Making It: Cardiff School of Art and Design Alumni magazine

MAKINGIT

CONTENTS PAGE No

3 .................................... PAUL JOHNSON 5 ...................................... LYDIA MEEHAN 7................................... GARETH McNEIL 9 ................................ INGRID MURPHY 11 ................... MEIRION GINSBURGH 13 ...................... JULIA RICHARDSON 15 ................................. JOSH SPINDLER 17................................. LAURA SORVALA FRONT COVER Gideon Petersen, Sculptor, with Jacob Bowen, with their installed sculpture of the University’s Crest.

INSIDE FRONT COVER Portrait of Sir William Goscombe John (1860-1952) by ROILOS, George (1867 - 1928).

By kind permission of the National Museums of Wales.

CREDITS Copywriting: Vikki Hutton Photography: Mal Bennet, CSAD, Cardiff Met Design: Sarah Garwood, Corporate Design Team, Cardiff Met

19 ................................. AMANDA AGYEI 21 ............................... VICTOR HAGGER 23 ...............................CLARA WATKINS 25 ..................... CHARLIE CHARLICK 27 ..................................... NICOLE MILES 29 ................................. ALEX JOHNSON 31 ............................... ALEX McCARTHY 33 .............................. DAVID EMANUEL

There are some disturbingly false assumptions about the career trajectory of art and design graduates. Perhaps the most annoying, because of its sheer persistence, is that our graduates are somehow duty-bound to leave behind three passionate stimulating years of creating, exploring and making things and fit into a nice nine to five job that conforms to an all pervading stereo-type of what is or isn’t, proper graduate employment. Without this, they and their education are deemed to have fallen short in some way.

We would beg to differ and the evidence of this collection of essays gives an insight into just how extraordinary our graduates are. To turn all of this on its head, art and design graduates are people who make their own opportunities, whether this is on their own or in large organisations. They are more likely to be people who run against the grain of the ‘norm’ and, through doing so, situate themselves to make a genuine difference in whatever it is they do.

The sheer guts of these savvy people are what marks them out. They have no desire to starve in a garret and have no expectation that in some Macawber-like way something will ‘turn-up’ and land in their laps. Instead they make their opportunities and will move heaven and earth to achieve their ambitions. That might mean holding down all kinds of jobs, menial and otherwise, as they build their body of work, make their connections and deliver their projects. It can be a long road, but most of them make it nevertheless. We’re proud of them.

It is the nature of many Universities to celebrate the success of those alumni who have reached the status of being ‘household names’. CSAD has a few of these. Arguably, the most influential of our alumni is Sir William Goscombe John (1860-1952), leader of the ‘New Sculpture’ movement, a significant force in the late nineteenth century cultural revival in Wales, whose work is most frequently known through his war memorials. To his name can be that of the cartoonists and illustrators, Joseph Morewood Staniforth (1863 -1921) and Leslie Gilbert Illingworth (1902-79), painter Ernest Zobole (1927 –1999), the award winning film production designer Brian Savegar (1932 –2007) and the fashion designer David Emmanuel (1952-).

Importance is a relative quality. Notwithstanding the School’s association with celebrity, the fact is that, over a period of 150 years, its thousands of graduates have enriched the world with their creativity; quietly, emphatically, but with little celebration. They have been the teachers, designers, makers, architects and artists whose inspiration has made the kind of difference that drives forward the qualities of our lives.

We know something of the first generation of students in Cardiff Art School. We know that they came to improve their skills and hence their opportunities and that they undertook their classes in central Cardiff at the end of a day’s work.

They were benefiting from a Government initiative that over a forty-year period in the nineteenth century purposefully established, maintained and enhanced art education in art schools through out the UK, primarily to ensure that British industry could remain competitive, especially with the French. Regardless of a central curriculum, the scope of training in the UK art schools varied to some degree in response to local economic need.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, because of the docks, Cardiff was a boom-town, with an emergent middle class whose needs were met by both retail development and the kind of new housing that lifted aspirations whilst deepening the class divide. It followed that the first generation of Cardiff Art School’s students were developing drawing and design skills that would lead to employment in the construction industry. Today, with their designs for fireplaces and chimney decoration, they would be on either our Architectural Design and Technology or our Product Design Programmes. We recognise them and believe they would recognise the commitment and drive of our current students.

Here are the names of the Cardiff Art School Prize winners from the first ten years of the School, from 1866: Basset Jones, TH Riches, W Coe, H C Harris, Edward Seward, William Bidgood, M E Foster, Miss E E South, R S Boyer, E C Morgan, and R S Boyer.

We know that E C Morgan, particularly, attended classes on three evenings a week, walking five miles each way, through winter and spring. He won the silver Science medal for his drawing. We salute him and them, and all our graduates. They are made of stern stuff.

Professor Gaynor Kavanagh Dean, Cardiff School of Art & Design Cardiff Metropolitan University

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Above: Hammersmith Apollo, London

Above: Bristol Old Vic

www.gds.uk.com

PAUL JOHNSON When Paul Johnson graduated from CSAD as a mature student of Architectural Design and Technology, he faced a choice between two specialist areas to pursue: historical buildings or lighting.

BSc (HONS) ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY 2006

“But they’re quite different, aren’t they?” I ask, a little confused.

swimming pools, orangeries – everything you can imagine.”

“Yeah, they’re totally different disciplines,” he replies with a laugh, his frankness amusing me. “I just enjoyed lighting and I liked old buildings… It was going to be one of the two.”

When the recession hit, and work slowed up, Paul other fascination – lighting – came back into focus.

When I learn what he does now – a truly unique role combining his knowledge of both – I briefly entertain the question of whether Paul may have ever been tempted to make it look like part of some grand plan, rather than a happy coincidence after a lot of hard work.

But I sense he’s not a showy person who’d like to dress up the details. He’s someone who doesn’t have a job title – just “I’m the architectural lighting guy…” – and who has to be asked about the projects I’d have forgiven him for namedropping (from the Old Vic and Hammersmith Apollo to Wembley Arena and Sadler’s Wells). Even then, the only credit he’ll take is as the man with a hard hat and a yellow vest on over a suit, “putting crosses on everything with a marker pen so the electricians will know where it’s all got to go.” Everything is understated, and lined with good humour.

Yet it was a serious decision to step out of a career in graphic design, in which Paul had been rising through the ranks at pace. “I’d done my HND at UWIC and spent a number of years working in graphic design”, he explains – but something was amiss.

“I’d always had this feeling of wanting to do something with architecture. I’d hankered after the idea for such a long time that I realised maybe this was the moment to dig my heels in and commit to doing it.”

He got in touch with a friend who had started a company called GDS, neither knowing then the impact that collaborating would go on to have.

“There had been all these discussions about making wirelessly controlled LED lights work like a traditional tungsten light bulb. GDS had the products and the ideas but they didn’t have the skills to integrate them into buildings. That’s where I could come in, with architectural and design ability to take over where the guys were already selling the products.”

That was three years ago, at which point GDS were gaining more of a reputation in the theatre world, before – as Paul puts it – “we realised we had something special.”

“We were the only company in the world that could do lights like we do and control them like we do,” he explains.

Now they have projects the world over, and Paul gets to treat as his office exceptional venues such as Sadler’s Wells, Wembley Arena, and the Lyceum theatre. He recently returned from Ghana, where he was working on a church which hosts 25,000 people.

But the project he’s proudest of? Much closer to home.

After almost a decade on the career ladder, Paul reenrolled at the newly-named CSAD as a mature student.

“It was huge step, and it was hard-going,” he admits. “The thought of not achieving was too much; I cancelled everything outside of studying to achieve what I had set myself to do.”

“The Bristol Old Vic,” he tells me, where he was brought in for the redesign. “The location of all the house lights, the gallery front fittings – that was me going around with a pen marking everything out, designing it in 3D first, locating everything; then I’m there with a hard hat on and bright yellow vest over a suit putting crosses on everything so the electricians know where it’s all got to go.”

“It was odd,” he remembers, “after graduating, to be sitting on the other side of the interview table again.”

“I loved that process,” he tells me, still chuffed (and understandably so), “and it looks fantastic.”

Paul’s first job in architecture saw him working on Georgian manor houses in Bath with Watson Bertram & Fell. “It was a very steep learning curve!” he laughs. “I was working alongside the director, doing contracts, documentation; designing; extractions, frontages,

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“We do stuff everywhere now; America… Australia… but it’s Old Vic, you know? There’s something special about that place.”

“Yeah…” he adds, thinking aloud, “I’m really proud of that.”

Below: Lydia studying

Above: A collage of Lydia's grandmother's belongings

Above: 'She used to be a scream' – Video work inspired by Lydia's grandparents' golden wedding anniversary

LYDIA MEEHAN The making of every great story is having an ending, jumping back to the beginning, and unfolding the middle in such a way that the outcome fits just perfectly. What’s endearing about talking to 23-year-old Lydia is that, as much as she says the past couple of years have come by surprise, to the reader it feels inevitable that she’d find herself in exactly this role.

“I never imagined myself going into community work,” she tells me, “but I really enjoy working with people every day, talking through ideas and being creative.”

Arriving at CSAD to study Fine Art in 2010, Lydia envisaged three years dedicated solely to painting.

Instead, she found inspiration in three-dimensional pieces; conceptual work; and people – all of which would wonderfully frame the opportunities in her next chapter.

“It’s strange; the transition between what you think you want to do when you arrive, and what your eyes are then opened up to,” she says. “I reached a point where I felt I couldn’t express my ideas through painting, so I began working more conceptually focusing on ideas; writing and thinking about things and how they made me feel.”

With newfound vision, Lydia made a successful application for the Dulcie Mayne Stephens Memorial Trust travel bursary and set off to Glasgow for a short trip which would prove a pivotal moment.

“I think it taught me that I needed time to appreciate a single piece of art. I tend to rush around and look at a lot of things as I have such a broad spectrum of interests,” she says, “but in those few days in Glasgow I was looking at just two pieces of art by one specific artist – Karla Black.”

“That was amazing; the things you learn from taking that time, listening to other people’s observations, thinking about the use of space and architecture and how that reflects upon the work.”

By the time her third year came around, Lydia had seen her installation work featured in an exhibition; she was interning for new initiative The Attic Galley; and she had taken up a place on the degree show committee – all this, in addition to her academic work.

After graduation, she became a Project Co-ordinator for a community art project and a facilitator for visual arts in primary schools. Later, when she took on the additional role of co-ordinating volunteers for Cardiff’s Made in Roath festival, Lydia found herself back at CSAD. “I spent a day there getting people excited about the festival and signing people up, when I met a colleague from Cardiff Met’s Centre of Student Entrepreneurship.”

Thirty minutes after Lydia learned they had a vacancy for someone to look after Launch Pad, their enterprise

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BA (HONS) FINE ART 2013 society, she was sending off her CV. During a presentation in which she was expected to focus on how to run Launch Pad in a way which would involve more students in enterprise activity, Lydia instead gave the spotlight to the curriculum and the degree show; “It was something they weren’t really looking for,” she says, “but they liked it.” It secured her a paid internship in which she ultimately became responsible for strengthening relationships at CSAD and inspiring students to get involved in extra-curricular activities.

“It would have been nice to have stayed longer,” she reflects. “If I could go back to studying at the art school, I would in a second. You have to appreciate everything you have while you’re there; the space, the people, the freedom to direct your own projects… the tech support!”

“And the career advice,” she adds. “Not many people utilise the career services, but I couldn’t have got here without them.”

‘Here’ is the Wales Millennium Centre, where Lydia has recently taken up a one-year, paid placement as a Community Engagement Assistant – an exciting and varied role tapping into Lydia’s artistic background, appreciation of space, and her natural ease with people.

“Today, for example,” she tells me, “I’ve been setting up for a children’s workshop, researching Chinese New Year, talking to a theatre director, brainstorming ideas for Roald Dahl celebrations in 2016, and having meetings about the centre’s five-year strategy plan.”

“There’s so much that I’m interested in,” she says. “But what I think I love the most is seeing the effect that art has on people; particularly people who wouldn’t necessarily get involved with it otherwise.”

Later this year, she’ll have the opportunity to take up three placements; one in Wales, one UK-based, and one international. “It’s as much about my professional development as it is bringing back better practice to the Centre,” she explains.

Ultimately, Lydia would like to balance the sort of role she has now with some time to dedicate to her own practice. And as she speaks with equal passion on the subject of both, I’m sure she’ll be successful; with great stories, after all, a perfect ending leaves a hint of a sequel.

Above: Joseph Joseph adjustable dish rack

Above: Joseph Joseph waste separation unit

Above: Mothercare Myhi highchair

GARETH McNEIL Before my conversation with Gareth McNeil, I’d never thought about how people wash-up dishes in Japan. “Design is really all about the people,” he tells me. “It’s not just about the product, it’s behaviours and attitudes.”

BA (HONS) PRODUCT DESIGN 2003

Currently a Product Design Manager for the iconic Joseph Joseph contemporary kitchenware company – with products being sold in 102 markets worldwide – 33year-old Gareth explains that globalisation has been one of the biggest changes to the industry he’s known for over a decade.

Gareth sought out summer placements whilst he was studying, and the impression he’d left with lecturers meant his name was put forward when Alloy, then one of the top 5 Product Design consultancies in the UK, contacted the school looking for graduates to join the ranks.

So what does it mean to have to think, and work, on a truly global scale? “Even though I work for a UK business, we have to deliver products which work across different global markets,” says Gareth. “So, launching a new dish rack, for example, we have to think about the fact that people wash up differently in the US than they do in the UK, and it’s different again in Japan.” It’s a point so glaringly obvious once you’ve acknowledged it that I briefly drift off and wonder how many would-be designers have been mid-pitch when their thousands of pounds worth of research and design has fallen apart with one such knock.

“It was a great opportunity,” Gareth remembers; not a year out of education and he was putting into practice user insight, product development, and marketing with different clients in mind, which included working with BT on their home telephone ranges.

I’m brought back to present as Gareth explains that he’s also seen a substantial shift in attitudes towards design itself.

“People are much more aware of design now,” he tells me. “There’s a greater understanding of what value design adds to a product, or company, or service; it’s more of a proven entity.”

Having trained for two years in Glasgow, Gareth joined the second year of the Product Design programme at CSAD (then UWIC) in 2001. “I wanted to do a multidisciplined, creative design course, and Product Design at UWIC was the best fit,” he says. There, he could immerse himself in the different elements of the creative process, which is what had always drawn Gareth towards a career in Product Design – “the chance to learn a lot of skills from being creative, and makings things, right through to presentations and marketing.”

“But the onus, then, was on the student to make the most of the opportunities available,” he adds. “There weren’t, by default, live projects or international travel as part of the course.” The upshot of that was that Gareth relied on a strong portfolio and the ability to network, which I realise is, incidentally, not bad advice for soonto-be graduates today.

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He later joined Mothercare’s Home and Travel division, rising quickly through the ranks to become Senior Product Designer.

“Working in-house, for a retailer, you take a design right through to the point it hits the shelves,” he begins, when asked about the highlights of his time with this internationally recognised brand. “I spent a lot of time in China working with suppliers and would oversee the whole process; from the materials used and keeping the manufacturing costs down, to shipping and marketing.”

“Mothercare have more than 1,000 stores across the world, in over 60 markets,” he adds, “seeing your products in different cultures was really exciting.”

That hasn’t changed since he joined Joseph Joseph as Product Design Manager, where a typical day starts early for calls to the Far East and involves working with design agencies, marketing, and strategy teams as Gareth manages up to 15 projects – at different stages and across Joseph Joseph’s Spring/Summer Autumn/Winter seasonal calendar – at any one time.

Keeping him grounded at the height of responsibility and innovation are the universal truths he’s always relied upon: “The simple, clever ideas will always be the strongest,” he says. “You’ve got to be working on products that interest you, but it’s not really about the product category. It’s about creating that point of difference; a product which is desirable not only because it looks nice, but because it’s going to be very useful, and make a difference, in the lives of the people who are ultimately going to be using it.”

Above: "Home" - AR Interactive ceramic pinhole camera & sound object

Above: "Hacking Histories" - The artist as St George

Above: "Things Men Have Made" - AR interactive Object & Film

Above: Teaching Art History in La Perdrix

ingridmurphy.wordpress.com

INGRID MURPHY In 1990, Ingrid Murphy – who always knew that she wanted to teach – applied to complete her post-graduate diploma, followed by a Masters degree in Ceramics, at the South Glamorgan Institute.

During college, she was taught by a graduate of the school and inspired by alumni who would present visiting lectures; mindful of its reputation, she still remembers the excitement of arriving for herself in its “hallowed halls.” Twenty-five years later, Ingrid’s back under the same roof – now known at CSAD – having been subject leader for Ceramics and a key member of the team to launch the flagship Artist Designer: Maker course.

When we (virtually) meet via Skype, Ingrid is in France making work for exhibition, whilst hosting visitors to the retreat she runs with her husband; a beautiful 13th century property between a church and a graveyard which, as well as having 15 bedrooms, has a ceramics studio and space for painting and drawing. She’s also preparing to give a speech at the International Academy of Ceramics conference on the future of ceramics.

“Well I don’t watch telly…” she says with a laugh when I ask how she compartmentalises.

“I’m lucky. Everything I do, between France and Wales, it’s all conducive to creativity.”

It’s also all related to the idea of exploring new possibilities within art and design, starting in 2011, when Ingrid – then course leader of Ceramics at CSAD – was awarded the Creative Wales Award to study how new technologies affect the role of the sole practitioner.

“I’ve always been a bit of a geek,” she says, explaining recent work ‘hacking’ herself into famous historical objects, as well as 3D printing her husband, “but it was also about what I have to teach.”

“We started up-skilling on a lot of digital process, 3D printing, 3D scanning, augmented reality; looking very closely at how, in a sense, there was a social revolution happening in making… I felt it would be lovely time to create a new type of programme.” This was the beginning of Artist Designer: Maker, now in its third year of recruitment.

Since its formation, Maker students have been regulars at Ingrid’s art retreat in France, where a week of adventure and challenges await.

“We use the house and its objects as starting points for projects,” she says. There’s a strict schedule; work starts at 9am and often continues after dusk. But there’s also that lovely team atmosphere, with well-earned rewards for hard work, like a dip in the picturesque river nearby or a trip to the market.

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MA CERAMICS 1992 If the spectacular setting wasn’t enough, it helps that the work is – well – pretty cool. Recent projects include ceramic funerary urns featuring pinhole cameras to allow for ‘selfies’ taken at arm’s length. “You could attach any digital information you wanted to that image,” Ingrid explains. “Life stories… photos from your everyday, or a special place… it was about what you might want to leave behind and how you might want to be remembered.”

This is when I first understand what Ingrid will go on to outline as a key feature of her upcoming speech; that new technology not only changes how we design and make art, but also how we conceive and perceive it.

“I’d always made objects – art which sits there,” she says.

“The beauty of new technology is that you can make something, which has been formed through an inert material, do something interesting.” Like the tea-cosy she made for her father who lives alone back in Ireland; an idea I fall in love with instantly. “I designed it to include a heat sensor and wifi shield,” Ingrid explains, “so when the tea cosy goes on the pot in Ireland, it activates the light where I make the tea in my kitchen in Cardiff.

So I’m connected to him, in a way,” she says, “through objects.”

“That’s the thrill of what we’re doing on the Maker course,” she tells me. “New ways of making are becoming possible; ideas once intangible are now very readily realised. We really feel like we’re moving with the times, but we’re bringing with us an incredible heritage of craft skill.”

“If you’ve got a confidence in materials, skills, ability and really interesting processes – like bronze casting, glass, clay, or textiles – and you’ve got your finger on the pulse of how things are being created, you can diversify quickly but with skills that are very special.”

“That’s the beauty of what our students can do,” she says – and I sense the feeling is mutual. Proud as Ingrid is of the work produced for her Creative Wales award (finally completed in Spring 2014), she’d sooner speak of the privilege of helping students see their potential in France, and the pleasure of receiving the Student Lead Teaching Fellowship for Innovation in 2013, as voted for

by CSAD students. It perfectly illustrates that Ingrid has helped create, for thousands of students, the sense of possibilities she remembers when first arriving at CSAD as she now ventures with them into an exciting unknown – the future of design.

Above: Girl With Orange Background

Above: Grump

www.maginsberg.co.uk

MEIRION GINSBERG Meirion Ginsberg tells me quite frankly that, at one point not so long ago, he was quite sure he’d be working in factories and as a labourer for the rest of his life. Yet in February this year, he had a solo show at Cardiff’s Martin Tinney gallery.

“That’s the reason that I’ve been able to make art for a living,” 29-year-old Meirion says, reflecting on the opportunity to showcase his work to an international clientele. “I’m really grateful for that.”

Graduating from CSAD with a degree in Fine Art in 2007, Meirion was always going to be a painter; it’s the one thing which comes across so clearly – in how he speaks, and how he works – that makes his natural shyness so surprising, and his decision to leave the factory for a makeshift studio in his spare bedroom such a relief.

Meirion’s paintings make up a collection of striking, sunken-eyed, textured faces; colourful figures in vibrant rooms and patterned surroundings. They have names like ‘Grump’ and ‘Girl with orange background’.

“I don’t think my work is a million miles from what I was doing when I was studying, ” he says. “Those three things – colour, the figure, and pattern – are really important in my work today, as they were then. But I’ve become more experienced and gained a better understanding of the medium since.”

When we start talking about work ethic, I get a glimpse into the mind of a 19-year-old Meirion; an undiagnosed dyslexic whose attention was rarely distracted from wanting to create paintings. A decade later, he remains incredibly focused without having lost his old habit to work with an almost frantic-level of creativity.

“I try to work as energetically as possible,” Meirion tells me. He likes to start and finish one portrait before moving on to the next, and he improvises often – sometimes going from blank canvas to finished portrait in a matter of hours. “If I slow down, I get into trouble where I overthink what I’m doing.”

“My work is quite conservative in the sense that there’s always a figure, and a definite composition,” he says, “but if you look at the brush marks, they’re pulled back and forth.” Occasionally, he’ll arrange a figure on top of older paintings which have been rubbed out.

“Improvising can be risky because you don’t always know where the picture, or the face, is going,” he says. “But I want that energy and spontaneity when I’m working.”

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BA (HONS) FINE ART 2007 For his latest show, most of Meirion’s paintings were made in a day, though not all would make it to the gallery wall.

“I’d say I destroy about 50% of paintings,” Meirion says, which pains me to hear. “If the door was hanging off in your house, you’re not going to just leave it there, are you? You’re going to fix it. Sometimes it’s better ‘out of sight, out of mind’.”

“Somewhere down the line I’ll realise I’ve chucked out some good things,” he admits. “But that’s just how it is.”

Isn’t it exhausting, I ask, working at that pace all the time?

“It’s an interesting question, actually” he says. “As I’ve gotten older I’ve realised I have to burn energy in a different way; I go running, I record music. I’ve got to clear my mind in a way that’s not always painting – but those things are still helpful to the creative process.”

Such is the flip-side of that frantic focus – never being able to switch off.

“You’re constantly trying to absorb things that surround you in your environment,” Meirion explains. “I can be walking down the street and see a colour combination – like a door and a wall colour together – and I’ll have to take those ideas with me.”

And what about faces, I’m dying to ask – does he notice people in the street whose image could end up on canvas?

“There’s definitely that,” he tells me. “Some people… I’d love to go up to them and ask if I could paint them, but I don’t have the courage to do it. Maybe when my profile is a bit bigger, and if I bump into someone who might know me – but I feel I’m out of my bounds to do that at the moment.”

I understand, of course, and although I’d like to see more confidence for Meirion, I think in its absence there is a beautiful bittersweetness. To lock eyes with his collection of nameless faces is to see – in the strokes, colours and layers – the patterns of lives you’ll never know any more about. And that sort of curiosity has, evidently, universal appeal.

Above: Showing CSAD students around International Greetings

Above: Julia at International Greetings

JULIA RICHARDSON As Julia Richardson describes what it means to be Design Manager for International Greetings, I conjure up the image of an office overrun with glitter, glosses, colourful gift bags and cards for every occasion.

BA (HONS) CONTEMPORARY TEXTILE PRACTICE 2007

“We can work all year for a presentation for Christmas – until there’s a room full of wrapping paper,” she says, doing nothing to dispel my office/grotto illusion. “For one customer last year we made around 400 designs, from which they would choose about thirty.”

It meant getting to grips with a new world of greetings, after years buried in knitwear and womenswear. “After a while, you start to find your way,” she says. “We have a great team of fast-working designers and there’s a lot of space for discussion; we learn a lot from each other.”

“Other briefs are short and sweet,” she adds. “We’ll have a few weeks to create a range and, as soon as the customer is happy, it all goes ahead.”

It’s such teamwork that Julia was keen to emphasise when she returned to CSAD, this time in her professional capacity. “IG did a project – a competition – with the university last year,” she explains. “We set the students a greetings-based brief, something they didn’t know a lot about. They had to go through our process; we came back in twice to give feedback, answer questions, and hear their presentations.” The winners received a cash prize and an 8-week placement at IG.

Much of Julia’s role is customer-facing, as she brings together different teams at IG to create new lines and products. As we speak, she’s turning her hand to everyday gift wrap, including gift wrap for flowers. “That’s something I don’t know much about,” she explains, “so I’ll spend a day researching and talking to managers before I write up the brief. Then I’ll pull together inspiration and design ideas and brief the designer.”

These essential project management skills are ones which Julia traces back to her time at CSAD over ten years ago, granting her the flexibility to work beyond her initial aspirations of a career in fashion and to join the ranks of International Greetings, not with an Illustration or Graphic Communication background, but with a degree in Textiles. “Your course teaches you to take an idea; research it, refine it, then carry it through design to the final product in response to a brief. It’s the same process we use on a daily basis,” she says.

Originally from France, where she was studying Fashion Design in Paris, Julia came to enrol at CSAD through the Erasmus programme; what was meant to be a year-long placement evolved into a love of Cardiff that has kept her in the city ever since, and the beginnings a demanding, rewarding career.

By 26, Julia was a manager at a Cardiff-based fashion company, overseeing everything from design and technical drawings to quality checks and photoshoots.

“It was the real deal,” she remembers, “the same experience you’d have had in London, but - being a small company - you could take on a bit of everything.”

Later, realising she didn’t live to work for fashion – “it was all a bit too much pressure over a pair of trousers!”

– she successfully applied for the role of designer at IG. “It was a bit of a step back for me, at that point” she says, “but I didn’t mind. I wanted to start again.”

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“We insisted on teamwork,” Julia recalls. “It’s easy to feel protective about work – it’s a student thing, I think – to think your idea is ‘the one’.”

“So we said: nobody is going to take anything away from you. It’s important to be openminded and to talk to people. When that’s not encouraged it stops creativity and interesting discussions, and creates problems.”

“It was nice to be able to assure them it would all be ok, as well,” she adds, remembering the pressure to find the right opportunity after graduation. “I told them: everyone has their journey. Some people get amazing jobs straight away. Others work awful jobs for five years and then get their break; some fall into something completely different and discover they love it.”

Looking at Julia’s own professional journey – one which proves the route to success and happiness isn’t set in stone – I’m keen to learn what she believes gives a job that little bit of magic appeal; Christmas crackers all year round is a novelty, I imagine, but making a career out of a job you love is a true test of time.

Julia’s conclusion? “I value a company which is always looking for something new,” she says. “One that’s not sitting comfortably, relying on customers coming to them, but always trying to top what has been done before.”

Above: Josh's signature style combines contemporary themes with old technology.

This image - of a picture in a ďŹ lm room at an art gallery in Paris - was taken using a Nokia 3360

vimeo.com/joshspindler

JOSH SPINDLER There’s a fine line but significant difference between reinventing yourself and going back to square one. The outcome might look the same – in Josh Spindler’s case, it’s the story of how an Illustration student found his way with video – but the journey it takes to reach that point defines two very different types of artist.

It requires a lot more character to confront a dead-end in your creative practice and choose not simply to fashion a quick fix but, rather, to pick up everything you’ve carried thus far, turn right back around and follow a gut feeling in a new direction.

“I realised I wasn’t doing anything original anymore,” he tells me. “I was just copying people that had been before me.”

Having enjoyed and pursued art throughout his education, Josh began studying Illustration at CSAD in 2010 without the set notion of becoming an illustrator. “I got lucky with the course,” he says. “At Cardiff it was an open floor; you could try what you wanted.”

Josh’s focus had originally been print-making, until he could no longer ignore a niggling feeling that it wasn’t the right platform for him. “I was finding it difficult to keep still image fresh or exciting,” he remembers.

“Finishing a piece lacked any sense of gratification.”

“When I got to third year, I just sort of… started again.” In a period usually reserved for dissertations and final year projects, Josh spent his spare time becoming self-taught in video editing.

“The ideas I was coming up with… they were more suited to work which could move,” he says. “I enjoyed experimenting with new technology; having a new output. I thought of editing as having infinite possibilities.”

Infinite possibilities. It was the perfect word-choice, I thought. Since first encountering Josh’s work on his website – where a dark screen folds into moving image, and a low voice crowds you like surround sound – I’d been searching for the right description. With this, I had it: vast, ominous, and all-encompassing. Through video, he creates a real experience for his audience, and to confine it to a silent, still image would be to stifle his best work.

He carries none of this weight when discussing his decision to embark upon video over traditional illustration; even though, for some time, naturally, his technical production skills fell short of his artistic ideas.

Bridging that gap, Josh successfully applied for a Masters course in Visual Communication at Royal College London. Now at the half-way point, he can reflect on the valuable lessons learned at CSAD.

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BA (HONS) ILLUSTRATION 2013 “On a weekly, if not daily, basis, an idea you have might not work out the way you want,” he says. “Speaking to someone else can shed new light on the situation and give you a different perspective. People who are likeminded, or not; people who are on form and want to create something; keep them near enough that you can connect with them on a creative level.”

“It’s the early-on concept I want people to connect with most,” he says of his own motivation. In which case it’s a welcome non-surprise, then, when I ask about his latest project and the concept instantly ‘clicks’.

“I bought an old smartphone,” he begins, “to film things which are beautiful to people every day. That might be sunsets, landscapes, relationships… I wanted to do what people do today on their HD-capable iPhones, but with really low-process technology.”

The end result will be a series of these moments strung together using only the phone as an editing tool – “by today’s standards, it’s completely useless”, he laughs.

Yet the feel of it completely encompasses the approach in which Josh has made peace with originality; to take traditional or out-dated technology, processes, or craft, and to create something new and relevant today. It also gives away his underlying fascination with the experiences of people, with truths of human nature; and a romantic way of taking these two things and communicating them back to an audience who may have missed them otherwise.

“A year ago, I would have said that one of the big driving forces for my work was for it to be innovative,” he says.

Now the word I’d use is honest.”

And to be honest with himself, today, puts Josh on the brink of another major milestone in his creative development. This time, it’s not the medium that’s in question, it’s how he sees himself using it.

“What I want to do has taken a massive U-turn recently.”

It’s on longer to turn a profit. “Now, I would say being happy,” Josh says. “As long as I have the time, space, or money, to make my own work and can continue living a life, I’ll be ok.”

Above: 'Our vision of Wales' bright future' – commissioned work for the Sustainable Development Alliance

Above: 'Our vision of Wales' bright future' – Laura designed five slides in total

Above: A piece for Laura's regular contribution to CQC magazine

www.auralab.co.uk

LAURA SORVALA For all the buzz and anticipation which surrounds graduation – the stepping into the relative unknown and wondering, ‘Am I going to make it?’

– Laura Sorvala has some sound advice: don’t lose yourself in the rush..

“It’s super competitive,” she tells me, when I ask how graduates might take their creative vision into the commercial world with confidence. “Good things come only from really knowing your creative self and doing good work. Knowing your specific strengths and quirks is what can make you stand out for clients.”

BA (HONS) GRAPHIC COMMUNICATION 2005

excitedly. “I remember trying [graphic recording] for the first time and the buzz of recording everything live; listening to people and capturing everything as it happened,” she says.

A little research confirmed that there was a gap in the British market for it, where by contrast it was already big in the States. “It Laura’s strength, in her own words, is “understanding complexity”. Her talent is in lifting from a haze of themes, was a period of self-discovery,” Laura recalls, “for me to realise that understanding ideas, discussions and processes, the parts which make complexity was a major skill that I had, and I them important, relatable and memorable. wondered – how far can I take this?”

Having graduated from CSAD with a degree in Graphic Communication in 2005, 33-year-old Laura still introduces herself as an illustrator. “People often think that means book covers or magazines,” she says, “but I tell them, my job is really to take complex ideas and explain them to others with visuals.”

Now, she runs her own business doing exactly that.

Laura founded Auralab a little over four years ago, eventually making the transition to freelance full-time in 2012. Yet, looking back to graduation, she says she hadn’t know then that this would be the direction her training would take her in.

Laura arrived at CSAD “almost by accident”, having spotted an opportunity for an exchange during her studies on home soil in Finland. With a long-held love of illustration, she was initially interested in expanding into interactive media but grabbed every opportunity at the school to experiment, crediting her tutors for how they “really encouraged students to discover their own creative voice and approach.”

“Personally, and considering the long haul,” she reflects, “the most important thing was to develop my own creative voice. Now that I’m finally running my own business, the learning process about my own visual practice seems very poignant.”

“The first time I came across visualisation was through a friend who I went to university with,” she remembers. At the time, Laura was enjoying working full-time for Cardiff-based branding agency, ‘Stills’, as part of a sixyear chapter she calls “learning everything possible.”

Being introduced to hand-drawn visualisation (which you could describe as illustrating information) and graphic recording (illustrating information in real time), Laura’s thoughts and inspiration began to multiply

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The answer? Almost anywhere now; from corporate meetings to public art exhibitions and, recently, even a 12-day excursion reporting Europe’s untold stories. “For the Transeuropa Caravans project, there were six or seven caravans travelling across Europe at the same time. I was basically in a motorhome of strangers,” she laughs. Recruited by European Alternatives – a transnational civil society organisation who had been crowdsourcing, for some time, what it meant to people to be a European citizen – the creative teams were tasked with giving a platform to the concerns and stories of the people they met during their travels.

It remains a stand-out project, she tells me, reflecting on her portfolio of work; “I’m not an activist, as such, but I think my work needs to contribute towards something useful and good,” she explains. “I couldn’t doing what I do if it was about supporting a consumerist mindset or living in a bubble about what actually goes on in our society.”

Through hard work and by building strong working relationships, Laura found her creative voice and learned how to lend it to a brief and its team. She loves her regular work for CQC magazine – where she was recently commissioned on the strength of “that weird brain of yours” – and tells me that the greatest feedback is often a simple case of someone saying: she got what we were thinking. And though she may not have known, at CSAD, that her alumni story would profile a visualisation artist/graphic recorder/business owner, others have seen it in her all along: “When I told my Dad I was starting to freelance successfully full time,” she tells me, “he said: Well, you were always a bit of a bohemian making your way in the world.”

Above: A collage workshop for the Italian organisation Anelli Mancanti

Above: Amanda volunteering in Italy

amandaagyei.tumblr.com

AMANDA AGYEI Amanda isn’t defiant, she’s what trust in a good idea sounds like. She’s learned from experience that things don’t always work out and that sometimes they’ll cost you, but that if they bring joy to others, the journey will invariably have been worth it.

Her journey to Italy, where she teaches English and volunteers with arts and languages in the community, began with the ideas she developed studying at CSAD. When she enrolled in the Fine Art course beginning in September 2009, she says “I tried mainly to focus on doing the best I could in every year.” Yet, from the outset, Amanda’s developing interests and specialisms aligned with a longer-held aspiration: to work with and support people, through art.

“I liked the set processes,” she says, as she explains how she came to focus on print-making and photography.

“They’re portable skills. I could take those and do workshops anywhere in the world.”

“If I could teach someone the process of taking a photo,” she adds, “they will learn a new skill and get something to take home with them.”

“I’ve always felt that if something feels more tangible outside the art world, it’s more accessible.”

That’s a consistent theme across Amanda’s portfolio; works of art without any air of exclusivity – hers are specifically designed to be given and experienced.

It was only five days after graduating that Amanda decided to leave her home in East London and begin volunteering in Italy. Over the next two and half months, she travelled and volunteered in places including Lucca, Tuscany, Sora and Lazio.

“I met so many amazing people,” she remembers of that time, “who were all bringing their ideas to life.” Her mind, she realised then, was set: “I really wanted to run a collaborative art project.”

BA (HONS) FINE ART 2011 It seems she touched upon a little bit of magic, because the project has been taken over for its second run this year. “Hopefully it will go well,” says Amanda. “A lot of people said the first one wouldn’t happen but it did; the basis was a good idea. We just had the guts to give it a try.”

Next on her agenda is making waves within the community support sector, where she spends a significant part of her time in Italy working.

“I’ve been doing collage workshops with people who might be seen as ‘outsiders’ by others,” she explains. “We’d make little collage pieces out of different materials and colours, stick them up, and have an exhibition.”

“I’ve done this twice over the course of six months,” she continues, “and now what I want to do is print them on to postcards and T-shirts. That way, the art becomes more tangible, and everybody else can learn the names, and something more, of the people that made them.”

Also in the pipeline is an atmospheric idea to use space and surroundings to create a shared experience for communities in Florence, which Amanda is developing with a friend who also teaches English in Italy.

“We wanted to find a way of information sharing,” Amanda explains, “and decided we’d take films that we, and others, think are important, and project them on to different walls and spaces.”

“There are loads of abandoned buildings and beautiful places and piazzas in Florence, which would make the perfect setting.”

A chance meeting on her way back to London introduced Amanda to a woman named Carol Barbieri – “she was really amazing,” Amanda recalls – who advised that Atina would be the perfect setting for my work.

Back in the UK, Amanda started planning the project that would become ‘Colour.itAtina’, with a friend, Natasha Sabatini, she’d met at CSAD. Twelve months later the pair met in Italy to bring the idea to life.

The work will begin on her return to Italy in September, with – I’m baffled to hear – a non-existent budget. “We don’t need much,” she tells me, giving away that she’s already invested her mind (which, on evidence, is reason to believe it’ll be a success). “Funding might make things more comfortable, but you can’t always get it, and you can’t choose not to do things just because you don’t get funding.”

“We had ten different artists from all around the world – illustrators, a print maker, a photographer, fine artists – all coming together for ten days to create collaborative work in relation to Atina, alongside the people who live and grew up there.”

“Maybe it’s the Cockney in me,” she adds, with a little laugh, “but if you really want to do something, you’ll find a way to do it.”

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Above: One of Victor's signature 'Rich Pictures'

Above: An illustration from Victor's brief with Samsung

informationillustration.wordpress.com

VICTOR HAGGER What I love about Victor’s work is how wonderfully it reflects his character; all but overspilling with ideas, colour, detail, and creativity, yet somehow streamlining into a seamless narrative – a collected thought.

I don’t get to meet him in person but his energy comes whittling through the phone line at such a pace that, despite the fact he wasn’t pitching (and that 30 minutes earlier I hadn’t heard of ‘information illustration’), I instantly want to hire him.

“It’s quite funny,” he tells me, when I ask if he could have predicted his career after graduating from CSAD in 2010.

“I don’t think anyone in the class expected me to be the one getting hired and going off to be an illustrator straight away,” he laughs.

BA (HONS) ILLUSTRATION 2010 “It’s quite a simple idea,” he says of this service. “If you look at language, we also use metaphors to frame an object within a subject, or to represent something; they’re visual cues. In the same way, this helps people make connections within a broader subject, so that they can understand how everything fits together.”

“On that basis, companies can win bids, or communicate with internal staff…” he adds. “It’s just more inspiring than handing out heaps of paper.”

So what is it, I wonder, that inspires him?

I suppose I can see why – if where I’ve credited his ‘energy’, friends might affectionately remember an approach they’d sooner call ‘bouncing off the walls’ – but I can also see how it’s worked in his favour. I imagine that spark to be the point where the wires of technical skills, creative vision and – quite simply – the ability to connect with people, are crossed. And it’s no surprise that big-name companies, such as Samsung, have already spotted the ways in which it can uniquely ignite their ideas.

“I really enjoy working with clients,” Victor says, “I love to ‘get’ exactly what they have in their heads and make it work in the way they’d imagined it.”

In any brief, he is the visual thinker of a collaborative effort. “I definitely believe that everyone is creative,” he tells me, “it’s just that some people can’t implement it in the same way as others.”

With Samsung, the task was to convey (to in-house staff) the company’s ‘Design Identity 3.0’. The result was a charming animated short, ‘Make it meaningful’, which illustrated, in real time, a voice-over on everything from how to emotionally connect with customers to why Samsung, as a global company, has an ethical and business imperative to look after the planet.

“Information Illustration, for me, is about cutting through the big picture,” Victor explains. Animation is just one of the mediums he has called upon to do this; more often, his illustrations take the shape of what Victor calls ‘Rich Pictures’. These images, which he likens to ‘Where’s Wally’, are eye-catching, colourful scenes, characterising the key points within a narrative in far more engaging ways than your typical PowerPoint. For his clients to date, Victor’s Rich Pictures have helped to map out business plans and rework complex data into single, accessible images.

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“I always knew I would be drawing,” Victor says. Born in Moldova and moving to Cornwall aged eight, he’s been making art for as long as he can remember – a hobby he held onto throughout his education. After an HND in Art and Design at Penwith College, Victor joined the Illustration course at CSAD. It was during his degree show, for which he’d illustrated a children’s book, that his work struck a chord with a local company, See What You Mean, who would introduce him to Rich Pictures.

From that point onwards, he’s been freelancing. He recalls the usual obstacles – the occasions when it’s been slower to find work, or when someone tries to take credit for a piece – but his advice is to be pro-active.

“When you’re looking for clients, you want to build up your personal work to show people what you can do.”

“I would sometimes get a list of companies I’d like to work for – and be happy to work for – try to get hold of the right people and start up a connection,” he tells me.

“You get a feel for the type of thing you’d be able to help them with, and then you can bring in your knowledge and creative input to show them how it can be done.”

This is what I mean about wanting to hire him. If I was to step into the shoes of a big business, Victor would have effortlessly sold me a new demand for exactly the concept which he supplies. Yet there’s a total absence of that competitive edge to his character, which says a lot about his motivation – the collected thought upon which he has built such a vast portfolio for someone only four years out of university: “I like to pick projects I feel passionate about,” he says, “and I’ll put in 100% effort every time. That way, I know I’ll always be happy with it.”

Above: A snapshot from Clara's ďŹ eld trip to Zambia

Above: Clara's looked closely at life in the Chongwe district

CLARA WATKINS Going into an undergraduate degree, it’s probably true to say that most students are preparing for up to three years of learning. Many at CSAD will identify themselves as artists or designers, primarily, and academics after that – if at all.

But what I learn from speaking to Clara Watkins, is that these two identities need not be seen as worlds away from each other. After all, they both depend on finding what it is that inspires you and motivates your work, shaping your practice and your unique stance on the world, and having the skill and patience to constantly reflect in order to grow.

BSc (HONS) PRODUCT DESIGN 2011

order to devise healthcare design solutions which are suitable – and sustainable – considering the areas lack of resources. Her PHD has focused heavily on developing a first responder pack for road traffic accidents.

Her progress has benefited equally from understanding the area’s shortcomings and difficulties – the barriers of poor living and working conditions, and the challenge to improve education standards – as it has from recognising its strengths. Chongwe has an impressive record of embracing innovation, and Clara’s motivation was to meet their aspirations with ideas that could make a real and tangible difference.

Clara developed an interest in ethical design gradually over the course of her studies in Product Design at CSAD, where her final major project as an undergraduate ultimately focused on design in developing countries; working with the London Tropical Medical Centre, Clara was linked with a research centre in Malawi and tasked with designing prototype packaging for Malaria treatment.

“We forget that there are other countries,” “I found it really interesting,” she tells me, explaining that the brief contextualised her understanding of how products have to be altered to suit different cultures and environments. At the time, she’d never set foot in Africa – in fact, a big part of the challenge was designing from afar, and relying on Skype for communicating with her fellow team members overseas – but before long, Clara’s tutors realised she’d tapped into both a passion for designing for developing countries and an obvious talent for research. “My lecturer suggested I should take it to a higher level of education,” she explains.

Following a Masters in Philosophy, Clara secured a scholarship, through Cardiff Met’s Research and Enterprise Innovation Scholarship scheme, to embark upon her PhD. She began working, alongside Welsh charity Mothers of Africa, which trains medical staff in Sub-Saharan Africa to care for mothers during pregnancy and childbirth.

That was almost three years ago, with Clara’s first trip to Zambia taking place in March 2012. She vividly remembers this earliest first-hand experience of the culture in which she’d set her next academic challenge: to produce a prototype-led ethnographic analysis of healthcare in the Chongwe district, so that her findings might inform the development of culturally appropriate health products for the region.

A big part of her research has depended upon the involvement of Chongwe’s communities; Clara has worked with Zambian staff from healthcare professionals to charities and government officials in

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she says, explaining why she has become so passionate about culturally relevant design.

“When you go to hospitals in Africa, they’ve often been donated the same things that we use, but it’s not always relevant. That’s a big issue that needs to be addressed; they need stuff that they can actually use and that is suitable for their surroundings.”

It is in addressing this problem throughout her PHD that Clara has already set in motion the next phase of her work. In fact, there is not even the suggestion of a break from academia as Clara talks excitedly about becoming a Research Assistant at CSAD, where she’ll work on carrying her prototype solution through the production and implementation stages.

So how is she feeling, with one deadline looming and a whole new set of aims in sight? “Stressed!” she admits, in good humour, “there’s still lots to do.”

“But the experience really has been fantastic,” she says. “I am extremely grateful for my amazing supervisors, Cardiff Met, Cardiff Uni and Mothers of Africa for all of the support they have provided me, and for the opportunity to be involved in a project that has not only enabled me to better my own understanding of design in the developing world, but which holds the real potential to benefit the lives of those less fortunate than myself.”

Above: Charlie helps construct exhibition stands in locations across the UK, as well as for international shows

Above: 'totaljobs.com exhibition stand' – with built-in widescreen TV

charliecharlick.co.uk

CHARLIE CHARLICK I speak to Charlie almost a year to the day that he graduated from CSAD, and I learn that his first job has taken him to Lyons, Paris, and Copenhagen; to London from Cardiff regularly; to Fashion Week, Old Trafford and the Chelsea stadium; and, soon, he’ll be off to Berlin.

Yet he doesn’t strike me as somebody impressed by air miles alone – and I’ll come to understand that his motivation is much more ‘hard work’ than ‘big talk’.

It started with an ad on Gumtree, he tells me. But what began as some temporary work in the summer after university, paved the way for Charlie to become a Production Assistant with Alchemy Expo.

“The company builds stands for marketing events and trade fairs,” 24-year-old Charlie explains. “We build the stand and the graphics,” he says, “and video tiles as well, where the clients can have their content on screen walls.”

One of his favourites to have worked on to date was for make-up giant Mac at this year’s London Fashion Week.

“It was three meters high,” Charlie remembers, “with a massive video wall.”

“That was quite a big client…” he reflects; Mac being one of the biggest names in his professional portfolio of barely twelve months, alongside the likes of Emirates Airlines. “Then another week you’ll be working at the Heating and Plumbing exhibition for a company that does underfloor heating,” he laughs.

“They can be in quite cool places, actually,” he says. “We went to Old Trafford Football Stadium for one, and another one was in the Chelsea Stadium – my little brother thought that was cool.”

“It’s quite interesting to see a cross-section of companies and how they use different marketing tools,” adds Charlie. “And I really enjoy the practical work; the handson building stuff,” he tells me.

Perhaps because, in this sense, Charlie’s found a common link with what was his biggest interest during his studies: sculpture.

“I don’t know exactly what it is about sculpture,” he ponders aloud, asked about the moment in second year when he chose to specialise within Fine Art. “I suppose it’s making something three-dimensional within a space,” he says.

Charlie’s signature pieces were twisting forms made from plaster, with bright interjections of colour across the surface. “I liked the colouring to seem more unnatural, while the form was more organic,” he explains.

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BA (HONS) FINE ART 2013 “I always thought plaster was a nice material to use. It’s a very workable material. You can paint it when it’s liquid and work with it then, and once it’s dry you can sand it, cut into it and chop it.”

Yet it doesn’t last, I say to him, in the same way as other forms of sculpture might.

“No…” he admits, without melancholy. “I’ve got the three pieces from my degree show in my back garden, and they’re beginning to crumble.” It is a new lesson for me that there can be as much joy in the production and making of something that has a finite lifespan, as there might be comfort in any sense of permanency.

At the time, Charlie’s degree show pieces made quite an impression, particularly with Roanna Larson, of the West Wharf Gallery, who was organising a rooftop exhibition and invited Charlie to have his work featured as a result.

“That was brilliant,” he remembers, “to see the final project move on in that way.”

“I’ve just started doing a little bit of work again,” he tells me, bringing the conversation back to present day.

“Working takes up a lot of time and I’ve been enjoying my job so I’ve been concentrating on that, and trying to carry on going to galleries in my spare time,” he says.

“But now I feel I want to be making things again.”

With every hope of continuing to progress with commercial exhibitions – the field in which he has gained so much experience in the past year alone – Charlie is also keen to explore museum and art gallery exhibitions. Whilst at Cardiff, he worked on a number of exhibitions with Modern Alchemists, which played to his interest in forms and their arrangement within an environment.

By the time our conversation comes to an end, I realise that his creative and commercial worlds revolve around this idea, and wonder how his time at CSAD best equipped him for the role. And as he paints a picture for me of an inspired studio spaced littered with empty coffee cups, I discover that skills are one half of the equation; the other, equally valuable half is the mindset that comes from total commitment to your craft.

“I think what I learned from CSAD is that you work as hard as you want,” he says, “and that taught me to be selfmotivated, and to work hard.”

Above: 'Constellation' – a digital illustration pattern

nicolemillo.tumblr.com

NICOLE MILES With the very first click on to Nicole Miles’ website, I’m taken by an image which maps out in vibrant yellow a constellation of stars against a backdrop of dark, chalky blues.

When I tell her I love the colours, she laughs and says “I was always told at university that I shied away from colour.

It’s true I never used it, but I really do love it.”

Originally from the Bahamas, 25-year-old Nicole joined the newly-established Illustration course at CSAD in 2008. It had been a shared love of comics among her friends in High School that first prompted her to consider a career in art.

“It was really dinky stuff,” she says, laughing as she looks back at her 14-year-old self. “We were into anime and manga, and drawing and writing our own comics.” With hindsight, she realises, “that was when I got serious about art, as a reader and as a maker of comics too.”

Although she began the course with every intention of concentrating on comics alone, Nicole has no regrets that her earlier interests gave way to new creative avenues.

“What you’re into as a teenager is very different from what you might do at university,” she says, “and what you do at university is different again to the types of things you might go on to do.”

Reflecting upon the parts of her time at CSAD that have most influenced her illustrations today, Nicole singles out the introduction to screen printing; the lessons in colour now so unmistakable in her work.

“Screen printing breaks down how you actually make work,” she tells me. “Building each layer on top of another, you go back to your very earliest understandings of how colours are created.”

“It makes you think more economically about what your elements are,” she adds. “It’s a stripping down of what you do, so that you can construct the whole picture again.”

In the months that followed her graduation, Nicole laughs that there were “a lot” of part-time jobs. Her focus returned to working digitally, having spent much of her time at university exploring more traditional approaches.

“I wouldn’t say that I consciously separate traditional work from digital,” Nicole explains, “but I prefer working digitally. It’s a lot less pressure – if you make a mistake with a colour, you can erase it and start again.”

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BA (HONS) ILLUSTRATION 2011 She began voluntarily contributing to exhibitions, and getting her work into galleries she’d long-since admired; like the Light Grey Art Lab in Minneapolis, which Nicole had known was her kind of space since she first came across their exhibition on Pokemon. “They wanted over 70 illustrators to contribute to an exhibition of Tarot cards,” she recalls. “I was one of them.”

“Volunteering to be part of things like that was fun, and it made me do work that I was proud of – and to a deadline.”

Later, Nicole contributed to the striking ‘Women Warriors’ zine, where an Art Director at Kaboom/Boom Studios spotted her work. She was asked to design the cover for Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time magazine.

“It was one of the first paid-for things I’d ever done that I was really excited about, and which was personal to me” Nicole remembers, explaining that Adventure Time remains one of her favourite shows.

Now she continues to freelance, alongside a new parttime role with Hallmark. “I work in Licensing and Properties,” Nicole explains. “Hallmark has a lot of brands which they own, like Forever Friends. If they’re asked for a new look for the season, I might put a proposal together.”

“I thought there would be pretty strict rules when you’re working in-house, but the role is really flexible.” She chooses which three days of the week to be in work, and spends the rest of the time concentrating on her freelance career, or learning skills like HTML, Java Script and web design, which she endearingly describes to me as “things there’s no real reason for me to know…”

“I just feel like it’s healthy to learn as much as you can, all the time – from everything,” she tells me, and I leave thinking how essential it is for any creative to connect the dots of the different skills they call upon; and how apt that message is coming from an artist I’ll remember for a piece which mapped the stars.

Above: 'Elixir ales' – packaging design

Above: 'Smugglers caravan park' – print advert design

ALEX JOHNSON When you’re starting out in your career, there’s an awful lot of pressure around what ‘success’ looks and sounds like. It feels like every choice to be made carries with it the weight of your entire future whilst at the same time, quite involuntarily, snowballing into a statement about Who You Really Are. In Alex Johnson, there’s an antidote to this particularly crippling expectation; here’s someone happily without a strict five-year plan, proving that being flexible is just as rewarding, and that you can be taken seriously without being so serious all the time.

A year ago he said – on record – he had no interest in moving to London to work. He didn’t want to be “another cog in a big machine.” Now he’s a Graphic Designer for international ad agency McCann, taking my call outside the company’s office in Camden. So what changed?

“I got made redundant,” he tells me, explaining how his two years as a designer for Matthew Fairweather, in Bristol, came to an unexpected end in June last year. “It was weird to have that experience so early on. We were all working fantastically, but the work suddenly dried up.

They had to let the juniors go, which was a shame, but I think it just happens in small businesses sometimes.”

On the bright side, it freed Alex up while the weather was good – “If I’d been let go in winter I’d probably have been in tears, but because it was so sunny I was pretty happy,” he jokes. He spent the next few weeks with a strict, self-imposed schedule. Weekdays from 9am 5.30pm were spent sending out CVs or working on side projects – “doing up websites” – and on weekends he plainly refused to anything. It paid off, because in July he joined McCann.

“I figured that since I’d been made redundant, I might as well look around and apply somewhere I could progress a bit more; work in a bigger place,” he says. “It’s been a completely different experience, and a nice step up.”

A typical week for Alex revolves around the team’s creative schedule – the rolling list of current projects which are assigned to different members of the team to manage. Recently, he tells me, he had been responsible for creating the concept drawings for World Vision, an international children’s charity. Other weeks he could be working on anything from press ads and direct mails, to branding, using much the same software he trained with whilst studying Graphic Communication at CSAD; “mainly a Wacom tablet, Mac, or the traditional creative suite.”

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BA (HONS) GRAPHIC COMMUNICATION 2012 I learn that he’s cheerfully in an ‘in-between stage’ of his career now. “There are junior designers under me, but I’ve only been out of university for two and a half years – I think it takes three to become a full middleweight designer,” he says, explaining how that moment is gradually sneaking up on him. “I remember interning and seeing what middleweight designers did and being really impressed by that. Now I realise I know a lot of that stuff! That’s just progression, I suppose.”

But Alex isn’t rushing to achieve everything at once, he’s happy to be one step ahead at most. At present, for example, Alex is finding the time to build his skills in animation, having noticed a constant demand for digital designers. “I figured if I learned how to do that properly,” he says, “then I can offer the people I’m working for that additional skill.”

“I’ve learned that you do need initiative,” he adds, pressed for his advice to current students. “I was told off a lot, whilst I was studying, for sitting around and waiting for stuff to happen. You need to think about what people want and be clever about finding stuff to do – impress people. I think that’s what employers look for.”

“If I’ve ever got nothing to do, I try to think about how the company I’m working for could improve itself or promote itself better, or if there’s any projects I could add to just by saying ‘Why not try this?’ Being proactive sets you apart and makes you more senior than junior, I think.”

That’s not to paint a picture of Alex as a workaholic – he admits he’s has quite a talent for ‘switching off’ in the pub after work. But it does illustrate what a few years in the industry teaches you about success – what’s most rewarding to Alex is not the salary, the location, the job title, company, or individual brief, nor what any of these things supposedly say about him. It’s just being able to keep up in a world much more intense than he was used to; meeting deadlines without whining about the workload; and having his ideas taken on board.

Above: Alex's signature metallic lustre

Above: Inspired by rough landscapes, the vessels are rough to touch

Above: The latest collection includes Japanese tea bowls and sake bottles

Above: The improvised path of the smooth lustre means no two pieces are alike

www.mccarthyceramics.com

ALEX McCARTHY I’m convinced it must be a bad time to be contacting Alex – it’s taken us several attempts to find this thirtyminute window, into which we have to squeeze the past four years and the sizeable subject of life after CSAD. The truth, in fact, is that it’s a very opportune time for our schedules to (eventually) align; capturing one of those fleeting and few moments in someone else’s life, one that is just before a really big decision becomes a reality.

“I don’t know how to put it,” he says, “other than to say it’s ‘to take the next step’, really; to immerse myself in the business side of things.”

It’s the penultimate week of the term and Alex’s last at the secondary school in Devon where he first took up the role of Artist in Residence and later became an art technician. Although he has been lucky to strike a good balance between working at the school and continuing his ceramics practice, Alex has had an inkling for some time that he could take his business further. Now he has found a place, just over the bridge from where he refined his craft at CSAD: a studio space in Bristol, which he’ll make his own in the new year.

I learn that a major catalyst for the change has been Alex’s involvement in the Craft Council’s Hot House Scheme, which supports emerging makers.

After a competitive interview process, the six-month scheme pairs successful applicants with a professional maker mentor, as well as a buddy (someone who completed the scheme themselves more recently).

Being back in a peer group – “where you can discuss things and share creative criticism” – was wholly positive for Alex, who says it spurred him on to making the move to Bristol a reality.

The scheme also enhanced his skills in business planning and target marketing. “I’m not the best at ‘pushing’ my work,” he admits. “That’s the thing, especially with hands-on makers; we enjoy what we do, we make things, but we forget – we could be sitting in our studio for months on end wondering ‘Why am I not selling anything?’ It’s usually because we haven’t done anything with the work other than put it on the shelves.”

His best bit of practical advice, then? Invest in good images of your work. Alex’s site serves as the most stunning gallery of his ceramics, giving centre stage to his signature pots and vessels – rough to touch, monochrome in stone colours and all beautifully contrasted with their own improvised downpour of metallic lustre.

“Images are so important,” he says; a fact he has understood even more clearly since accepting the

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BA (HONS) CERAMICS 2010 invitation to join this year’s panel of the Hot House scheme. “In any application process, yours might have twenty seconds – if that – to make a first impression. If they’re poorly lit, or have your dog in the background, you’re going to get a ‘no’ straight away.”

Our conversation is peppered with mentions of rejection, how it’s part and parcel of ‘putting yourself out there’ in the hope of becoming successful (not just in making, Alex adds; much can be applied to any career). Even now, with an inspired portfolio, several hows behind him and, at present, a large order to meet, Alex won’t rest on his laurels. “There are still a few shows, like Ceramic Art London, which I’ve been trying to get into for five years or so. You just have to keep at it and believe in your work.”

“Once you’ve made contacts, be good to them,” he advises. “Be reliable, be friendly; I deliver all my pieces personally – I think people really appreciate the effort of going to meet them in person; it lets them put a face to the name.”

This he says with much conviction; an artist fluent in professionalism, trusting of his own ability and experienced in his trade. And if these are the cornerstones of a great career, Alex is free to concentrate solely on the thing that binds them – his work.

“This move to Bristol may be perfect timing to try something new,” he says. “I’m conscious I don’t want to change my work too much – if you’ve got a signature, it doesn’t make sense to change dramatically. But my work has been similar for a couple of years now, and I know I do want something about it to change. I think that’s enough of a starting point.”

He’ll start the new year in a shared space – “white partitioned walls that I’ll have to make my own somehow” – and hasn’t thought a whole lot further ahead. But when I ask what will be the first thing he’ll hang to make those walls his own, he doesn’t hesitate: “This is going to sound really sad,” he laughs, “but probably my logo, my name, which was made by one of my friends from Uni. I take it to every show as my branding, I think it’s what makes me feel like I’ve arrived.”

And, for me, that image alone sums up the excitement ahead: that 2015 for Alex brings with it the chance to get creatively, onstructively lost, without ever veering too far from himself and all the many qualities which make his practice so unique.

Charity project: Bespoke, Wearable Gown Made Entirely From Toilet Tissue

Above: The ďŹ nished gown

Images: David Emanuel and John Swannell

Above: Designed exclusively for BonmarchĂŠ, the David Emanuel collection

DAVID EMANUEL The iconic fashion designer reflects on the earliest years in his career, and leaving his hometown of Bridgend to embark upon an Art Foundation course in Cardiff.

I’m originally from Bridgend and applied to both Cardiff College of Music & Drama and Cardiff College of Art and was fortunate enough to be accepted to both. It just so happened that the envelope came from Cardiff College of Art first, so I decided to go there.

Coming to Cardiff was extremely daunting. Back then, Bridgend was a very sleepy market town, so coming to the big city was an enormous deal. I remember thinking “I'll never crack this”, but within 3 months I had. After my Foundation course, I applied to study fashion at Cardiff and moved into a flat with all girls and I had the best time, I loved student life.

A lady called Miss June Tiley was Head of Fashion. She was marvellous. In those days, Cardiff had a fantastic reputation for winning fashion competitions.

I loved my time in Cardiff; it was liberating and I was doing something that I adored. With the encouragement of Miss Tiley, I was able to complete my three year course in two and transferred to Harrow School of Art. I used this as a stepping stone to get into the Royal College of Art. One of my best stories of when I was a student was when Miss Tiley organised for me to have an interview at Hardy Amies and they offered me a Summer job.

One day, Hardy Amies himself asked me to go down to the stock room and find some cloth to design something. So I went and I pulled out a big bale of mohair and dragged it up to the design studio and I decided to design a coat.

I sketched this coat and it took roughly a week to finish.

I was fitting it on the house model and it just so happened that Hardy Amies came through the door and he really liked it - it was added to the collection, then on the press day Vogue magazine picked it up and I had to take the coat over to the Vogue's headquarters.

FOUNDATION COURSE We are opening our brand new Cardiff School of Art and Design building, how important do you think this is to the current, prospective students and what advice would you give them?

The new building is extremely exciting but the important thing is to have great staff, with great imagination and strong links to the industry.

I think it’s important that the students understand that to be successful they need to have some business acumen. It’s also important to manage students' expectations and ensure that they realise they won’t just jump out of college and have their own label instantly.

There is a lot of work to this game; they will most likely start off as an assistant designer.

Students need to know about other options and be made aware of different possibilities such as becoming a designer buyer, how photo shoots work etc. and the more that students can open their minds to this the better.

With the number of government cuts there have been over the past few years, how important do you think it is to keep up continued funding for UK arts and culture?

To me, arts and crafts are fundamental. They’re my background and they're my future. Without getting too political, cuts to the arts are hideous, but it is what it is, so we have to tighten the belt. I was fortunate to have a grant from the council when I started but now things are tightening up.

That is desperately sad but if you are really passionate about something you will find a way and you must find a way.

Interview by the University's Development and Alumni Office.

When I returned to College and opened the September issue of Vogue, there was my coat! I have Cardiff and Miss Tiley to thank for all of this and it really set me up.

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cardiffmet.ac.uk/csad cardiffmet.ac.uk/study Cardiff School of Art & Design, Llandaff Campus, Western Avenue, Cardiff, CF5 2YB Tel: +44 (0)29 2041 6070 Fax: +44 (0)29 2041 6640 email: csad@cardiffmet.ac.uk

FOUNDATION • Cardiff Diploma in Foundation Studies (Art & Design) (Bridgend) allied programme only • • •

•

Foundation Degree in Applied Art & Design (Bridgend) Foundation Degree in Ceramics (Cardiff and The Vale College) Foundation Degree in Contemporary Textiles Practice (Cardiff and The Vale College) Foundation Degree in Graphic Communication (Cardiff and The Vale College)

UNDERGRADUATE •

HNC Building Technology and Management (Ystrad Mynach)

•

BSc (Hons) Architectural Design & Technology BA (Hons) Artist Designer: Maker BA (Hons) Fine Art BA (Hons) Ceramics BA (Hons) Textiles BA (Hons) Graphic Communication BA (Hons) Illustration BA (Hons) Product Design BSc (Hons) Product Design BA (Hons) Photographic Practice (Bridgend)

• • • • • • • • •

TAUGHT POSTGRADUATE • • •

Master of Fine Art (MFA) Master of Design (MDes) Master of Design (MDes) SADI

•

MA (Cardiff School of Art & Design) Specialist Pathways only • Art & Science • Philosophy • Ecologies • Death and Visual Culture

•

Postgraduate Certificate in Research Skills: Art & Design

• •

MA Ceramics MSc Advanced Product Design

RESEARCH DEGREES • • • •

MPhil PhD Professional Doctorate in Art Professional Doctorate in Design