When Zoe Garnett-Scott, Graphic Design tutor from my ‘alma mater’ the University of Cumbria, reached out at the end of 2019 with a request for a group of students to visit our office, I enthusiastically jumped at the opportunity.
Several years ago, I worked as a part-time lecturer at the university so I’m already passionate about passing on skills and knowledge to students and young designers. I’ve seen the value of prising students away from their comfortable desks and showing how professional designers work in the ‘real world’. How the skills and processes they learn as theory, on campus, are put into practice on a daily basis. How a basic understanding of printing techniques, balanced with technical accuracy and consistency, are just as important as high levels of creativity.
After several, detailed conversations, Zoe highlighted three specific topics for discussion: ‘Personal Journeys’ – from graduation to current position, ‘A day in the life’ – to highlight Zinco’s diverse team, I invited Johnny Walker and Doug Greenhough to contribute here as we all have very different working days, ‘Project Management’ – to illustrate how jobs move through our teams, from brief to end product. From here I designed a sixty minute programme to cover these desired outcomes.
Zoe, along with 15 students arrived at Cragwood on February 4th. After a brief office tour, we discussed the student’s requested topics, discussed some recent projects and how we present these to clients, included air screens and videos, followed by a quick fire Q&A session, refreshments and a trip to the lake shore.
After the session, many students engaged with us on a 1:1 basis and feedback from all was very positive and enthusiastic.
Dave Johnson (Luckily, I’m behind the camera)
Head of Graphic Design
