D&AD Education Day : Jack Renwick

Designer and art director Jack Renwick also spoke at the morning lecture at D&AD last Wednesday. Originally from Scotland, she moved to London to work with established design and branding agency The Partners (who have both an office in London and New York), and had been with them for a good few years until recently when she decided to venture out on her own. Jack is also a D&AD judge, and has won a few awards herself, both as a student and for her work at The Partners.

Jack firstly spoke about how she got into the industry, through ramp welding and sign making, and went on to talk about the work she had done at The Partners.

For example, they were asked to design the packaging for 'Mr Singh's Bangras', Indian flavoured sausages. They decided to not only create the box packaging, but also to design the package and look of each individual sausage by printing onto the skin in edible inks, such as the henna style pattern on the sausage below.

I really loved this idea as it just seemed to have taken the idea of packaging to another level, and they had really gone that extra mile to create something unique and special. They could have just made a nice box or packet but they really though about how to create something really appealing and created a great selling point.

Another project I was really impressed by was one that they had done for Deloitte (a huge accountancy firm with more than 165,000 employees all over the world). The brief was to create a fancy screen saver for all of Deloitte's computers, but as screen savers aren't really needed anymore, they created an eco friendly application that shuts down the computers to save loads of money and more importantly, energy. I think this is an example of really thinking outside of the box, and not just how to answer the given brief, but to answer the problem behind the brief in a better and more efficient way. I've posted a little vid from their website below which explains the idea, check it out.......

She spoke about a few other projects to that involved making logos, packaging design and typography. She also gave a few bits of advice about working in the industry, including learning to love the client, working hard, having a good personality, and how it can be really good to work as part of a team. 

I really enjoyed Jack's talk as she was really honest and down to earth, and some of the ideas she presented for projects were just really imaginative, and things I would never have thought of! I'll definitely keep an eye out for her work in the future....