Shillington is unbelievable and I do not think there is anything out there like it. DO IT!

I can say that I was a little bit scared about the program because I didn’t feel confident about the language (Spanish is my first language) and also I thought that three months are not enough to learn and change my career but, it wasn’t true!! I did it!

The teachers are so professional, patient, helpful and dedicated. They helped us a lot to learn the programs and also gave us advises all the time to improve our work.

Sincerely, this was the best decision ever!! I met wonderful persons and now I can call myself a Graphic Designer!

 

 

I feel badly putting this out there for everyone to see, but it's important to make sure that future students have all of the information they need to make the right decision about their education so though conflicted I realize it's important. I have had good instructors and have definitely learned a lot. The small environment is really cool and in most situations I think that could really foster learning. Some instructors are incredibly talented and really do a great job sharing that and guiding those who want to learn. However, I find the overall mood or rather feel of Shillington to be negative and I think that is due to the director currently in place. I'm not sure if she is family to the owners, but I think she lacks experience not only in the field, but also in her type of position. If you go to her with a concern she is defensive and combative as opposed to understanding and helpful. She is gossipy and rather unprofessional. She will ice you out if she doesn't like you and that can be incredibly uncomfortable and overall unacceptable when paying so much money. Most recently I overheard her speaking about another student in a negative way where other people could hear. This was uncredibly disheartening because when I walked away I realized it could be me she was talking about next. I think so much of a positive learning experience is the atmopshere and the relationships you build, so having one kink in an overall great place, especially someone in charge can really bring down the enire operation. I do want to say that Rebecca Montanaro and Adam Dudd are great. Hopefully the director's bosses see this and really re-think the representation of their business. The model is great. It just needs better management.

 

I can confidently say that going to The Shillington School of Graphic Design was the best decision that I have ever made.  I absolutely LOVED it.

I graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Communications not sure of what I really wanted to do and then came across Shillington.  I was a little bit hesitant at first with the price for such a short amount of time but it was WELL WORTH IT.  

After being in traditional college and transitioning to a bootcamp atmosphere I believe that the you definitely do get your money's worth.  Everyday from 8:00 - 5:00pm you are learning and designing and it was SO MUCH FUN.  You have very little lecture time and more of the time is spent designing which I thought was fantastic.  You are given a real world brief and real world deadlines. The teachers are great and the class size is perfect.  I could not believe how much I learned and how much skill I had obtained at the end of each week.  If you have any doubts, 3 months is ABSOLUTELY enough time to learn graphic design.

At the end of the course you leave with a beautiful portfolio that your teachers make sure is perfect before putting you out in the "real world".  Each interview I went on, I could tell that people were impressed that I was a new graduate out of a three month program.  The quality of the work you will be able to create is aligned with top trends, top software and best practices.  If you have an eye for design, Shillington will take care of the rest. (But you do have to put in the work and have the drive for it).

When speaking about the Job assistance, there wasn't much.  They had some designers come in and speak about their positions and what options you have entering the field and what to expect.  They also had Creative Circle, a creative agency, come in and speak about how to get a job and how to go through recruiters. After graduation you can feel free to e-mail for assistance, but you are pretty much on your own.  To be honest, with the skills you acquire, along with the portfolio you create you really won't need much else.

I can confidently say that going to The Shillington School of Graphic Design was the best decision that I have ever made.  I absolutely LOVED it.

I graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Communications not sure of what I really wanted to do and then came across Shillington.  I was a little bit hesitant at first with the price for such a short amount of time but it was WELL WORTH IT.  

After being in traditional college and transitioning to a bootcamp atmosphere I believe that the you definitely do get your money's worth.  Everyday from 8:00 - 5:00pm you are learning and designing and it was SO MUCH FUN.  You have very little lecture time and more of the time is spent designing which I thought was fantastic.  You are given a real world brief and real world deadlines. The teachers are great and the class size is perfect.  I could not believe how much I learned and how much skill I had obtained at the end of each week.  If you have any doubts, 3 months is ABSOLUTELY enough time to learn graphic design.

At the end of the course you leave with a beautiful portfolio that your teachers make sure is perfect before putting you out in the "real world".  Each interview I went on, I could tell that people were impressed that I was a new graduate out of a three month program.  The quality of the work you will be able to create is aligned with top trends, top software and best practices.  If you have an eye for design, Shillington will take care of the rest. (But you do have to put in the work and have the drive for it).

When speaking about the Job assistance, there wasn't much.  They had some designers come in and speak about their positions and what options you have entering the field and what to expect.  They also had Creative Circle, a creative agency, come in and speak about how to get a job and how to go through recruiters. After graduation you can feel free to e-mail for assistance, but you are pretty much on your own.  To be honest, with the skills you acquire, along with the portfolio you create you really won't need much else.

Shillington is a great school for a student who wants to develop a portfolio with a nice range of projects - ranging from web to print.

Going into the school, I think it would  beneficial to have a basic understandning of design concepts and the Adobe programs, but if not, then there's time for the student to catch up. From my experience, the majority of the students in my part-time course already had some design experience or were working artists. The other challenge is that the class size is very large and it was difficult to get the attention of the instructors sometimes due to the class size. 

The teachers are very knowledgeable and approacheable. I like the school environment. 

I learned a great deal in the program and apply the skills I learned at my current job. The school doesn't offer career assistance, but they do help you with developing the online portfolio and selecting your strong pieces. Also, the blog on the site has regular postings.  

I do not regret taking this course. I think it was very useful. I personally prefer the part-time course since it's still quite intense. I feel like that full-time is too rushed, unless of course you are at the junior designer level and are just looking to get a portfolio oafter graduating. I really liked the briefs and gaining the experience as though we were working in an actual design studio. The wide range of projects were challenging in a good way.

 

I just recently graduated from the full-time Graphic Design course at Shillington this past July. I was very impressed with how much they taught us in the short 3 months that we were there. The course is very fast paced and the studio-like environment is structured in a way that really prepares students for work in the real world. We received new briefs every day with deadlines ranging from a couple hours to the end of the day as well as more intensive briefs towards the end of the course. The instructors are also all still currently working in the industry so they are very helpful and well-versed in what they teach. I left Shillington with a beautiful, professional portfolio full of projects that made sense to employers as well as the confidence to talk about my work. I am now working at a creative agency as well as a magazine publishing company and I owe it all to Shillington!

Gets a lot of glowing reviews but I think it depends where you study. I was at the Manchester campus both before and during lockdowns and the tutors were under lots of pressure. The first class I was put in before any lockdown had over 20 students so it was very stretched. It’s a large workload and very difficult to manage with a full time job, especially when you start from absolute scratch so be aware of that. One of the tutors put my work on a scale of “0-5” with “0 being absolute sh*te”, asked me “what the fu*k is that?” and also told me during portfolio time “I can’t wait to get this over with” which I found super unprofessional. Whilst I did learn a lot, my overall experience was disappointing. It ran itself as a business first and foremost, making you feel as though you’re an employer rather than a paying customer.