With access to a panel of designers from different backgrounds and attending professionals that help support the community, students could have their chance to ask the questions of what lies ahead for them.

The venue for the event was the cozy spot of Hylin in West Leederville, and by 7 pm the space was at its capacity. Fifty people in total, and after pizza had arrived and most people had a drink in their hand, a Q&A session was started. It took up the bulk of the night and the panel was made up of six awesome professionals that had been in the industry for anything less than ten years. Panelists included:

  • Benjamin Clark – In-house designer at Sea to Summit
  • Joseph Dennis – Designer at Meerkats
  • Tom Benson – Running Benson Design Co
  • Jaclyn Tan – Designer/developer at Monk Media
  • Melissa Hawkett – Junior art director at 303 Mullenlowe
  • Corey Ginnivan – Designer at Appbot & co-organiser of Localhost Perth

The panel did a brilliant job of answering all the questions and each one of them had some knowledge and wisdom to share in relation to each topic. We made sure to get a collection from different areas of design to both cover directed questions and give different perspectives on each answer. A lot of the questions were collected beforehand through the TDK and AGDA social media so we knew what the students wanted to know.

A few questions were aimed at the freelance-experienced, such as “how do you deal with a client that refuses to pay up?” and “how do you deal with a client that is really unreliable at communicating?”. The always important “do digital designers need to know how to code?” also got asked and all answers were quite similar. In a short (just in case you’re wondering) – no.

The Q&A session wrapped up after about an hour and we had a good amount of input from the audience. About thirty minutes was left as a chance to mingle, drink and pack up. It was fantastic to see the students from different campuses attend the event, and we also had attendees from a few agencies around Perth. Great feedback was received from both students and panelists, so it’s definitely worth running again. AGDA WA would also like to thank Localhost for making an appearance at the event!

Photo credits: Hailey Sims of AGDA WA and TDK

Post by Ash Vadolia

Last year, Ash joined the AGDA WA council to give what he can to the industry. He’s now helping run events around Perth and takes care of some of the organisation’s social media. Outside of that, Ash has a focus on the web, UI and branding design, but never wants to stop learning things outside of his job description. With that being said, you'll find him at design-meet ups around Perth.