While searching for design inspiration and opportunities to further immerse ourselves in the creative world, we stumbled across the ‘New Designers’ graduate design show on an online list of upcoming design events. We were fortunate enough to receive funding from the department to make attending this event possible and are hugely grateful for this opportunity.
Entering the main room of the degree show, we were instantly enveloped in design all around us, with university stalls housing recent graduates’ work. The stalls exhibited examples from several creative disciplines, including but not limited to product, interior, illustrative, and graphic design. Each student was standing by their stall ready to tell visitors all about their project and their creative process which was a great opportunity and allowed us to hear a diverse way of approaching design.
After walking around the more general design area of the main floor, we headed towards the more specific graphic design and visual communications area. Getting to see not only several examples of graphic design work, but also several creative ways of displaying their work was invaluable and incredibly inspiring (especially when it comes time to have our own degree show). Some stalls such as Swansea College of Art used a combination of table and wall space (figure 1), while Nottingham Trent University opted for an ‘open briefcase’ style of display consisting of loose pages of a printed portfolio (figure 2). In addition to the printed portfolios, the stall also had examples of printed work such as books, leaflets, and posters dotted across the walls creating more of an immersive experience when viewing the work (figure 3).
Seeing such a range of approaches to typography in graphic work was also fascinating. Seeing some examples in which the typographic treatment could be improved reiterated the importance of studying this discipline academically and in depth at Reading.
Towards the end of our visit, we attended a hugely impactful talk by Chris Margerison who took us on his journey from graphic design student to motion graphic designer at Playstation (figure 4). He emphasised the point that when advertising yourself as a young creative to an employer, work ethic and strong conceptual skills can outweigh the importance of the overall ‘look’ of a project. His honesty about his journey and enthusiasm for graphic design resonated with us both enough for us to approach him after his talk and ask for his contact details to invite him to be a potential future speaker of Baseline Shift.
These kinds of events are hugely important to us growing as designers and young creatives in general. Interacting with people in the design sphere and having in-depth conversations about graduates’ creative processes allowed us to further develop our soft skills and gain inspiration from those beyond our department. Being immersed in so much creativity and passion for design fills us with excitement for both of our futures in graphic design.
– Tommy Molnar and Amirah Yasin