
5 December 2020
Luthiem Escalona is a freelance graphic designer who currently works mainly for the online knitting and crochet store Wool and the Gang. In this meeting, she introduced the collective to what graphic design is, as well as her career path, projects, and creative process. Below we have summarised some key points from her presentation:

What is Graphic Design?
- Creating visual content to communicate a message
- By using hierarchy, typography, colours, photography and illustration you can communicate a feeling or message
- You see it all day every day, even if you might not realise it in:
- packaging
- logos
- books
- branding
- websites
- posters

Career path:
- Luthiem graduated with a BA in Graphic Design from the University of Herfordshire in 2017.
- She subsequently ended up getting an internship and later a full time job at Liberty London’s graphic studio as a junior graphic designer. Here she worked on mainly campaign identities, posters, signage, and window graphics. Above is an example of one of these designs.
- After a year at Liberty Luthiem decided to go freelance and now works predominantly for a company called Wool and the Gang, who focus on sustainability and slow fashion.

What does a graphic designer do all day?
“I currently work 4 days a week at Wool and the Gang from Monday to Friday. While I’m there my day starts at 9am. We have a daily catch up at 10am, where we talk about what we’re working on the day, now that we’re all working from home. Then I’ll work on what I’ve been briefed in, paid ads, a newsletter, etc. Depending on the day I might have a meeting where we will talk about upcoming campaigns, how we think it should look, etc. I finish at 5:30pm!”
Luthiem

Creative process:
“It depends on the brief. Some clients are really set on what they would like, some others are a bit more open. But it’s always very important to know what needs to be communicated. Based on that it always helps me to write down a few key words that summarise the message.”
Luthiem
Step by step:
- Write down some key words. What is the message and who is it coming from?
- Create a moodboard of your references and inspirations
- Make sketches, testing our your initial ideas
- Present to the client and get feedback
- Amend and create the final artwork

And finally…some lovely creative advice!
“Don’t be scared to ask for help or try things. Find people who inspire you and encourage you and keep them close. Give yourself space to do whatever you want. Draw, paint, sculpt, read, take photos. Go there, do that thing you’ve been wanting to do for ages, don’t be scared to go all the way there cause it’s easier to edit back than to add more.”
Luthiem
Want to discover more of Luthiem’s gorgeous work? Why not give her a follow on Instagram or check out her website?