Lloyd Seymour, Senior Designer at Brisbane Marketing

We recently welcomed Shillington graduate Lloyd Seymour back to Brisbane for a guest lecture. Now Senior Graphic Designer at Brisbane Marketing, he explained that he still applies all the same principles he learned at Shillington. He’s created a wide range of design including conceptual art, large scale event branding, marketing collateral, UX and photography. 

Lloyd wowed our Brisbane students with some straight-up, practical tips for working as a graphic designer. Here are our our seven favourites:

Invest your time, effort and money in creating a killer portfolio. “It is not only vital to your role, but will give you confidence. From my experience, a killer portfolio can trump a high qualification.”

Research is more important than just the facts. “Sometimes my research hasn’t been factually correct, but it’s brought inspiration.”

Never start a design without a brief. “You may need to perform a reverse brief if you have too little information. You may need to summarise if you have too much information.”

Collaboration is good. “There’s no shame in passing a part of your design over to a specialist to bring it to the next level.”

Don’t waste energy on bad clients. “Do whatever it takes to dispatch bad clients.”

Tips on holding efficient meetings. First, “start with a small group of decision makers only.” Here’s the step-by-step:

• Recap why you are having a meeting.
• Set the agenda—what you will be doing.
• Define objectives—what will be achieved.
• Start presentation, and use mood boards.
• Finish with a summary.
• Set actions.

Lloyd’s advice to clients.

• “The design can only be as good as the brief you deliver.”
• “Explain the problem not the solution.”
• “You have engaged a designer for their experience and expertise so avoid the temptation to instruct the design process.”

Big thanks again to Lloyd for sharing some seriously practical advice with our students. Follow him on Facebook and Behance for more!