Careers Day – Dalbeattie High School

Jack Ogston 11th of February 2022

It was great to be involved in Dalbeattie High School’s Careers Day, held on Wednesday at the school. Zoe, one of our designers, is a former pupil of the school and she was delighted to be given the opportunity to talk all things design and (hopefully) inspire some of the students into a career in web and graphic design.

Here’s what Zoe had to say about the day:

Presenting to young teens can be tough, so I planned a quick presentation about my journey into a design job and the opportunities available in the local area and across the country.

Boring introductions over, we set up a 30 circles design challenge and asked the kids to think outside the box. Fill the 30 circles with 30 things and you have 3 minutes.

It surprised me how many finished the exercise. This is a well known ice breaker in the design world and adults rarely mange to finish it. The kids had less fear to mess up and were comfortable with making some mistakes to get the job done. After all, there wasn’t any way of doing it wrong.

So, the point in the game was to encourage thinking outside the box (or circle), that there are no set rules when being creative, it’s tough being put on the spot but ultimately you need to get comfortable making mistakes because sometimes the best design can come from a blunder.

With that in mind, we moved onto the design challenge – creating a logo for a doughnut company – Doh Doughnuts.

The logo should be influenced by the companies USP. So, what is their Unique Selling Point?

Are they plant based doughnuts? Are they a doughnut delivery service? Do they charter flights to fly doughnuts wherever you need them? (A personal favourite that came from one of the third year pupils).

In those 15 minutes there were hundreds and hundreds of ideas, and most of them not stifled by the realms of possibility.

Although I was asked to provide a workshop for the kids to teach them about design and being creative, they reminded me the power of imagination and how it can lead to some really cool ideas.

I wanted to thank the staff at Dalbeattie High for their hospitality, a special thanks to Mrs Houston who organised the event. Finally, a shout out to Mya – a sixth year pupil who helped me throughout the entire day with the back to back workshops.

It was fantastic seeing a small local school that is so involved with the neighbouring workforce.

Lots of different companies in a range of different sectors. Covering Hospitality, STEM, Construction, Engineering, Healthcare, Design, Computing & ICT, Agriculture and Sport.

These included Jas P Wilson, Loreburn Housing Association, Qubiti, Tarff Valley, NHS, The Market Inn Hotel, Active Schools & My World of Work Ambassadors.