00:40.3 Education kind of seems key to me… It’s one big circle… with… sections [that]… intersect… There’ll be a piece of methodology that would go with… professionalism. 05:38.1 [That’s] turning up on time, making sure you respect the tutors and they respect you… I think everybody’s been at loggerheads with certain aspects of the course or certain aspects of tutors. And you just have to try and work and get round that… get over it and make it kind of work for you. Um, there’s also things like encouragement with dissertation. We’re on a design course and we don’t like writing [laughing] and everybody’s finding that very difficult. There’s hoops you have to jump through to get the degree.

The most important aspect is…creativity, concept, and ideas… It’s obviously vital to learn the tools, but anybody these days can pick-up how to learn PhotoShop. That does not make them a graphic designer… if it’s a bad idea …it might look professional, it might be good, but it’s never going to be great. 08:06.6 [Methodology] is how you approach… any project… make all these sketches… research… ideas. Development. Refinement. And production… Being able to stick to that’s sometimes very hard because you get one idea in your head that you think’s fantastic when you hear a brief for a project. You just want to run with it.

10:00.8 Challenges: I’m drawing an angry little mean face… [as my] anxiety… it’s not just something that happens every so often to you or something you can just control… All you can do is best manage it… And there is no telling when it flairs up, and it is a daily… battle just to keep it at a certain level. Some days it’s okay. And some days are really tough, and you can have a deadline, you’ve got things to do, you… I have to find a way around that. I suppose the challenge is of, like, wanting to clear the bureaucracy and the hoops you’ve got to jump through. They were very, very difficult to get around… a straight line, a zigzag line and…yeah, curves running round, through… hoops… [but] you have to try and make it work for yourself. Even… when you don’t like the subject, you don’t like how it’s being taught, you don’t like the brief’s guidelines… the previous course into this one, was very much all like that. It really stifled everybody’s creativity. That course taught us tools. This course is teaching me how to be creative. It’s hard to maintain a level of professionalism sometimes. Especially if you feel very strongly about something.

13:58.7 The programmes that you use are huge. All the Adobe software is massive… You could spend the rest of your life trying to learn. You’ve to look at it as if you’re, if you’re using the program, you’re probably learning something new every day, if you’re using it right…that’s not the great challenge. You can do that in your own time… It is a problem when it comes to production and it does get frustrating. But it’s not… difficult. You can always find… There’s always Youtube videos or tutorials. I’m busily drawing… a small brick wall… Because when you get the creativity block, you can spend as long as you like trying to get at the best options – it’s best to go away, and come back… whether that’s in half an hour or half a day… to that particular project. Unless you’ve got a deadline… But generally if you don’t have time, the best option – always walk away because you can go for a cup of tea and come back and just instantly go: “that’s wrong, that’s wrong, this is what to do”.

15:45.7 Highlights… when you’ve had some real challenges with your tools and how to do something, you end up being able to do it, and you produce it well, and you feel like giving yourself a pat on the back. Almost like a primary school teacher giving a gold star. For creativity… it’s when you get the idea and you see it through and you get good feedback from tutors and peers… and you’re happy with it, too, is the most important thing. ‘Cause feedback’s all very well but if you’re happy with it, it’s the best feeling that you’ve actually produced something really good that you would even put in your own house, but you don’t because it would be ostentatious! I think I’m just going to go very simple and do a jumping stickman. A big smile on his face because he’s very happy with the idea. If you get the mix of the great idea and… if the methodology has just naturally worked and it hasn’t had to be forced… that is a good sense of satisfaction with those two combined… when those two pick up and everything goes well like that, it’s a better feeling than just getting a creative idea. You know? When you’ve done everything and it’s just fallen into place, it feels like a natural project… it feels like a natural brief and a natural outcome … And then…you’re fairly happy… you’re not stressing about your work, you know that it’s going well.

29:26.7 [Graphics education is] like a massive kind of trumpet. Or horn. Because I feel like I started very, very small so I’ll draw a stick man there. I feel… like I’ve grown with all the experience that I’ve got… Before any of this, I wouldn’t have felt confident enough to even critique a painting… even if it was a friend’s or in a gallery… when there’s nobody there… Now I feel confident that not only could I do something like dictating my opinion, it’s valid and it’s informed. I’m [older]. First did my first course when I was seventeen, eighteen or something… got a full-time job and thought the money was brilliant. Education wasn’t. Many years down the line… I had a bit of a quick time with everything, and when I first found that I had anxiety – very insecure at the time. I got some help for it. But I knew that I couldn’t go back to work. It just…it wasn’t going to be possible. [I thought] ‘What do you like? What do you love?’, and… I applied for a foundation degree… I got in and… I was very proud. So personally it was very difficult for me get into.