I still have no idea how I landed this gig to be completely honest, but it was one of my very first projects I ever worked on where I was actually paid. Granted, it was just one time pay in a cheque and I was still really quite young, while learning how the real world works in the media world. A student nevertheless.
I was tasked in designing the next handbook for "City of Westminster College" that would feature for 2011/2012 educational year and be given away to every student that attended the college. Naturally, I was a bit nervous, as I was told 2000+ minimum of hard copies would be print out to be given away, so I wanted to do my best. Back then, I had a lot of influence on futuristic, yet simplistic design choices because of the video games I was playing back then. So naturally I wanted to replicate that in my first ever proper design, but adding my creativity to the mix.
Whenever I'm working on any media project, my main goal always was to make people think and inspire them for whatever they want to be inspired. Education might be a beautiful thing that I started to appreciate later down the years, but it's hard to sell education properly to young teenage demographic that inspires. A pen and some notebook is not only boring, but I doesn't look that visually pleasing either. So my idea was to make my design more abstract, more simple, and take all the possible words that reflect positivity and self strengths in a person, and combine all the words into something singular and easy to understand - a pen, the ultimate educational symbol. Now it was just a matter of putting all the words together to shape a pen, creating a nice simple background and polish the design following the feedback I was given from my superiors. Even put a small easter egg into the design of my original nationality, as every designer should have their personal signature on their designs I think.
Fast forward to September 2011, my first ever professionally designed handbook is being given away to every student that enters the building. It was quite surreal to see the same handbook being in every student's hands on that first ever day at "City of Westminster College" and definitely one of my biggest highlights in my professional career. I was told 3000 copies were printed out and naturally I took minimum 5 copies to myself to keep and bragging like an idiot that my name features at the back of the handbook (I was proud, don't judge me).
