The Company You Keep at Shillington Melbourne

We recently had the pleasure of welcoming Rhys Gorgol (Creative Director) and Veronica Lethorn (Designer) for a guest lecture at Shillington Melbourne to discuss the creative process at The Company You Keep. TCYK is a design led creative practice that combines brand strategy and design thinking to help businesses distil, define and articulate what they want to do and why they do it.

Rhys and Veronica used two recent branding projects, Northcote Social Club and Storey Floors, as case studies which gave valuable insight into how a powerful narrative can connect businesses to their audiences. By walking us through the early stages of development, from brief to concept and pitch, #shillomel students learnt how to execute and sell ideas in a meaningful way. 

We love getting a behind the scenes run down on how our design heroes tackle new projects. Thanks to Rhys and Veronica, our students took away a whole new mindset on the importance of lateral thinking in design. “We had to ask ourselves—does it feel like the sort of ‘N’ I’d sit drinking whiskey until 3am with?” Rhys Gorgol on creating the Northcote Social Club logo.

Here’s our pick of advice from TCYK’s talk broken down into student and graduate advice:

Student Advice:

1. “If you’re gonna take an internship—go into it with a clear vision of what you want to get out of it.”― Rhys
2. “As a graduate you should go after everything—meet people, talk to people you admire, go after freelance projects. Any opportunity you have to gain more experience.”― Rhys

Design Advice:

1. “I always pick up on details when I visit places. It’s the little things that make a place feel human because you know that someone has thought about that fine detail.”― Rhys
2. “Put yourself in the shoes of your target demographic. What kind of things would they want to see?” ― Rhys
3. “If you have reasons to your design, you can justify to your client why you’ve made those choices. Then the client will understand.”― Veronica
4. “We tend to take a systemised approach to brand identities. What excites me is how an identity can adapt and become flexible within its parameters.”― Rhys

Again, a huge thanks to Rhys and Veronica for coming in. Be sure to check out The Company You Keep’s portfolio and follow TCYK on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for more branding inspiration.