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Life After Uni: How Graphic Communication at Cardiff Met helped me become a well-rounded designer

Kieran working at his desk
Kieran working at his desk

Since graduating from Graphic Communication at Cardiff School of Art and Design (CSAD) in the summer of 2020, I have been working as a designer for Friendly Giants creative agency in London. 

I joined Friendly Giants last August as an intern alongside fellow Cardiff Met graduate Maria Korkonea, and we have since settled in as a core part of the team.

graphic communication Cardiff met, Life After Uni: How Graphic Communication at Cardiff Met helped me become a well-rounded designer, CARDIFF MET BLOG
The current team at Friendly Giants

As a small agency with big aspirations, we share our skills across all of the active projects, meaning that my role often interacts with all stages of the design process, from research, to ideation, to bringing that idea to life.

This has given me the opportunity to further develop my skills in brand identity while working on more traditional design projects, but has also given me the chance to broaden my knowledge by being involved in projects outside of my field.

A personal highlight of this for me was getting to work on-set for notonthehighstreet’s Christmas commercial, and helping to bring to life our own self-published book Christmas Is Cancelled!. Both great opportunities I previously couldn’t imagine being a part of.  

The concept of choosing a specialism within my practice was something I considered often during my time at CSAD – what’s my unique selling point that is going to set me apart from the crowd?

During midterm, Graphic Communication would host a guest speaker from industry in a weekly series of lectures called ‘After Life’. It was usually a highly anticipated occasion, as we all low-key idolised the local design community!

A piece of advice that stuck with me from those talks is that it is okay to be a jack of all trades and master of none – that in itself is a point of difference to be proud of. During my final year I applied this advice to my practice, making my portfolio as well rounded as I could, displaying all the disciplines we covered on the course.

I would have found it easier to stick to something I particularly enjoyed, like moving image, but ultimately, challenging myself to work on my weaker skills made me a more competent designer.

I knew my goal was to work as part of a team of creatives as opposed to freelancing, so this prepared me perfectly for the dynamic day-to-day of a company like Friendly Giants, where it is truly all-hands-on-deck, whether it’s within your specialism or not.

At Level 5 and Level 6 (years 2 and 3) of the Graphic Communication course we had the chance to work alongside real clients. Looking back on it, this was a great preamble for the logistical realities of working with a client.

graphic communication Cardiff met, Life After Uni: How Graphic Communication at Cardiff Met helped me become a well-rounded designer, CARDIFF MET BLOG
Our team and client presenting our live L5 project at the Welsh Stroke Conference (2019)

You begin to learn the difficulties of bringing to life an idea that isn’t in your own head, while picking up the etiquette and skills to start selling the idea that is in yours. It also demonstrated the importance of nurturing these client relationships, as doing so allowed myself and many other students to continue working with our clients on further projects beyond the end of the module.

It taught me that building friendships and getting the job done don’t have to be mutually exclusive goals.