---
title: "I Joined Penninghen to Study Design and Art Direction"
date: 2013-02-06T17:15
author: Julien Reszka
description: "I started at Esag Penninghen in Paris today. The school trains art directors. I want to understand how good visual communication actually works."
keywords: ["design", "work", "learning", "opportunity", "startups"]
canonical: https://julienreszka.com/blog/i-joined-penninghen-to-study-design-and-art-direction/
---

# I Joined Penninghen to Study Design and Art Direction

I started at Esag Penninghen in Paris today. The school trains art directors. I want to understand how good visual communication actually works.

I started at Esag Penninghen today.

The school is on Rue du Dragon in the 6th arrondissement. It trains art directors and graphic designers. The program is five years.

I applied because I wanted to understand visual communication at a level that goes beyond taste. I can tell when something looks good. I cannot always explain why, and I cannot always reproduce it deliberately. That gap is what I want to close.

What the first day looked like:

- A studio environment, not a classroom. Tables, not chairs in rows.
- Work already on the walls from previous years. The standard is visible immediately.
- Faculty who work professionally. They are not academics explaining design from a distance.
- A small cohort. Tables, not chairs in rows.
- Critique built into the structure from day one. You show work. People tell you what is wrong with it.

I do not know yet how long I will stay or what I will build from here. What I know is that I have been interested in how things look and why some things communicate clearly and others do not. I want to understand that seriously, not as a hobby.

The school treats it seriously. That is why I am here.

---

**Actionable insight:** If you want to get serious about a craft, find the institution that treats it most rigorously and put yourself in that room. Proximity to people who are better than you is the fastest feedback loop.

## Key figure

**1954** — Year Penninghen was founded in Paris, one of the oldest schools for art direction and graphic design in France

*Source: Esag Penninghen, Paris*

## Myth vs reality

**Myth:** Design is something you learn by doing, not by going to school

**Reality:** Doing without feedback produces confident mediocrity. A rigorous school compresses years of self-taught trial and error into a structured critique environment. Both matter, but school accelerates the early part.

*Source: Personal experience, 2013*