College Years

With no interest or capability in proper academia, and still no reasonable job prospects, I decided to go to Wakefield College, along with three other people from School. My best friend Chris would do a different course, but I would spend the next year on the Foundation Art & Design course with fellow Rodillians Joanne Smith and Kirsty Mullen.
I made some really good friends at Wakefield College and it was one of the most memorable times in my life when I finally felt like I had a wider group of friends and there were lots of gatherings and events. Everyone began by doing the same stuff before the course was separated out into specialised areas. Most of the people I stayed friends with were also in the Graphic Design group, but some others had done “3D” design. I was never really friends with the people that moved into “Fine Art” or “Textiles”. There still wasn’t a lot of access to computers at the time and any that we did get was largely unsupervised, in a different part of the college and we pretty much had to learn things ourselves. By the end of the year, I still had no clear direction and I hadn’t really been taught anything at all. I came away with some basic skills using early design software, but not much else. The best thing about Wakefield College had been the people around me. Sadly, these days I rarely see or even hear from most of them, even via Facebook. Even so, I still consider these to be my most prominent and meaningful group of friends I ever had. I have nothing but kind words and fond memories about them all.

HND Graphic Design
Attending Barnsley College took up four years of my life and they were the loneliest years of supposed education. Although the HND course was specifically Graphic Design, in many ways it didn’t feel very different from Wakefield because there wasn’t much teaching going on. It was more about being set briefs and having to figure out what to do yourself and learning any software skills the hard way. There was no way that by the end of it I was going to be any more well prepared for a job. And apart from a lack of technical skills, my creative abilities were not at all well honed. I would spend quite large chunks of time working on my own pet projects instead of work that had been set. This alone should have made it obvious to me that I would never be well suited for carrying out tedious work set by potential clients that I would have no real interest in.

Bachelor of Arts (Degree) Combined Studies (Design)
Up to the last day of my HND course, I had no idea what I would do next and going out into the world to get a full time job of some type was way too daunting. At the last minute I decided to carry on at Barnsley and do a BA course. But this would be “Combined Studies”, so it wouldn’t just be Graphic Design. In theory that could have worked in my favour, but in practice, it meant that I would be taking a massive step backwards and revisiting pointless unhelpful work like Life Drawing and Photography. Furthermore, I’d also have to do even less useful things like Printmaking, and even more written studies about aspects of design that I had absolutely no interest in whatsoever like product design. The Graphic Design I did would now also include video graphics production. Most things were difficult as the software was still relatively basic and access to hardware was sometimes difficult as there was high demand for it.

Arguably, the best thing to come out of the four years at Barnsley College was the opportunity I had in 1996 to spend two months in California. When it was announced as something we could do, it seemed too good to be true. I left the UK in thick snow at the end of January with lots of other people from the same course and people from similar areas of study. I arrived to summery weather even though it was supposedly “winter” in Los Angeles too. Whilst there, I was going to go to Graphic Design, Packaging Design, and Computer Graphics classes. My first lesson of Graphic Design was painful and I sat alone as no-one else from the UK was doing it. I had no idea what to do for the brief about promoting the Northridge Department of Art and Design. Consequently, I immediately stopped going to the only course that was best suited to my area of study. I carried on with Computer Design but I had to switch from using Freehand that I knew well to using Illustrator, which I found difficult because of how different it was. The lessons were quite basic and I never achieved much in it. Packaging Design was more interesting, but the class was entirely based in a room with no computers and it was more about discussion and appraisal of existing packaging and our attempts to re-do them. I had some access to computers in the Student Union building but no print or scanning facilities. I really don’t know how we were supposed to produce the final pieces. I would end up working on and finishing US work back in the UK when it ultimately didn’t matter anymore.
Visiting the US was massively more about enjoying the free time and places to go like San Francisco (a 365 mile drive away), Hollywood, Santa Monica, or theme parks like Disneyland, Universal Studios and Six Flags either in a small group or as a bigger one. I would also spend a lot of time walking around the campus or surrounding areas alone, which I quite enjoyed even if it was a bit lonely.
This was also the first time I would encounter access to the internet. And although it was still in its infancy, and looked terrible by more modern standards, it was an almighty revelation. It was just ultimately fascinating and engrossing. Wednesday 28th February 1996 was the first day that I got to use it properly. I spent 10 hours in the main library surfing different topics and interests, only briefly breaking off to get a burger or use the toilet. There’d be a number of days like that.