Michael C Plaice is a northern based creative director of the design studio Studio.Build. His talk today spoke about his upbringing, as well as causes and influences in his life that have led him towards a career in graphic design.

From the start of the talk it was clear that Michael was not an ordinary designer, his path and love/hate relationship with graphic design has led him to live a dynamic life where he has many lessons to teach, and much knowledge to offer.

I found his passion for typography prevelent throughout his life, from studying album covers in the 1980s as a passion to the typography centered work he and his studio embark on today. He asks us to appreciate the ‘wow’ moments in design and find inspiration from everything in life, and not just everything within graphic design.

Micheal does not belive that pretty graphic design is interesting, and instead belives that everything is ari game, with minimal rules and regulations create the most interesting designers of tomorow. I find truth in this, Especially within creative industries, graphic design is an industry that promotes innovation and dynamism that such the upbringing of these creative must find their own innovative path and employ their own creative techniques. Michael belives that this creates the kind of evocative and visual design that he finds particularly interesting.

A key part of the speak that has been prevalent throughout all of the afterlife talks so far, and that is that forming relationships within the design industry is key to a successful career, not only that forming relationships is vital, but that doing good design for good people is as key. Favours are commonplace within the design industry and play an important part of forming your own design studio. Another key part of Michaels talk is his preference on smaller, tighter workspaces with small groups of good, focussed people that are equally as passionate as the creative director.

Key takeaways from this talk include interesting designers to research such as, Vorne Oliver & Rod Clarke, an urgency to form relationships with design studios around the country, the overflood of graduates in the summer is often frustrating for studios and thus, earlier applications stand a better chance of being a success due to a lower amount of competition. I found Michael’s talk inspiring and useful in my recent influx of passion for typography, serving to only inspire me further to grasp every opportunity and attempt to find inspiration in everything that surrounds me, ensuring to look out for the key ‘wow’ moments in design, then ensuring to employ these interesting and innovative systems in the work that I create, in the hope that I can develop into a more unique and interesting designer.

Studio KOTO

James Greenfield and his studio, Studio KOTO work with companies for branding and re-branding from start-ups. Having heavy involvement in brand development and maintenance. With this being the opening salvo to his afterlife talk, I am very interested in what he has to say. I found his talk both inspiring and relatable with James believing in the ideas over the visuals when designing. This is a point I have come to realise going into my third year, I find that I am starting to focus much more on the research and ideation stages of projects, in order to allow for a greater meaning filled execution.

IDEAS ARE EVERYTHING –

A good brand can be built on good ideas, but just having flashy visuals is not enough to create real, emotional lasting connections with audiences. This point really resonated with me due to my own experience on the course and reflecting on the project that I have found most successful so far. As well as being built on fantastic ideas, James believes that brands should also be a story, not a static collection of branding elements slapped together, btu instead a story and the brands quality should be judged when asking yourself the question, how good is their story? I found this piece of information useful to me, I have done research on brand purpose previously, but to have it said by an industry professional as such as valued point only confirms it within my own design philosophy. James states the key to creating a good brand story is really delving into what the brand means, knowing what they do and how they do it inside and out, so that effective design solutions can be developed.

Some of the clients James and his studio have worked with include, Meatable – Whereby Studio KOTO created for the future, this project was particularly interesting to me as the work had to be placed in a time that doesn’t exist yet, the ability to design for the future shows a clear solid and fool proof approach to design, something that has clearly been cracked over at Studio KOTO.

James considers designers agents of change, but also shares the belief that talking can fast track you to better answers, I fully agree with this and find that communication in every instance, but especially within design is the key to being successful, good clear and confident communication can give you access to others viewpoints and criticisms, something that helps everyone tighten up their design work.

I walk away from this inspiring afterlife session with a question in my mind, who are you? what are your values? I believe that these questions will help to shapes me further as a designer as well as find my place within design.

Maris Latham

Maris Latham is a previous graduate of CSAD, she is currently working for Cowshed in Cardiff.

due to Maris position as a CSAD graduate, I found her talk more relatable than most other afterlife sessions. Her tips and experiences seem very real and born out of experience. she expresses concerns and mentions how it’s okay to not know exactly what you want to do, or where you want to go. This helped me realise that I do not only have the career of a graphic designer available to me and has inspired me to look further afield into related industries, where my communication based degree will still possess transferable skills, even if the job title is not strictly “Graphic Designer”.

Maris’ confidence within her time studying at CSAD was particularly interesting, the fact she dove right in to using type within her FMP, even with limited experience is something that I find myself doing, and it’s reassuring to know that it is often met with positive connotations among industry professionals.

Once again, Maris stressed the importance of preventing burnout as a key factor to having both a successful career, and an enjoyable time. It is vital to have a work/life balance and to note that your entire life cannot be design, you must have hobbies and activities outside of it, or else you risk losing interest and burning out early.

Maris also recommends the book: “Graphic design is mental” Ben Longden

Gavin Leisfield

within Gavin’s talk I found a common theme amongst all the previous afterlife sessions, that being a designer is far more than just design. Putting emphasis on getting out and inspired by everything around you as well as remining determined and hardworking, but also stressed the points that design must remain enjoyable if to avoid fast and deadly burnouts often. Burnout is a feeling I have certainly felt before and with Gavin’s advice I believe it should help me to avoid it more in the future.

Gavin’s asks us to consider if we are happy where we are, as well as stating the important fact that there is always more out there if you aren’t happy with where you are. Gavin has gone through many different job and industry roles and finds that moving around in jobs helps to gain a bigger picture. On the topic of travelling Gavin advise us to get out and travel the world, the experiences and inspiration gained by travelling to other countries is unmatched.

Similar to James Greenfield, Gavin asks us to consider who we are now, and who we want to be. this will help shape long term goals and overall guide your journey to becoming a more rounded and experienced designer.

I found Gavin’s run through of Go Ape very useful, I have done branding projects in the past however to see a live case study with annotations from Gavin made me realise the huge amount of experimentation and research that goes into finding the best branding elements for a client. The sheer number of tiny adjustments made to just the logo marque alone, this matched with user research in order to develop good quality keywords and focus groups. Competitor analysis was also a key part of the research stage, making sure you know not just your clients products, but analysing competitors gives you a better view of the industry as a whole, as well as spotting what holes exist amongst those competitors, and then exploit it.

Gavin also talks about getting the idea, and then breaking it down to the smallest parts possible, then rebuilding it, with the visual language and design approaches attached, I found this very interesting, but surely challenging to do. It does guarantee an engaging and huge understanding of the brief the client has set, but it also means that you will have a plethora of experimentations when the work is being complete, meaning you will have a lot of fallbacks if the client does not agree with your outcomes.

Overall I found Gavin’s talk inspiring and informative, his walkthrough of the Go Ape brief will continue to be of use to me for a long time, a constant document that can be fell back onto whenever I am struggling to fight my way through a design challenge.

A final note from Gavin, that Bolivain food tastes like shit!

Paul Felton & Alex Wooley

I really enjoyed this afterlife session, the focus on meaning as well as multiple interesting projects run throughs kept me engaged the whole time. Common Curiosity are heavily embedded in theoretical and conceptual research long before they even consider creating their own work. This resonated with me, as my love for research sits at the forefront of my designs, I share their view of taking one or two core concepts that have been founded in heavy research, and then relating that back to design. I find that this removes the need for “pretty Graphic Design” with such heavily embedded meaning there is no need for fluffy gradients or strokes, the research is informing the designs, and thus the designs made are true and real, they allow the viewer to relate perfectly and relate not just the colour or the shape of the logo, but the objects/experiences that the branding material is being visually explored.

Paul chooses to pull out a couple of examples, the one I found most interesting was a project on a London brewery, I found this to be a perfect complement to his talks on the necessity of research within graphic designs. the visual language of the brief represented not just the look of barrels and arches, but specific arches and structures that are unique to the brewery itself, this allowed the visual language to tell its own story and made the brand far more interesting than just being a nice colour or looking pretty.

Overall I found this talk very inspiring and interesting, the tips witihn the talk are relatable to my own practice commonly and will no doubt help me shape my future moving forward into graduation.

Gareth Dunt

Within Gareth’s Afterlife session I found his Journey to be the most unique of the afterlife sessions, he talks about his life frankly and this makes him appearing more human and interesting, gaining interest and making me listen to every word he has to say throughout his afterlife session.

Gareth pushes collaboration projects as he believes that the best work is made when varied people come together, and i must agree! from field projects and general life experiences the mixing of talents and industries creates varied and innovative outcomes, and certainly some of the best projects throughout my degree have been working with others who possess different skillsets, whether that is working with clients or with other designers who exist within a different undergraduate.

Another interesting point mad by Gareth was an idea that “it’s better to be interested than interesting”. This mindset helps people to keep working and improving themselves, as well as prevent people from comparing themselves to the people around them too often. Wanting constant inspiration and design ideas seems the key to creating positive designs and all round being more valued as both a person, and a designer.

Gareths porfolio advice for us was also very interesting and useful. His advice is as follows

Less is More!

Make sure your portfolio is designed well in order to tell the stories of your work more efficiently

Create some self initiated projects! they show a passion better than words ever can

Constantly update your portfolio, not leaving everything until it is needed for an interview the day before

Also accept and encourage feedback at every opportunity

There is no need for more than three pages per portfolio project

Jack Renwick

During her time period of talking, Jack Renwick spoke of not only her latest works and careers, but mostly in great length about how her journey from a small child through into becoming an extremely successful and well known graphic designer came to be. As well as explaining how even growing up during a time and place where graphic design was not yet known as a subject area, how alternatives can be found to make your way to ideal career choice. Jack originates from Glasgow and has worked on a huge variety of projects over the past 20 years for clients including Amnesty International, British Heart Foundation, eBay, BBC, Nokia, Royal Mail and Stella McCartney and received recognition from most of the world’s most prestigious awards. Discovering that graphic design was something that could be taken as a career later in life than most discover, then eventually being let into Art school where she recieved qualifications neccesary to begin working for others. However shortly after deciding to take the leap to freelance and starting her own design company aptly named “Jack Renwick Studios”. She now works with 9 designers in London.

Jack encourages everyone to display their work, even when they don’t; think it works, considering how others may find it useful, or, with a different pair of eyes may be able to relate it to something else and solve an important design problem. Getting under the skin of briefs and doing your homework on projects, clients and briefs is clearly as important as making the designs themselves, as it seems you can; t make successful and meaning filled outcomes without first learning everything there is to learn about that brief/client.

I found Jack to be a freindly but confident and innovative designer, her life in design has be carved through years of determination and hard work. Coming from a time and place where graphic design was much smaller than it is now, she has managed to place hersefl as a creative director of her successful studio, where she has a team that clearly appreciate her massively along with everything she does.