Above is my selection of designers, who i sent emails to. All the designers/ design agencies are from Melbourne, this is I wanted to interview designers that i could interact with in person.
Of these designers that i sent emails to, several responded. This on it’s own was a surprise to me, I found it warming to see that people that I admire find time to educate new designers working to be a part of the industry. Of the 4 designers who responded, Nick Symeou, Amery Johnston, Brenton Osborn and Andrew Paoli, for a number of reasons I decided to interview Amery johnston.
Amery is a young communication and graphic designer who graduated from Monash 3 years ago, I found it really cool that in those brief three years he had achieved so much. I wanted to interview someone that I could relate to on a personal level, and i think choosing someone who wasn’t an adult really helped us see us to eye. In addition, because of out small age gap, I felt as if Amery gave me really up to date advice of the contemporary design world.
After exchanging 5 or so emails regarding where we would meet up and if it was ok for me to film, me and Amery met on Degraves st in the city. I bought him a coffee and I found that our conversation was really comfortable and easy flowing. While i expected him to be in a rush (and I'm sure he was) Amery spent almost two hours speaking to me about his experiences with the design industry and gave me endless amount of really cool tips and suggestions that I will hopefully manifest in my design practice. In a really positive way, I found that the interaction was less of an interview and more of a conversation on design.
Once the interview was done and i collected all the information i needed, including Amery’s written answers to my questions and footage of Amery working, I began to create the video. I had about 50 minutes of video footage, that i needed to deduce into a short film. I wanted the video to showcase Amery when she is working. I therefore, removed all the footage of me asking question and him answering them and focused on the time when he invited me to watch him do a project he has been working on. This was a really nice counterbalance from the questions, it allowed me to have a not only Amery’s answers to my questions but also see how those answers manifest in her work.
I then decided to generate a website, where I would display my interview in a blog format. I designed a simple template on Sqaurespace and bought a cheap URL off GoDaddy (www.ameryjohnston.info) and began to put together the sections of the interview. I intended to refine the website down to it’s simplest form, having a simple menu of the interview itself, Amerys work (through imagery) and his contact information. My design of the website layout was very much influenced on the blog ‘ItsNiceThat’ - http://www.itsnicethat.com . Being simple, minimalist and easy to read.
After completing the editing of the film, I utilised iMovie’s easy sharing tools to export my video onto Vimeo, which i then easily embedded onto my website. I then sent a link to Amery to confirm that he was ok with everything, this was really nice, because I got a super nice response form him and said that he really liked it!
Overall, I found the ‘ask me anything’ project to be really exciting, I loved engaging with professionals and taking a step into the not to distance future. It gave me a lot of confidence and inspiration and a drive to push myself so I can truly tackle the design industry once i finish studying. It also gave me a sense of direction, I now feel like I have a greater understanding of where i want to take my studies, and what a day in the life of a designer looks like.
I also discovered the importance of networking, Amery spent a lot of time explaining to me how important it is to get your name out there, this to me meant that I should continue to engage with new people, be professionals or amateurs because a conversation is the beginning of a new pathway.
Bellow is a link to my website:
www.ameryjohnston.info











