[kerham]

Hello,

First of all, I'd like to apology for posting in English, but my German language command is quite weak at the moment, and I am not yet ready to use it in writing.

Secondly, I hope I am posting in the correct section of the forum.

The problem: I live in Romania and I work for 7 years now as DTP. Sometime in future (~1 year from now) I plan to move to Germany, for some personal reasons. Of course, in the meantime, I am taking some intensive classes of German. What I'd be interested in is, which are the possibilities of education in this domain in Germany? In Romania there is no such thing as professional education for DTP (which I understand is translated as Mediengestalter in German, hope I am not wrong ), and one can learn only by effectively entering the profession as junior/trainee with some minimum knowledges of the programs (Adobe, Macromedia, etc.) and learn from there.

Now, given my interest into moving in Germany, what is your opinion? Is my working experience enough to qualify for employment or I must follow some sort of school? If a certification/education form is mandatory, such courses can be taken in an official superior school (like, low frequency classes in the evening), or is some sort of short length course in a private company specialized in training in this domain?

Oh, also, in terms of language mastery, what would be the recommended level for practice of this job? If I know correctly, for admission in an university the necessary certification would be C1, the situation is similar here?

Thank you for your attention and I'd be really grateful for some answers

Viele Grüße,

kerham

*moved to the correct forum section by radschlaeger - good luck!*

[ChrisKam]

I suppose that very much depends on your portfolio - working for 7 years as DTP can mean virtually anything. If you could show some examples of your work and demonstrate what "minimum knowledge" of the programs you mentioned means, I'm certain you could get some qualified answers. I myself am neither a mediengestaler nor do I know very much about the requirements, but other users here certainly do so.

[kerham]

First of all, thanks for your reply.

I was mainly interested if the employers in Germany are considering the diploma a "must" or what comes first is a portofolio/eventually a hands-on test.

And indeed 7 years meant a very wide range of projects/clients/experiences. My main activities were building paths/masks for various images (if needed, of course), retouching, color correction, modification of fonts where needed (to include Romanian characters), checking the spelling, the overprint, checking and applying corporate IDs, anything from meshes of 400sqm to brochurses or business cards, doing the DTP for the BTL communication of a worldwide telecom operator (starts with a v, ends in "one", no advertising meant ), working the images and/or layout of two national-represented retailers' catalogs, etc. Pretty much the middleman between artdirector and prepress.

As for portfolio, didn't built one yet, was thinking at some small neat website but didn't found the time so far.

Didn't intended to bore anyone with too many details, was just looking into the issue of the diploma's importance versus proven experience.

Thanks for your time

[jungundverbraucht]

working in dtp in germany, a good portfolio/cv is worth a lot more than a mediengestalter-diploma.