design companies

The design profession is very broad and is increasingly becoming a wider discipline. You can choose to become a specialist or you can attempt to be multi-disciplined. You can compose music, screenprint, make your own books, shoot and edit your own films, build 3D environments, sculpt or animate.

To begin to establish where your future lies, we recommend you seek out organisations and design mentors who produce work that interests you personally. Contact them, seek their advice, sniff out internships, learn from them.

We will not attempt to name the thousands and thousands of exciting practitioners that you could approach here. The fun lies in finding them yourself. Lurk around the excellent LCC library, meander around Magma, attend every design lecture you can, subscribe to Eye, Creative Review, Grafik, Baseline, TypoGraphic, Dot,Dot,Dot, Varoom, Campaign, Res. Note down people and work that excites you and track them down. It is worth noting that the better your research, the more original and fruitful your finds may be. Remember that you are not the only person who will be contacting Why Not Associates, Browns or Tomato…

One final point: life is not like university. There are no 'areas of study' in the profession. Illustrators can write, typographers can animate, web designers can bind and advertisers can letterpress, so keep an open mind.

Typo/graphics

This is a very broad area and those with an interest in typography have a huge range of choices from font design to book and magazine design, from film and TV title design, exhibition design to identity design.

Here are a few interesting sites to get you started:

Una, Amsterdam

A Practice for Everyday Life, London

Bibliotheque, London

Fraser Muggeridge, London

Fuel, London

Made thought, London

Nick Bell, London

Non Format, London

O.R.G., NYC

Tom Hingston, London

Universal Everything, Sheffield

Advertising

There is a mega list published by Campaign every year listing the 300 top advertising agencies. These are the big hitting, international agencies which cover above and below the line accounts. You can work your way down the list, Abbott Mead Vickers, BBDO, JWT, Saatchi & Saatchi, Fallon, Mother, Bartle Bogle Hegarty and on. The IPA (The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) has a directory which you can use.

Consider whether you are a writer, a planner or an art director. Consider whether you want to collaborate and have a partner or whether the established way of doing it is not for you.

However, there is a new breed of organisation emerging, which is providing new possibilities. Smaller, more design-led, more socially responsible, less conventional. For example, Weiden+Kennedy are the first agency to have stated that they no longer want to see a conventional advertising 'book' from applicants.

Check these out for starters:

Information Design

Possibly the broadest area of all, information design offers a vast range of options. The subject encompasses newspaper design, environmental signage, tv design, interactive web design, exhibition design, posters and broadsheets....indeed almost anything.

Every time you read a book, look at the publishers details, every time you see a good film title note down the credits, every time you see a fabulous poster on the underground, turn sideways and make a note of who did it, every time you go to a memorable exhibition check in the programme for the designers’ name. All the information around you has been designed by someone and most of it has a small credit on it.

Have a look at these:

Illustration

Illustrators have loads of choice. Do you want to work from home and seek commissions? Do you want to work in some kind of co-operative of artists and illustrators? Do you want to work in a design group with artists of other disciplines? Do you want to get an agent who will get work for you? Do you want to be an art director on a magazine and commission other illustrators and photographers? Once you have worked that out, it’s just up to you to get your work seen by as many people as possible.

The following list may give you a few ideas of design organisations who love illustrators. Cruise Borders Bookshop or the Tate Modern shop and extract the art directors name from every exciting book or magazine that you see and call them. Engage animators. Address advertising agencies. Involve yourself with interactive designers.

Aboud Sodano

Association of Illustrators

Heart Illustration Agency