Study abroad

Experiences

Although my study abroad may have been a particularly turbulent experience, I learnt a lot about both myself as a practitioner, and as a person. The experience gave me the opportunity to collaborate with not only people from different cultures and with different ways of working, but to study something slightly outside of my comfort zone, and gain some valuable, transferrable skills to incorporate into my course at my home university.

Transferrable skills gained:

Graphic Design

• Learning more about typefaces and composing magazines. I learnt the rules relevant when selecting specific type faces for layouts for magazines. We created some infographics for a hospital which gave me some further information into the process of carrying out research projects.

Collaboration :

• Collaboration was evidently a key activity which ran through all modules. It was interesting collaborating with students from different countries and seeing the diversity in styles/ways of working. This experience gave me increased confidence in communicating with other practitioners and was a great reflection of myself as a practitioner, outlining the strengths and weaknesses I poses.

Presenting:

• Presenting your work was something which was done as an alternative to just handing in your work to be marked at the end of the module. This was beneficial to me as presenting has never really been my strong point - this experience allowed me to become a lot more confident with regards to public speaking, which i guess is very useful after graduating when communicating with art directors/authors/designers and pitching concepts/designs.

Networking:

• The experience was great for meeting other young designers and tutors for potential future collaborations and gaining a greater following. Keeping in contact has been useful in regards to discussing current working projects and looking for inspiration.