Are design and advertising really separate disciplines?

My partner and I are studying Graphic Design BA courses at Staffordshire University. We have been contacting a number of design groups and advertising agencies regarding graduate employment, in the process of which many of the leading agencies have been more than helpful and their responses positive.

However, one reply was less than obliging, condemning our discipline as design when the company in question is an ad agency, advising that in the future we target more ‘appropriate’ agencies. Well, we apologise for putting the words advertising and design in the same sentence.

Are these disciplines separate? Do we have to narrow our field and ambitions? Our course has a strong advertising emphasis, but still constitutes graphic design.

Lisa Hastings

lisa.hastings1@ntlworld.com