Carl studied graphic design at college back in 2003 and hasn’t changed career paths since.
At school, Carl wasn’t sure what he wanted to do career-wise, but he knew he enjoyed subjects that allowed him to be creative. He also never considered university but the opportunity just fell into place. Once he graduated, he knew graphic design was the career he wanted to pursue.
We asked him to tell us more about how he has developed his creative career so far.
Choosing to study Graphic Design
“I had to convince my Dad to go to college, he’s a trade man and used to take the mick out of creatives in the 70’s – it was seen as ‘hippy’ and he was mechanical and logical. I had to put a sort of case study together of why I should go. Today it’s easy to jump online and look at career paths. I didn’t know I could earn money from this career, I just enjoyed it”.
“Do something that you love and it will reward you. We will always need people to think of ideas and come up with new things. Everything requires a design”.
Are there any skills and techniques you learned at Chesterfield College that you still use now?
“Chesterfield College taught me that I can’t do anything without a reason. You can’t just do things for the sake of it, you need to do things that have a purpose and a reason.” Carl believes design is about the story of the product or service and how it benefits something or someone.
Part of the course includes presenting to the group on a regular basis. Initially, Carl struggled with this “I did a presentation on the folding scooter so everyone played with that rather than paying attention to me”. Presenting regularly in class improved Carl’s confidence and set him up for the industry as presenting is something he has to do all the time now.
“We did quite a lot of live projects that meant you have to talk to the client. A lot of students miss learning about what happens in the real world. The course at Chesterfield prepares you for working life – an important quality.” Carl worked with a local design company during his time at Chesterfield. Filling in for a role taking maternity leave, Carl gained skills that gave him a true insight into the working world.
Technologies for graphic design have improved a little since 2003
“Things have changed a little since 2003. Back then, graphic design was still pretty hard to find information about. You had to go to the library to get your resources and research, you couldn’t just jump on the internet as you can now. Can you imagine that now?”
Carl is from a little village in Derbyshire, he didn’t have the best school experience, doesn’t see himself as ‘academic’ and he struggled with attention deficiency. Chesterfield College appealed to him because it is creative, he could get ‘stuck in and involved’.
Chesterfield college gave Carl real-life experience of the industry
The course gave Carl a fully rounded experience of what he can create and how he would go about creating it. He experimented with a range of subjects and mediums to truly find out the processes and what he wanted to do going forward in his career.
Carl felt Chesterfield College gave him more industry-specific experience than university did. “The college let people get an idea about what they wanted to do and to adapt their career path accordingly because of the variety of the course content on offer”.
Chesterfield college to Northumbria University to study graphic design
After Carl’s time at Chesterfield, he moved up to Northumbria university. He chose the university because it resembled college. The classes were small, less intense and more intimate, which allowed him to network and have one on one time with his tutors and lecturers. This was something that Carl found beneficial at Chesterfield. He wasn’t just a number, he had a good relationship with both his peers and lecturers and felt as if he could chat with them whenever he needed them. It was accessible and it felt homely.
Working life – what was next?
After university Carl worked for a company that produced baby products in Newcastle on the packaging side of the business. After a while, Carl left and went to Sydney, Australia. Carl’s drive pushed him to get a job there straight away. He had trained for 6 or 7 years so wanted a job in the industry straight away rather than a stop-gap role. He ripped out the design company pages in the phonebook and rang all the businesses until one offered him a job.
Carl gained more and more experience with every role he went into. Carl says “you need to go and see different places, work out what you want to do and what you don’t want to do and then narrow that down. With more career experience, you ask more questions, your confidence builds, and you find out where you want to be”.
After 4 successful years in Australia Carl is now working in London at Landor and Fitch. He mainly works in brand design as he enjoys that the most and he also loves a creative challenge that forces him to use his graphic skills to problem solve and improve processes and businesses.
He believes the people are at the heart of all designs. He strives to create designs that will benefit a person, service or product. According to Carl, “There’s no point in doing something if it is not going to be beneficial for the user”.
“By using your hands to explore creative subjects, such as design, your muscle memory remembers the skills and you will use these skills throughout your career”.
You can’t recreate experiences
Carl believes engagement in design and how something will be interacted with from a creative perspective needs to be considered. “You can’t computerise how something is engaged with or physically felt. You can’t recreate experiences – for example, those experiences you can get from little independent shops.
People can adapt and change constantly. You can’t just rely on one particular skill, it’s got to be a range of skillsets, if not everything would be so boring. ”
Is it important students study creative subjects?
“As an industry yes, we’ll be the only one’s standing after machines take over. You need to study a creative subject if you want to be creative, you need real-world experience though because time moves a lot faster in the real world than the graphic design classroom does. A 3-month project needs doing in 1 week”.
