So here I am a year from being a graduate student at Teesside University. I studied a bachelors (BA) honors (Hons) in Graphic Design. My specialism was in Typography. How I actually got to this stage was an incredibly long cycle of studies.

From attending public schools in Yorkshire; Martin Frobisher, Altofts Middle School and St. Wilfrid’s Catholic High School & Sixth Form College.

I graduated from high school at the age of sixteen receiving five GCSE’s, which included Art, Maths, Science, Technology (Resistant Materials). Summing up with these GCSE’s, I decided to take a route in design. I already had ambitions to be an artist or designer at a young age.

Ending sixth form in 2006 receiving three A-levels; Art & Design, Art Graphics and Technology (Resistant Materials). This was the nerve racking time when I had to make my life line decisions. Whether to take an apprenticeship or straight into university with some sort of knowledge what I actually wanted to work as a profession.

By this point I was struggling what to do and wanted to keep my options opened at the same time. I had asked my tutors in each of the subjects I studied for some advice, but ideally this felt as if I was narrowing down to one set of skills.

I took a work experience as an in house Graphic Designer at BMB Group in Leeds. They are a big company creating and supplying major designer labels or brands in men’s suits and women’s garments. I enjoyed the placement designing advertisements for the company and their clients.

Eventually I came around after taking many advices from tutors, careers advisers, parents, relatives and friends. I chose to head towards university studying Graphic Design.

My theory was I enjoyed working with new technology from the Art Graphic course and also learnt in the realm of reality, technology was just the start of a new era, especially in computers and the web. My placement also help me to convince this was the right choice as all hand drawn designs were moving towards digital designs.

During my studies at university, I also took another work experience in print production at Cast Media Group, which is also based in Leeds. They design for print, web and also manufacture prints for products. This helped a lot how to design for print and handle the different sizes, textures, finishes for different printed products and the manufacturing processes for formats..

After achieving a Bachelor’s degree at Teesside University. I tried to find employment in the profession I did, but this was proving me harder then I actually thought. I was in the middle of a recession and companies were tightening up their expectations on what would be their ideal employee.

Beginning of this year 2011, I had been working for a publishing firm as a freelancer, designing magazines and controlling online media. Personally this was to show a strong passion in design and that I worked for free for a period.