Nixon Design - Placement

Nixon Design is a graphic design studio based in Hayle, Cornwall. While they have had a number of national and international clients and projects such as Ginsters and Fedrigoni, the majority of their client base lies within the Cornwall region, having undertaken projects such as branding and editorial for nearby hotels, businesses and festivals. However it seems to be their intention to gain more national clients, spreading their business further across the uk to places like London. 

I gained this placement because my grandfather knows Martin Nixon, the founder of the studio, and put me in contact with him. Despite this contact, I was told that whether I got the placement or not would be based on the merit of my portfolio, due to the high number of applicants they get for placements. Luckily, my portfolio seemed to impress and I was contacted saying I had the placement 2 days after sending my portfolio in. 

When I started the placement, I was shown round the small studio in Cornwall, which consisted of about 12 employees, who had varying jobs; about half of the employees were full time designers, a few did more web based, coding roles and the other roles were jobs such as managing accounts and clients and social media. 

I was introduced to the lead designer who was supervising me for my two week placement. We chatted about what sort of design I was interested in and what I wanted to get out of the placement, before he set me off on my first task, rebranding ‘Hell Bay’ a four star hotel on the isle of Bryher in the Scilly Isles. The project was basically an upcoming client brief, meaning I was technically doing a client project for them, however I didn’t have the immediate pressure of my work being completely final. I enjoyed working on this brief because I am interested in branding and visual identity, and while its not the sort of client that I’d have for a project that I’d do at university, this actually ended up being quite interesting as it was a bit different then what I’d done before. I came up with some designs for this, and pitched them to my supervisor who seemed impressed and gave me some good feedback. 

I enjoyed this because I was in a professional setting, it was a bit of an insight to how I might be working in the future, coming up with some designs and ideas, pitching them to the supervising designer and seeing what they thought and how I should proceed. Getting that validation from a professional designer that my designs were good was certainly a confidence booster as well. After this I was given another project on top of this one; editorial design for a yachting magazine called Voyage. Similarly this was an upcoming client project, the studio had recently acquired the magazine and will be redesigning it in the future, so I was given the opportunity to redesign the previous issue to come up with some ideas for the layout and editorial style. It was good to have 2 different projects on the go and to see how managing my time in a professional design studio might work, when I’ve got multiple projects on the go. I can certainly apply some of these skills to extended practise at university. Also, doing this editorial project really made me more enthusiastic about editorial design, having been leaning more so towards branding before. I will definitely push to do some more editorial projects for extended practise, just because my skills with grid systems, laying out type and typesetting etc. all improved greatly from designing a full magazine. I really like dcoming up with simple ideas for the rationalisation of the editorial style, and applying these throughout the magazine, to create a consistent and cohesive publication. 

Towards the end of the second week, I pitched both of my designs for these projects to my supervisor, who again seemed impressed. Then for the last few days, he told me what he was currently woking on and said I could try and come up with some designs for that. The project was exterior signage and way finding for ‘Thornbury Castle’ a luxury Tudor castle hotel near Bristol. This was a less complete design process and was more so coming top with a few ideas. The hotel had recently undergone a rebrand so it was interesting having to work within the visual identity that another studio has just created. 

At the end of the two weeks, I sent across all the work I had done, so in the future, they may use some of that work when they undertake those projects, be it just a small idea or two here and there, to a larger part of some of those projects. 

This placement was really very valuable experience I think. It was just such good insight into how a graphic design studio functions day to day, and where my role might be within that once I graduate and get a job. While the nature of these projects and the clients weren’t the most exciting, I did still enjoy the projects. Even mundane every day things such as working 9-5 for two weeks was insight into what it’ll be like when I’m working full time. 

I think that even when there are parts of a placement like this that you don’t enjoy as much, or aren’t as ideal as you’d like, those parts are just as valuable insight, because now I have a much better idea of the sort of studio I want to work for moving forward, and what is important to me.  For example one of the biggest things was the location of the studio for me; it was in such a tiny Cornish town, and while for a two week placement, this was a nice little break, It definitely made me realise that I want to be in a big city with more going on. This also has an effect on the clients and projects that I’d be undertaking; in a bigger city, there’s a lot more going on and a lot more opportunity for design. The projects at Nixon were quite commercial and ideally, I’d really like to be working somewhere that does work within the cultural and public sectors as well. 

Also, the atmosphere and scale of Nixon was certainly quite small, definitely in comparison to BBH which had about 400 employees in a massive soho office. This was just a small attic studio with 12 people, but actually it was very nice. In an ideal world I’d perhaps work somewhere slightly larger, but what was good about Nixon was that everyone was very familiar with each other, and was up to date with what people were working on which made communication and efficiency within the studio quite effective