Reviews

London Design Professionals

The majority of young, educated designers are made aware that the importance of industry contacts and placement within agencies is invaluable. Communication with smaller local design consultancies is as vital to impressionable graphic design students, as is communication, if one is lucky enough, with the much larger design units.

A select number of institutions are granted access to larger commercial design and advertising agencies; Foundation Degree Graphic Design has the upper hand in this particular area. Dedicated tutors ‘go the extra mile’ to build bridges with well known professionals, resulting in the courses’ students having the best contact at their disposal.

Foundation Degree Graphic Design receives the opportunity of travelling to London, allowing them to meet design and advertising agencies such as: BMB, AdamAndEve, Creature, Pentagram and McCann, formally McCann Ericsson. All of these agencies work with big established clients spanning from Subway and Cobra Beer to Virgin and John Lewis; contracts worth millions of pounds, some over a number of years with one client.

Students on the course are urged to engage and question the professionals they meet to aid their own personal learning. Student: Professional enquiries are presumed to take place within client meeting rooms yet the majority of questions are posed within an informal environment with a select few designers, namely Trevor Beattie of BMB, Domenic Lippa and Leah Speakman of Pentagram London and Stewart Holmes of BloodyBigSpider, whom go on to communicate with students further.

Therefore, as an individual or with an educational institution, if the opportunity arises to converse and ‘pick the brains’ of household names within Graphic Design; it should be grabbed by the horns and used to the full potential to learn from some of the greatest designers of the 21^st century.