Yesterday, PLHS was privileged to host a visit from ex-student now professional graphic designer, Jess Scholz from Cohere Creative. Jess generously donated an hour of her time and expertise to deliver a graphics workshop with our Year 10 Design crew.
Jess spoke about her pathway from enjoying Art and Design at Port Lincoln High School, to tertiary study at TAFE SA in Adelaide to attain an Advanced Diploma in Advertising & Graphic Design, to eventually returning to Port Lincoln and operating her own business.
She offered insights into her profession, discussing her working hours and daily time management (tracking every fifteen minutes of the day!), the computing equipment and software that she uses, and her various approaches to working with her clients to establish each crucial design brief.
Jess was also willing to present three case studies to our students, sharing style guides that she created for the recent Tunarama festival, Jump Ship Brewing and GPK Partners (chartered accountants). As well as showcasing her outstanding final solutions, these documents clearly demonstrated the behind-the-scenes processes that Jess utilises to effectively execute the brief for her clients – these initial phases include producing identity rationales, key words and mood boards. From there, the processes were very familiar to our students, who are also generating graphics by exploring options for brand imagery, colour schemes, typography and composition options, before resolving their final designs and relating them to a range of applications.
Jess’ visit reinforced two key themes to our Year 10 Designers – firstly, they are on the right track as far as embracing the design process before committing to a final artwork; secondly, a PLHS education can clearly take you far. I should point out that Jess’s face appears on our “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Arts Students” poster (pictured below) that can be found in each arts learning space at PLHS.
We sincerely thank Jess for sharing her valuable time and expertise with us and now look forward to achieving higher levels of success with our current graphic design project.
~ Mr. Shaun Thomas (Design Teacher)
* NOTE: Jess kindly left her three style guides behind for me to show my other Design classes – they will also be available for viewing in the Design Room at this afternoon’s Open Night.
