Louise is a recent graduate of Kingston University, having studied BA Graphic Design with a Professional Placement year. Louise is passionate about publication – the act of making public – through printed and digital forms, as well as typography and art direction.
Louise undertook a Professional Placement year in Berlin, where she worked first as an artists’ assistant and intern, then as a design intern at a publishing house. During this time, she developed digital publication skills, website building, copywriting and research and presentation skills. Her employer then invited her to collaborate on a book following the end of the internship, which she designed and fundraised for through a Kickstarter campaign. The book was stocked in over 10 bookshops in Berlin and London in 2022, including Tenderbooks and The Photographers’ Gallery.
Alongside my final year at University, Louise was actively involved in fundraising for and putting on a graduate exhibition at Candid Arts Trust in Angel, to showcase her year groups’ work. Fundraising for this included hosting a ‘Wine+Bind’ bookbinding workshop, organising print sales and taking part in setting up a pop-up shop in Kingston’s shopping centre. As part of the Graduate Show Organisation team, Louise was responsible for setting tasks and deadlines, seeking information from participants and communicating with the venue. Louise was also part of the Print and Publication team in which she, along with four others, produced 600 embossed and foil-block printed publications which acted as an index of the work displayed, as well as designing and producing posters, captions and other takeaways using branding guidelines.
Alongside Louise’s work at Spencer West, she has been commissioned by Kingston University to design and produce a publication that can be used as a reflection and best practice for the publication of academic dissertations in a creative context. This was following the publication of her 8,000 word dissertation entitled ‘In What Ways Can Typography Be Political?’ in a relevant, printed form, thus merging theory and practice.