UWTSD SKY graduate inspires students at Design Week Festival

The BA (Hons) Graphic Design and BA (Hons) Advertising & Brand programmes at UWTSD’s Swansea College of Art have once again completed a dynamic industry event at their annual Design Week.

Now in its 7th year, the event has attracted employers and influential artists and designers who are making important contributions to the creative world. This year’s theme was Community and Truth and featured a talk by Sky Senior Creative, Gareth Winter who is a graduate of the BA (Hons) Graphic Design programme and Harry Ward, Design Director at Sky.

The talk highlighted how good intention, combined with design skill can initiate positive choices. Over the past ten years Sky have employed many of UWTSD’s graduates and each one has had fantastic opportunities and thrived in many different areas. A challenge was set to the students entitled ‘Sky and climate change’ and winners Georgia McDonald, Dylan Davies, Megan John and Callum Smith will soon be on their way to pitch to Sky head office in London.

Other speakers included Dan Alcorn, a graduate of BA (Hons) Graphic Design, who runs the annual Birmingham Design Festival (BDF), whilst also working as a Senior Designer for Substrakt. Suzy Prince also gave an honest and extremely insightful talk on magazine self-publishing. Once again, an artist who is committed to her craft spoke honestly about the pitfalls and joys of creating the publication ‘Actual Size.’

Nick Loaring, from The Print Project impressed students with his dynamic use of colour and his skilful approach and Rhian Hullin and Rachael Wheatley from local design company, Waters, spent the day at student workshops sharing expertise and knowledge.

Donna Williams, Course Director of the BA(Hons) Graphic Design programme, said: “This has been an interesting week of ‘community and truth’, sharing experiences and reflecting on how we teach, how we learn and how graduates get into their chosen careers. The staff and students would especially like to thank the speakers and workshop leaders. Our speakers have once again been dynamic and a great source of information and ideas, but my favourite moment of the week was our Student Celebration day.  Our students are a credit to their craft. It is also fantastic that so many of our graduates want to return to Swansea College of Art and give back their time and wisdom, and this, as a lecturer makes it all worth it.”