The fact that I will go the extra mile for my clients is probably the one thing you'd like to know before hiring me. For other minor details, please read on...
Design career
I've been working as a graphic designer since 2005 following a complete career change.
My formal training involved four years of study at Johannesburg's AAA School of Advertising. My design career started out by working as a junior intern gaining experience in an international branding agency called ‘Enterprise IG’ (they have since undergone a name change, and now call themselves The Brand Union). Still staying in the vibrant Johannesburg, I spent three years designing at ‘Lesoba Difference’ – an advertising and marketing agency. During this time span I was lucky enough to be intimately involved in bigger campaigns that stretched over various types of media. It provided a very good overall grounding in agency experience, and allowed me the chance to get my hands dirty with some art direction of photo shoots and the exploration of elaborate print techniques. Being a larger agency, a digital branch existed within the company making it possible for me to gain insight into more technical matters. Having this resource close at hand was invaluable in understanding web-based and screen-based design. Consequently my interest in this sector gained momentum and any of my digital work is backed by a fluent understanding of the capability and limitations of current technology.
And so, in 2007, I literally moved to greener pastures – the United Kingdom. Initially I worked for a small agency in London who then moved out to Theale, Berkshire. They are ‘Ideas Industry’ and afforded me the opportunity to experience small agency life which meant more than merely designing; it involved artworking for print, handling production, and in some cases account handling. During my two years at Ideas Industy, I got to work on numerous projects with some wonderful clients such as Silverstring, CA Technologies, Quantel, Hitachil and the QCDA (Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency). This broad base of hands-on-experience has equipped me with the ideal set of skills needed for working on a freelance basis which I have been doing since 2010.
A take on a perfect client-designer relationship
In 1956, the Russian-born designer Misha Black submitted a paper to the Sixth International Design Conference in Colorado called The Designer and The Client. His comment in the fifties about the relationship between the designer and the client is still relevant today: "I am not suggesting that the influence of the client is necessarily harmful. The opposite is often true. When the client and the designer are in sympathy, they can together produce better work than that of which either alone would be capable." *
Without clients there can be no graphic design – unlike art, the very nature of graphic design is commercial and purpose-driven. And so I believe that a symbiotic relationship based on good listening skills is all important. Of course, the answer is not for designers to merely to do everything client's say, as clients are not always right and need to be challenged when they are wrong – not doing so would be a professional disservice.
* Printed in Looking Closer 3: Critical Writings on Graphic Design (New York: Allworth Press), 1999.
What next? View previous projects completed in collaboration with brave clients.