Visiting Professional: Liv

Liv was a really interesting guest speaker as I felt she was the first visiting professional I could connect with on a design level. Being younger (and closer to my age bracket) than talkers last year, as well as her love for music made her words resonate a lot more with me. 

She spoke about always being really into design, yet never that good in comparison to her classmates. Studying Graphic Design at Kingston, she became aware that although being aware of what makes successful design, she would never be as good as other conventional 'graphic designers' around her. This in particular stuck with me as I have always found my evaluation of work and conceptual ideas to be a lot more successful than my actual design work. Hearing that there is a solid sector for people like this, following her job with It's Nice That, made me a lot more motivated to carry on in the bracket of 'Graphic Design' despite coming from a more Fine Art background.

After It's Nice That, Liv worked at Rough Trade, which coincidentally is my favourite store in London. I've been going there since I was a kid, and hearing that she was in charge of their monthly store magazine really got me excited. Her relaxed and informal approach to design really motivated me to carry on doing what I am doing, as it's working for her, it could for me as well. She spoke of having no prior experience in editorial and how having to put together a low budget publication every month gave her that experience. Before I always though I couldn't do things that I had no prior knowledge to as someone else would be better, however seeing the progression of the zine and how it got progressively better, showed me to go for things and to ask for help.

Liv's evident ability to do things because she wanted to, and the subsequent relevant and effective relaxed hands-on aesthetic is representative of the low-budget sort of bottom-up magazine that Rough Trade wanted. That is what best reflected their identity and so Liv found a space where she could be her own creative and communicate an aesthetic that suited her and the target audience. This is something I hope to achieve, as it becomes clear that within the many many different styles of design, there is something for everyone.