Career Stories

What is your current role?  I’m a multidisciplinary designer & illustrator who specialises in branding and illustration for the unconventional. My projects vary from conceptual branding for startups and SMEs, to print and illustration for the Arts and Advertising. As I’m self-employed, my job includes creative development of the above as well as client liaison, invoicing, lead generation and other business management. I’m also co-founder of DesignOpp, an IDI initiative to champion diversity for People of Colour in Irish Design. Tell us about your career journey to date:  After graduating from Visual Communication in DIT/TUD I worked at a startup before settling in an agency called Thinkhouse from 2017 – 2019. I worked predominantly on advertising campaigns, posters, social design…

What is your current role?   I’m Ashwin Chacko a positively playful Author, Illustrator and Motivational Speaker. I am the founder of Whacko Chacko an illustration studio. Tell us about your career journey to date?  I studied BSc: animation and multimedia in college from 2009 – 2012. While I was studying I was freelancing on the side doing some graphic design and some illustration. At the end of the course I decided animation wasn’t for me so I continued to freelance for 2 more years before I joined Whoa Mama Design, an Ad Agency, in 2014, where I learned my trade as a graphic designer. 2015 I moved to Delhi where I worked as an Art Director at Animal, a…

What is your current role? I am a Branding and Design Consultant, working primarily with small businesses helping them to create visual identities. These visual identities come alive in websites and printed material. Collaborating with each client I create a brand personality, values, archetypes and overall look and feel for the brand. Tell us about your career journey to date? Traditionally I was trained as a Graphic Designer, starting out first taking part in a BTEC National Diploma in Graphics and Packaging at Southgate college from 1997 to 1998. This course focused primarily on packaging, Technical drawing and Typography. This course instilled early a great sense of the importance of the craft of Graphic Design. After I graduated from the…

What is your current role? I’m a Senior UX Designer at Each&Other. What that means is actively listening to people, be that client stakeholders or users, to understand and frame a problem. Then it’s finding insights and creating a response that not only meets their needs now but also unseen needs and has the potential to evolve with them.  Tell us about your career journey to date? I began my design career with a degree in Visual Communication from DIT. When I finished, I left for London and after a little while (which seemed like a long time then), I got an internship which turned into my first full time design position. It was in this role that I learnt…

What is your current role? Founder of a Design Consultancy specialising in professional and industrial products. Boxclever was founded in 2002 and has grown to a mix of industrial designers and mechanical engineers. My actual design work is now only around 20%, primarily my role is in client management, project scoping and quoting, Mentoring of junior and middleweight designers, finance, strategy, running the ‘business’. Tell us about your career journey to date? I was hired within three months of leaving NCAD Industrial Design in 1993 as a modelmaker. Product/Industrial Design was very different, there were few jobs in consultancy, and in-house usually meant you were one of a minimal design team in an Irish SME. Modelmaking was the usual route…