David Sedgwick Vs. Mike Rigby

In the three years of studying Graphic Design at Stockport College we have some a fair few practitioners come in from the outside to speak to us about different things such as; their work, life after graduation, how important placements are and what it's like working in the industry.

Deciding who to do my last design comparison on wasn't an easy task considering the amount of designers I've seen over the last three years. When thinking about it, I decided to choose two designers who stood out to me more than the rest. One of these designers was Dave Sedgwick, Dave is my favourite designer to date and the other was Mike Rigby, I chose him because of the impact of his talk with us.

Dave is an ex Manchester Metropolitan student during his time there he worked as a freelancer to get a bit of extra money in which is always a bonus. David has been on placements with Flux Magazine in the Northern Quarter, Splinter in Liverpool and Dinosaur.

Mike is an ex Preston University student. Mike has worked for companies such as, Imagination, Chase (Manchester,) Moon Design, Pentagram and Landor Sydney.

When Dave did his talk he spoke about how serious we take things. This to me is something that stood out and was very striking. As we are students the majority of us are very laidback people who don't think that far ahead, but as we are all trying to make it into the design industry this is something that we should do, the people who are more serious about it have that advantage straight away. Dave's tips was that 'we should be more determined to be successful and being more involved.' Certain things Dave did when he realized this was how he researched into design companies so he could try and get portfolio viewings etc.

When Mike did his talk he approached it very differently to how everyone else. Mike did his talk about the good and negative points about being a designer. Some of the good points about working in an industry like that are; easy to work for yourself, easy to work abroad, all the free parties and people in the industry are very helpful. Although as we all know with everything there's bad points to it, the negative points about being a designer are; long hours/unpaid overtime, poor quality of work and the pressure on you.

Overall these two designer's did their talk differently. For instance Dave did his talk in a big lecture theatre, this resulted in there being more people in the talk, more pressure on us to ask questions, whereas Mike did his talk in the classroom which I found was more relaxing and when at the end we asked questions it was a lot more relaxed we didn't feel like the question was going to be daft and embarrass us or something like that.

In the end both designers did their talks very different, but both was very enjoyable. It didn't matter to me where the presentation was because each talk is interesting and their is always something, big or small, that amazes you with what is said in each presentation.