education

05 Venn & Bars

01:15.8 The education I had at college is very different… to the education that I’ve received here. They’re quite different things but obviously there is still the overarching… stuff that is similar… This is college… the bigger one… ’cause this… a BTEC in Graphics and Illustration… set me up creativity… creativity-wise for life. Whereas… [university] is looking at more the technical and… not business side, but getting ready to go out into the world and stuff. Whereas college didn’t give me any of that, but it gave me my working method, you know, like the direction that I wanted to go in… it’s much bigger. 03:44.0 I think the division of graphic design, when I think back to something one of the tutors here kind of said, if you look at it really, like, logically… it’s words; image; sometimes sound… We did a lot of sound work in college… [whereas] we’re doing mainly typography stuff at the moment.

06:26.0 I always really struggled through college… it was so broad, you know?… Trying to specialise… refining what I do… was difficult for me. And also…motivation. And… also confidence. I’m feeling pretty good at where I am now, though. Motivation is a weird thing: at college I was so, so, so, so motivated. First year [university] really motivated. Second year not at all. And then third year, yeah, I got more motivated. 10:05.2 College was amazing!… I think there’s a real excitement when you’re first finding your creativity…  I did a BTEC that enabled me to… just do anything I wanted. To go from everything to then refine it is a better way to do it, I think, for myself personally, as opposed to starting going very thin and then trying to go larger… It was kind of like life-changing. I know it sounds really clichéd but I came from a born-again boarding school… and I didn’t have a good time there. And then took a chance to do something that I liked and never looked back.

11:37.2 Second year [university]… I wasn’t that motivated… but I still managed to, like, still be coming up with stuff so… in a warped way, a real confidence boost… to know that you can not be working as hard as you could be but still doing stuff that you’re proud of… First year… I had a really tough time personally… within my halls… I had a bit of a dodgy flat… I don’t consider my first year as a highlight because of the other stuff affecting [it]… I did some good work… that I’m still proud of but as a whole it’s kind of a bit… hit and miss. But…I’m going to colour in third year… because it’s going well. 33:08.8 Obviously, like, you develop stuff but I don’t feel I need to work on my kind of working method particularly or… technical skills. It’s more about… third year for me is about…getting ready the portfolio, you know? Being able to make the most of the kind of stuff that the university can offer me… Making contacts is a really big one… I did some work experience to meet people… and that was good and working with a mentor. It’s good just to be meeting people who are already doing the stuff that I want to do… It’s the cherry on top, you know?