Top Nine Fashion Schools

For anyone who is interested in earning a fashion design degree, finding the right college is a very important factor. While there are many schools where this degree is available, the best schools to earn this degree are those who have a very dedicated program, knowledgeable professors, plenty of experience opportunities, and lots of job connections for students after graduation. The following nine schools have been ranked as the best colleges and universities from which to earn a fashion degree. While not in order, these top nine represent institutions with the highest jobs procured, study options, program offerings, and people in the industry. Some listed schools don’t offer a fashion degree, but do have other fantastic programs to give students a jump-start in a career in fashion. Included is the average approximate annual tuition for a Bachelor’s degree, plus some distinctive aspects about each school.

Parsons, The New School for Design
• $40,660
• Alma mater of Marc Jacobs, Jason Wu, Donna Karan, Anna Sui, and Tom Ford.

Fashion Institute for Technology (FIT)
• $6,068 for residents of New York, $16,370 for out-of-state
• Graduates of programs at FIT have appeared on the show “Project Runway.”

Rhode Island School of Design
• $42,622
• Annual surveys show that 70% of graduates from RISD are employed in a job directly related to their major a year after graduation.

Academy of Art University
• $18,840
• The largest accredited private art and design university.
• This university was the only school to show at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York.

Savannah College of Art and Design
• $32,950
• SCAD has restored so many old historic buildings to use for college facilities that they have been recognized by the American Institute of Architects, the Victorian Society of America, the Historic Savannah Foundation, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Pratt Institute
• $38,010
• Pratt was named by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance as one of the best values in private colleges and universities in the country.
• Fashionista ranked Pratt as the #3 design school in the country in 2013

Kent State University
• $9,816 for Ohio residents, $17,776 for non-residents
• Kent State offers a study-abroad program at its facility in the Garment District of New York City for those interested in fashion design and other related fields.

Drexel University
• $43,135
• If accepted to a study abroad program, students can opt to spend a year at the London College of Fashion

Otis College of Art and Design
• $38,300
• Rick Owens and Cynthia Vincent both attended Otis.

Posted in Fashion | Tagged | Comments Off

Money Saving Tips For Garden Designing

Garden designing, often called landscape designing, is of course a big undertaking, and can consume a great deal of time and energy. Professional Garden designers can be very expensive consequently you need to do some serious planning before you go out and hire a professional Garden Designer. Here are some garden designing tips to save you both time and money.

First and foremost you must have a clear idea or vision of the kind of garden you truly wish to have. Here is list of the most popular:

English Gardens promote a style that accentuates harmony between the architecture of the house with the garden. This is often accomplished by using the placement of flowers and plants and borders to accentuate the rhythm of the structure of the house.

Asian Gardens are usually found in smaller backyards to promote peace, health as well as beauty. They often employ evergreens, rocks, rock formations and water features in just the right places to create a feng shui effect.

Woodland Gardens are beautiful and scenic well suited to a house that has a wooded backyard.

Formal Gardens have a style consisting of many perfectly geometrical shapes with straight lines. Everything is orderly and planned, this means the garden design will not tolerate random placement of plants.

Informal Gardens are usually the charming, quaint style you see in Cozy Cottages. In this style Garden Beds have rounded or curved boundaries instead of perfectly straight lines. Unlike the formal garden, the plants are often randomly placed to bump up the charm factor.

Mixture of Formal with the Informal Gardens is the style that often has lovely brick walkways that emanate formality but lead to a circular or curved garden spot which is softer a feature often seen in an informal garden. This arrangement of formal and informal bring to mind the English Garden style but without formal borders.

And my favorite…

Vegetable Gardens where you plant what you love to eat and share with others. This garden type with a bit of imagination and planning can also be built with many of the above styles in mind.

The Style of Your House:

While you plan out your dream garden there’s another very important thing to consider, and that is the style of your home. If you have very formal architecture the charming informal garden may not be properly suited the style of your home. This is just as true if you have a cottage style house it is important to realize that a formal garden may look completely out of place.

Your Lifestyle:

Also take a good and truthful look at your own lifestyle. Do you enjoy spending your spare time caring for numerous beds of plants, trees and flowers which entail seasonal cultivating and pruning? If you love this please plant them.

On the other hand if you prefer spending your free time traveling, going to the park or beach then choose a garden design that gives you what you need or love but make sure that it is relatively suited for easy care.

The Vision of Your Finished Design:

Once you have made the above choices it’s time to diligently think about your finished design. So take a discerning look at your existing landscape and make a list of how you truly want use this piece of land. It is now time to decide what kind of plants you love and want to include. And what features are important to you. In other words, would a barbeque or swimming pool be appropriate? Would you like an area to entertain friends and family? A children’s area for playing? A pond with koi fish and lily pads?

Favorite Place:

Posted in Gardening | Tagged | Comments Off

Google Controversy – Child Porn Ads, Data Retention Laws, and What Congress Plans to Do About It

With questionably-qualified self-interested politicians in charge of all three branches of government, how can we possibly expect the government to make reasonable decisions? We know how foolishly they deal with illegal immigration policies — making decisions for political, rather than practical or just reasons — yet we still respect their opinions on the stories when it comes to cracking down on issues that are seemingly one-sided like the current Google controversy. Thanks to Google news sources, we know that politicians are quick to criticize companies which are trying to do the right thing, but neglect taking action against those who are actually committing the crimes.

The latest Google news is the whole hubbub about predators viewing child pornography on the Internet, which was initiated by congressmen who figured it would be necessary to engage in IP tracking and data retention. While those who follow Google news already know that there is nothing secret about what you do online, long term data retention is a completely new idea and is utterly ridiculous.

Google news shows that granting such power to law enforcement gives them a blank check to look into your data at any time – even after you have terminated your contract with a DSL or cable internet provider and even if you have never done anything wrong. Sure, according to Google news, the law was designed to protect victims of child pornography and aid the cops in apprehending those who actively view and propagate child porn, but why should the rest of the Internet users need to have their website views scrutinized by some FBI agent with nothing but time on his hands.

This leads us to the Google controversy – Google’s supposed, yet largely unproven, profiteering from child pornography websites. According to some SE news sources, these child porn sites have run ads on Google’s AdWords program (potentially without Google’s knowing it). As you can most likely guess, it wasn’t long until it was brought to the attention of a few congressmen who decided to sue Google because the search engine giant apparently “acted negligently and inflicted emotional distress on the public” according to various Google news outlets. Furthermore, as reported by SE news, if Google loses, they will have to pay significant amounts of money to those who filed the lawsuit.

Ultimately, certain congressmen and countless New York lawyers want nothing more out of Google than a couple of hundred million dollars. Now don’t get me wrong here — those who view child porn rightly deserve to be apprehended and do not deserve to be defended – but when it comes to protecting children, the United States Congress only appears to be interested if they can use it to levy a few fines or earn a few more votes. What happened to holding those who actively view the child porn responsible for their actions? Shouldn’t they be the ones having to pay for their crimes instead of the search engine they happened to use at the time?

© Copyright Restricted by author

Mary Murtha

Article may be freely distributed as long as full article, author’s copyright, author’s name, and resource box stays in tac, and the link clickable.

Posted in Law and Issues | Tagged | Comments Off