Designer | Jack Renwick Studio Ltd.

 

 

We asked Ash about his highs and lows, regrets, “gold nugget” life lessons, and if his experience at Lincoln Uni gave him that all important “foot-up” into the “big bad” Design Industry.

This is what he had to say…

I graduated in 2013. I think the Metamorphosis’ was a favourite project of mine, during my third year of study, as it had a clear starting point but with sufficient space to interpret the brief as and how one chose. As a result some of my best work came from this brief.

Another of my favourite (and toughest) projects was the final major project. The extended time and open-endedness of the brief allowed the student to do whatever they felt would make their portfolio piece stand-out, putting everything one learned as a student into one project.

I thoroughly enjoyed both the course and my time at Lincoln. I felt as though the course and tutors rewarded hard work and continually attempted to help me push ideas and concepts forward until the end of the project.

If you ask me if I could do it all again – what would I change, my answer would be that I wouldn’t change a thing. I really achieved everything I had hoped to. What t I really took out of the course was that I learnt how to take feedback and how to come back with something stronger to show the next week.

My advice to someone starting the GD course at Lincoln would be this:  Treat every brief as though it is for the real-world and as though you are the client. You will find yourself asking – ‘Is this really good enough for me?’. But at the same time dont be constrained by real-world boundaries.

My most memorable time at Lincoln was when I received a perfect set of final year grades and was subsequently awarded the Best Student Award.

So now I’m a designer at Jack Renwick Studio in Shoreditch. We specialise in branding across print, and across various digital environments. Our clients range from multi-national companies to start-ups. All of our work has strong ideas as their foundations. I recently completed the roll out for the rebranding of a large investment company. This was a huge project that I have overseen, from sketches on paper, to artwork, sending to print and production – so across many, many touchpoints. The project has recently gone live and I’m very proud of how it will change the perception of the company in question.

Regarding my future, I keen to climb up the ranks from a Junior, to a mid-weight designer and then hopefully onto a Senior Designer, and then maybe towards opening my own Studio. What is fortunate is that the studio I work for is fairly committed to striking a balance between creative freedom and making money – strong ideas will always be rewarded over ‘easy wins’ and design ‘fluff’