Graham And Brown Visit, Guru Meeting with Phil

Quite early on in the year we had a guru meeting with previous students who graduated from the same course as us and successfully progressed into the design world. The objective of the meeting was to be linked to a particular guru who suited your style of working so that you could get the most out of using contacting them. I thought this was a brilliant idea and was really pleased that my guru was Phillip from one of the leading wallpaper companies Graham and Brown. His portfolio was very impressive and you could see how he had progressed into the design world after he'd left college with a degree in surface design which made me feel a little uplifted about leaving the course and searching for a job. I found the meeting really helpful and felt very grateful for having such a qualified guru who was clearly very dedicated and passionate about surface design.

Following the guru meeting we got the opportunity to take a trip to visit the Graham and Brown studio for the day. On this trip we received a guided tour on every part of wallpaper producing, it was a very impressive studio and I was astonished at the size of the buildings and the amount of work going on and jobs available. We learnt a lot about what the wallpaper industry is looking for and discovered a great deal on the process of wallpaper making. I was shocked to learn that you can spend a large amount of time on a design and get so far with it, only to be told right near the end of the process that a design can sometimes not be created as it it could be to complicated or may not work as a print. It was also really fascinating to see the factory side of the production on the wallpaper as as a student designer who creates samples you tend to forget about this side of it. I was unaware of how much work there is to be done in order to create a successful wallpaper design and how advanced and large some of the machines are, so it was really good to see this. Overall I feel I have gained a lot from the company Graham and Brown and hope to still learn a lot more from Phillip and the company itself in the future.