These days, I’m cutting my teeth at Clear Design and Brand Strategy, down in Fitzroy. Overall, it’s a great experience! It’s full of all the challenges you would expect as a Junior Designer trying to understand the industry. Luckily, I have a strong and supportive team of people behind me ready to answer the tedious questions I may have. I love the weekly meetings we have (Aptly titled D-d-d-design Talking), where we just talk about design, and let out the design nerd the rest of society doesn’t quite understand. There’s a great energy you don’t get working alone.
Internships are invaluable. It’s good to scare yourself once in a while to make sure you’re alive. If you have the resources—do more than one internship. It’s your time to jump around from studio to studio without a bound contract—to understand further what kind of environment you do like, and don’t like. The people you meet, will also become future mentors and contacts, burger buddies.
1. David Eggers—Due to his radical way of thinking of the ‘magazine’ as a beautiful ‘book.’ He worked with discardable and unconventional content, released it in beau-tiful compediums. Each issue was unique masterpiece on its very own. To tap into his mind, would be amazing.
2. Adrian Shaughnessy—His insight and experience into self-publishing would be fascinating and something I’d love to learn the ropes about.
3. Alex Trochut—Not many people can do what he does. He is someone I would also consider a master of his craft. He’s young, fresh, embodies a lot of the values of our current generation of designers but has also worked very hard.
1. You’re not that great. Work hard, learn.
2. Take frequent walks away from the screen.
3. Don’t take criticism personally.
4. Things won’t get easier, but you’ll get better.
5. Don’t use headphones at a studio—no, not yet.
6. Come down to #TDKtuesdays and get acquainted. ;)
*Bonus* BE YOURSELF. I REPEAT. YOURSELF. IT’S TRUE. IT’S ALL TRUE.
I’m flying off to Fabrica, over in Treviso, Italy! I’ll be there learning what I can, and then not worrying too much about what the future holds. I hope to explore self-publishing at some point, political design and web. I think it’s time to get onto web. In my personal life, I just want to love and learn Chinese.
If a larger portion of designers could use our design capabilities to:
—Question anything that is blindly accepted by the masses.
—Target social and environmental injustices.
—Encourage edifying cultural behaviours then there’d be a lot more happy designers and happy non-designers.