The Impact of SPD Alumni on My Learning Experience - Visual Marketing Career
This blog post is again a continuation of the SPD alumni talks focusing on one of the speakers, the graduate Alice Burke who works for "Tenn Ltd" which is a bespoke window dressing design company.
Alice Burke focused on digital print throughout her studies at UWTSD. The opportunity to work for "Tenn Ltd" came up with the lecturers at the university, and being familiar with Alice's work they passed on her details as they thought she may be interested in the job. She started working as a Product Assistant, helping to source materials for the company and worked her way up to the title Project Manager, which allowed her to take a stronger lead in the company, working directly with clients and putting together her own briefs based on the information from these clients. "Tenn Ltd" works in Visual Merchandising, which means that they design windows or installations for brands to help sell products. Some examples of their clients would include "Topman", "Arcadia", "Diesel", "M&S" as well as lots of smaller companies. They mainly work with brands who have shops based in London, as these flagship stores have the most funding for their windows and advertising, as London is a larger city and therefore has a much larger customer market. They also have a few clients who are not fashion based such as "Paul Bakeries". This was really interesting to learn about as this career area is not one you may think of when someone mentions textiles!
Alice works with many different materials such as cement, acrylics, wood, metals and electrical mechanisms such as lighting and movement. These are all materials she has had to teach herself about, as they are not included on the Surface Pattern Design course, this shows you have to be open to work with things you are unfamiliar with! The company "Tenn Ltd" has expanded since she has been working for them, and now covers stores and clients in Europe and America as well as the UK.
I couldn't see myself in her position, I think although there are so many cool and interesting things that she can do I would prefer a career option that allows me to be creative but focusing on textiles and paper, rather than the big extreme concrete and metal design. With a more textile based career I'd be able to branch into a few different things but mostly stick to what I know best!
