Today we had a talk from Gavin Leisfeild who is a partner at the studio Friendly Giants. Back in first year I went to visit LittleHawk studio where Gavin previously worked so it was interesting to seee what he has achieved three years on and have a reminder of how interesting his story is to becoming a designer and in the position he is in today.
I found listening to Gavin’s personal experience in the industry inspiring because he’s had the experience from going freelance to studio work and seeing the benefits to both. Hearing about Gavin’s progression into Friendly Giants made me think about how important it is to also give back to the community as designers and do projects that I’m interested in. They worked on a project where they produced a book called Christmas is cancelled and I thought that this was different from what we have heard spoken about in the past at previous afterlife talks.
As part of the presentation I found when Gavin talked us through the stages of working on a rebrand interesting to see the amount of work that goes into it. There is a huge amount refinement and development that happens but also research. This showed me that the working process I have now is similar to that of those working in the industry so this was really encouraging to see.
At the talk we were also joined by Maria and Kieran who have both recently started working for friendly giants and graduated from our course last year. It was useful to hear about how they have adapted to working life and hearing about the differences in the studio to university. It was also useful to get some tips on managing FMP and ISTD from them and how they thought that talking to people is the most useful thing. I think this is something that I’m already doing as I have daily chat with Meg about our work and bounce back ideas between each other. Overall I found this was really useful as a talk and has inspired me to keep working hard at my projects.
Abbie Louise Williams 