creative – Assemblage Collective

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.

An example of Luthiem’s work for Wool and the Gang

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

An example of a gift card Luthiem designed for a client

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?

22 October 2020

Kat Chojnacka is the creative director, editor, and founder of Bulb magazine. Founded in February 2020, the main goals of the magazine are to gather various artworks made by young creatives, to build a community where aspiring artists can showcase their work, and to create magazines full of art that feels fresh and relevant.

In this meeting, we were lucky enough to hear from Kat about the concept behind Bulb, how the name came about, and the failures and successes she’s experienced along the way.

On why she decided to start Bulb Mag:

“In January we had like a series of networking events organised by our university. And what amazed me is that I actually got to professionally meet people from other courses at my university. And it was kind of like, the first chance to do so in university with our tutors included. I just felt like I was missing out before on the full university experience, because I feel like, as an Art University, we should collaborate a lot and have some sort of platforms to share our work and motivate one another. So I wanted to help build that community. And I was just thinking about what I could do to, you know, help that. And because of my latest interest in InDesign, I thought maybe a magazine is the way to do it.”

On the name ‘Bulb’:

“The initial idea was to name it in a way that it would evoke feelings of freshness. So, at first, I wanted to name it ‘fresh’ or ‘raw.’ But those names were already taken by popular magazines. So I couldn’t settle on that. So I was literally using like a random word generator and just refreshing it all the time to see what names popped up. And there were a lot of that I kind of liked, for example ‘kettle’ ‘milk’, or ‘flesh.’ But they were all taken. I was just checking everything and everything was taken. So the actual name, the name ‘Bulb,’ is not my original idea. Basically I was telling my friend, my flatmate Veronica, how I was struggling with the name and she was like, ‘let’s look around the room, maybe we’ll find something interesting.’ And then she was like, ‘why not Bulb?’ And I was like, I kind of like it. So I settled on ‘Bulb.’ So basically, if you know, the symbolism of bulb, it’s supposed to be intention, or ideas. So I feel like it really gives away that fresh, creative mindset, in a way. And it’s short and catchy, which I also wanted it to be. So yeah, for me, it’s perfect.”

On the main goals of Bulb Magazine:

“The main goals of Bulb are to build a community of young artists, just young creatives wanting to share their work, and to promote them in a way, but also to motivate them. So initially, it was supposed to be for students of the Leeds Arts University, but now it’s more about just young creators in general. I didn’t feel like I should limit anyone and also I actually didn’t know at first that it might get popular some time. And so actually now my friends from Poland are submitting as well. But yeah, to be honest, one of the goals was also to motivate myself as well because I was struggling with motivation to produce more work. And I know that a lot of people from my course, and not only my course, had a difficult time as well, especially in quarantine. So it was, you know, it was just supposed to get us going and keep us on track.”

On failure and success:

“For the first official issue of Bulb I made an open call poster for submissions to the magazine, but I had to redo it, because for the first deadline, I didn’t get any submissions, like any at all. And once again, I was really heartbroken because of that. But I figured that maybe it was just it was just bad timing. So I redid the poster with different dates after university submissions. And then I got a lot of submissions. I mean, by a lot I mean, around 15. It doesn’t seem like that much. But for me, it’s quite a lot. And yeah, I went through three stages, basically. So at the beginning, because of the number of submissions, I was very motivated, and had really high hopes. And then I felt pressure, because there’s so many submissions. And I just felt the need to do it perfectly. And at the same time, it kind of motivated me as well. So at the end, I kind of felt fulfilment, because it’s so much longer than the previous ones. So I really feel like I did everything I could to make your work. And also I’ve created a website alongside, which I didn’t initially intend to do. But then I thought, why not try? Why not give it a go and just create a website?”

Want to find out more? Why not check out Bulb’s website or give Bulb a follow on Instagram.

By Tascha von Uexkull