A big congrats to Dominique Vine, one of our 30 TDK Awards’ winners for 2018. A Monash University graduate from Melbourne, their work was chosen by Tad from Carpenter Collective: “From the start I really responded to how the designer presented their work. Very simple, clean and straight forward. The decision to use black only enhanced their bold colors and strong typography choices. Several projects really stood out, but Dominique’s overall strength through-out the book was typography. From the ‘Dreams Archive’ project where we see the type heavily manipulated to the smart type pairings on the “Abbotsford Convent Identity” project, this designers understanding of type far exceeds expectations”. We asked Dominique to answer a few questions for next years TDK Awards’ hopefuls.
What are some of your earliest creative memories and what lead you into design?
I feel like I just always gravitated towards art when I was young, I remember doing after school art classes with my friends and watching Art Attack religiously. For VCE (Year 12) I studied Vis Comm, Studio Arts and Media, which are three folio subjects and I loved it. Despite all this, for some reason I thought I wouldn’t be good enough to study graphic design at university, so regardless of it being the one thing that I really wanted to do, I went down the journalism path first. It wasn’t for me, and this became apparent literally after the first day. I applied to study Communication Design at Monash after the first semester and it was the best decision I could have made.
Any passion projects/collabs you would like to share?
I was fortunate enough in my last semester at university for one of my projects to be chosen as the 2018 identity for the Melbourne Cinémathèque. The Melbourne Cinémathèque is a not-for-profit film society which shows films in their original format at ACMI. Two of my teachers helped and supervised me and now the identity is up and running all year long, which is pretty cool.
What has been some of the biggest lessons you’ve learnt along the way?
Asking your peers for constructive feedback on your design is invaluable. Hiding your work away from your friends only hinders your designs from the broader perspective that it ALWAYS needs.
In saying this, don’t take their criticism personally; just because your design might suck, doesn’t mean you do. Sometimes the best thing to happen is for a project to fail.
The more you do the better you become.
Your teachers have incredible insight into the design industry, so try and engage with them as much as possible! The more you try, the more they give. Go to class.
Try to not let the voice in your head saying you aren’t good enough stop you from doing something you love.
What/who are your top five places or people to follow online to get inspiration?
- Studio Laucke Siebein
- TM Research Archive
- Studio Katja Gretzinger
- Re:collection
- Here Be Monsters – A podcast that has nothing to do with design, but the ideas and topics that this podcast talks about are pretty weird and it gave me a lot of inspiration in my final year at university.
Where to find Dominique Vine online.
Website: dominiquevine.com
Instagram: @dominiquevinedesign
