AOD presents a First-Hand Experience to Studying Design
The successful ‘Design Experience Day 2017’ by AOD gathers After ALs and OLs students around design
The Design Experience Day recently hosted by AOD at its campus in Colombo was a great success and saw over a hundred attendees interested in design as a career. The event was especially curated by AOD’s faculty of international design academics to help after ALs and OLs students as well as their parents understand the incredible number of local and international prospects that design offers as one of the best new career paths in Sri Lanka. With a series of fantastic creative experiences such as workshops, taster sessions, exhibitions and one-on-one career guidance sessions which were as informative as they were interactive and engaging. AOD’s Design Experience Day proved to be a unique opportunity for many to get an understanding of what it is like to be studying and working in design.
At Design Experience Day 2017, AOD’s international faculty shed light on the various types of design careers, the kind of job roles involved in each and the type of qualifications needed for them. One of the most interesting revelations that students and parents got at the event was how the career path of graphic design has evolved beyond the traditional mould. The Design Experience Day workshops provided a genuine insight into the modern role of a Graphic Designer allowing attendees to see that it was a multidisciplinary role that challenged creative thinkers to interpret strategic content in visual form by integrating exciting mixes of new media and technologies from art to science.
Simultaneously AOD’s animation design faculty allowed students to understand the depth of visual effects (VFX), rendering, creative thinking and design that goes into motion graphics and animation and why careers in this sector are extremely important and in high demand within today’s visually wired society. During the career counselling sessions for visual communication design and animation, the many opportunities available to work in industries such as television, new media, film, advertising, corporate identity design and editorial design were revealed along with tips and pointers on succeeding as visual design or animation entrepreneurs with own studios. The pathway to these incredible opportunities was also presented as the Northumbria UK BA (Hons) Graphic Design degree at AOD which is the only one of its kind that can be fully completed in Sri Lanka.
Similarly, AOD’s fashion faculty explained how its BA (Hons) Fashion & TextileDesign degree is structured to help students join powerful industries like Sri Lanka’s multi-billion dollar apparel industry, along with many examples of young AOD graduates who succeeded in starting their own labels and brands in fashion. AOD Design Experience Day also shared the more business and promotional edged facet of fashion, through the award-winning Northumbria Fashion Marketing & Design degree at AOD which engages all aspects of fashion studies, from forecasting, to research into markets, fashion graphic, illustration, photographic styling and promotional techniques to feed professionals into careers in trend forecasting, fashion styling, fashion media and promotion.
Another area that was highlighted was interior design and the careers that this incredibly exciting and fast-growing sector presents. The workshops, career sessions and exhibitions highlighted how the interior design industry is a career built around providing spatial and experiential solutions for hospitality, tourism, retail and other significant industries. It also presented how successful graduates have gone to collaborate with architects, existing design studios etc., and also by specialising in selected areas like lighting, material technology, furniture design, hospitality design, residential spaces, exhibitions and events and spatial reconstruction.
AOD Design Experience Day 2017 shed light on these fantastic design careers and how one can prepare for them by acquiring the right kind of education, exposure and qualifications. The prestigious Northumbria University UK design degrees at AOD is now open for 2017 intake enrollments allowing more students after ALs to join in for a British design degree completed right here in Sri Lanka, with the guaranteed security of a great career in design.