The Impact of SPD Alumni on My Learning Experience - Stationary and Illustration Careers
Throughout the start of 2017, during my second year studying at UWTSD we had the opportunity to listen to SPD alumni speak about their experiences since graduating from the course. I'd like to reflect on some of these speakers and explain how their insight and advice will help me during my last year and after I too graduate from the degree course.
The following two speakers I'd like to review are Ciara Long and Catrin Jones, they have both gone into card and stationary design work since graduating however Ciara works as a freelance designer and Catrin is employed by the company "Hallmark".
Ciara Long graduated with a BaHons and was picked up by the company "Tigerprint" to do an internship over the summer. From that she decided to return to SPD and complete an Mdes course to further her creative studies. After graduating with an Mdes, Ciara gained a placement at "Moonpig" to design some illustrative placement pieces for cards and gift wrap. She also managed to snap up a placement at "Lemon Ribbon", designing an array of items such as pajamas, children's clothing and stationary. She advised us to take on as many placements and internships as we can, to find out what we liked or had genuine interest in. She said that she wouldn't have ever thought she'd be working in such an illustrative drawing style until she worked at these placements, which again goes to show that our paths in Surface Pattern Design can change drastically as we progress. Ciara now works as a freelance artist at "Moonpig"," Lemon Ribbon" and "Clinton Cards".
Freelance essentially means that the person is self employed. Ciara gave a lot of information about how this works, we would sign a contract and be commissioned to do a brief. This, to me, seems like a very viable option for the future, the only downside to being self employed would be that payment can be quite few and far between due to only being paid once the products sell.
Catrin Jones made contacts throughout her time studying the Surface Pattern Design course with "Tigerprint" and "M&S". Both of these contacts were made through live briefs completed along with her SPD peers. From the brief with "Tigerprint" she won a two week placement at the company. After completing this placement, the company decided to keep her on as a freelance artist because they liked her design work, this kind of thing can be really great but not everyone will win placements, so Catrin really emphasised keeping positive and applying to work placements and internships with lots of companies to keep options open. For the "M&S" live brief Catrin won a month placement, but asked the company if she could stay on for an extra month after finishing as she really enjoyed the experience and wanted to get more professional opinions on her design work. After these placements she was contacted by "Hallmark" for an illustration position, "Hallmark" knew about her work from her previous placement with "Tigerprint", which just goes to show how important making contacts throughout your degree is!
Working at "Hallmark", Catrin gets to design with a lot of licensed companies such as Peter Rabbit and Disney. I thought that was really interesting as I thought it would just be cutting and pasting existing images and drawing a few little additions, but she gave examples of some of her work and it was so much more interesting than just a five minute Photoshop job! She draws with mixed media such as pen, watercolour, pencil and then moves her imagery to Illustrator or Photoshop to clean them up.
Another thing Catrin advised to remember is that even though I am completing a Surface Pattern Design degree, I may be asked to venture into graphic design, advertising, styling, photography or other crafts, and the best thing to do when asked to work in these fields is to just say "Yes!". It allows you to gain skills in different areas and, who knows, you might enjoy it and decide that is the path you would like to follow! With this in mind, collaboration is a very important thing whilst still studying in university. It broadens your view of the creative world and prepares you for working in all sorts of design placements.
